Straight out of the box I need to aplogise for the quality of what follows…..hardest day ever!

Given the drizzle and the cold, greyness outdoors we decide to set up a make shift kitchen in the shower block. I know it sounds less than ideal but it was at least dry at and Marc managed to cook up a storm again with pasta, tomato sauce, mushrooms and even some garlic bread (all on a single tiny gas burner!). Overall I would say 5 star for food, 3 stars for service (no dessert, let himself down) and 1 star for ambience (it would have been zero but it was after all at least dry!)

 I would also give the shower block 5 stars for versatility as in the morning it also becomes “bike workshop”, “tent drying area”, “pannier packing workstation” and of course “electrical charging area”…..

There is lots of procrastinating and faffing about this morning and when we decide that yet another cup of coffee is “probably a good idea before we head off” we all recognise that basically this is just another stalling tactic...we need to put on our big boy trousers and get on with it....and so we do.

As soon as we leave Bourg D’Oisans the base of the climb just looms up in front of us and for the first 15 minutes or so and the first three of four hairpins it’s minimum 10% and often 14%. It is brutally, incredibly hard and really messes with your head....”there is no way I can maintain this level  of pain all the way to the top”. We pause (frequently!) for photos and refueling…..

Fortunately the gradient does then lessen to between 7% and 10% which (just to be super clear this is still very, ridiculously hurty but feels more manageable). Alpe D’Huez has been a stage on the Tour de France many times and each of the 21 hairpins has a sign celebrating those who have one the stage. We make a special stop at corner 13 for Geraint Thomas.

When we finally after, about and hour and half of turning ourselves inside out, reach corner 1 we know we are within sight of our goal. Cheekily though there is a corner zero as well but once we round that we know we are there….the summit of Alpe D’Huez.

Disappointingly there is no really obvious end to the climb, we simply run out of road and that’s the end. We celebrate, bikes aloft and then as per the TMAAT MO, we brew up.

Two guys pedal up shortly after we have arrived and had our tea, and ask if we know where the finish is, which we obviously don’t. We get chatting and when they hear what we are doing they very kindly reach into their wallets and offer 30 euros. It’s all I can do not to burst into tears to be honest (I can even feel myself welling up now as I type) it’s just a really generous kind thing to do and on the back of probably the hardest climb I have ever done it’s all a bit much.

Matt and Miles from Thames Ditton your are legends and we salute you even if your bikes did weigh a fraction of ours....just saying!

We have a route planned that carries on over the back of Alpe D’Huez and back down into the next valley where we will pick up the D1091 to La Grave and our stop for the night. Given our track record with the Garmin / google maps and the fact the weather looks uncertain we decide that the sensible, albeit harder, thing to do is not risk the Garmin taking us along a goat track, in a thunderstorm, up an alp and so we head back the way we have come down to Bourg-d’Oisans and then head east along the valley. It will add 10 miles and around 3000 feet of extra climbing to our day (and so far from an easy choice) but it’s the right decision.....you just don’t mess with Alps.

The descent from the top of Alpe D’Huez is off the scale exhilarating .....unfortunately I am having problems downloading the videos but they will appear here….rest assured it was amazing!!!

We stop for well earned omelette and frites in Bourg d’Oisans and then head off to La Grave.

It’s a spectacular but back breaking ride, with only the odd flat or down section.....it is almost exclusively up, alps are alps for a reason after all.

We are really starting to flag when we finally arrive at La Grave and to be honest I am totally spent....I have absolutely nothing left. I need to get off my bike, I need to eat (a lot!!) and I need a hot shower and some sleep. We have only travelled 38 miles but we have climbed a massive, and very hard, 6700 feet (and depending on your preferred standard of measurement, that is either a hell of a lot flights of stairs and/or Snowdons)

La Grave is a welcome sight although slightly ghostly in its total lack of activity. In fact it’s clear that nothing is open....at all! We assume this is because it’s mid afternoon and cruise down to our campsite for the night, Camping de La Meije, which is also closed! We roam around the site seeing if perhaps the showers are open (and they are but there is no hot water and the toilets are all locked). I call the number for the campsite but there is no answer so I leave a message. 

No food (potentially) and no hot water (definitely) is not the dream ticket after a ridiculous hard day of riding even if you are not in the Alps but the Alps add another level of concern and vulnerability...and that is exactly all of a sudden how we all feel....more than a little vulnerable. 

We have a three men and a tent pow pow and decide that we will have to forsake our tent for the evening and check into a hotel....except that a quick cycle around the small town (even that is no easy thing when you have already cycled eleventy billion miles and the town is itself on a mountain!) reveals that all the hotels are closed too.....this is fast becoming quite scary. A cold night in the alps with no hot water and no food or the risk of pressing on to see if we strike it lucky elsewhere is definitely what you could call “sub optimal”. Google suggests that our best chance of success is Briancon but that’s another 19 miles and around 2000 feet of climbing which not one of us feels is really possible. In the absence of other plausible options its a scary moment then as we decide that we simply have to push on, we have to have warmth and food and neither seem to exist in La Grave.

Just as we start pedalling out of La Grave the phone rings and it’s the campsite owner returning my call. Miracle of miracles she speaks English and whilst she confirms what we already know (we are closed!) she does direct us to a gite at the edge of the town (I don’t know why I keep calling it a town it’s barely a hamlet!) which she is adamant is open.

We bowl into the gite desperate for some good news and .....we actually get some. Yes they are open, yes they have a room for us, and yes they have hot water for us. Unfortunately they don’t serve food but the owner very kindly donates some pasta, cereal, milk and other bits and pieces and the free use of her kitchen to three men and a tent cause …..honestly I could hug her!

So safe, dry warm and fed in the middle of the Alps the most incredible day comes to an end.....vive les trois hommes!