Norton Wheelers Tour de France 2008

The Riders

Darrell – Le maillot jaune – unbeatable on the hills

Tom – King of the mountains – looks poised to challenge his ageing team mates for next year’s maillot jaune!

Hannah – le maillot blanc – the best young rider. We didn’t see any other 10 year olds on any of the cols!

Jean-Pierre – le maillot vert – teaching the youngsters a thing or two about a sprint finish

Russell – Best downhiller. Already at the campsite drinking beer by the time we had negotiated the potholed descent on the Col des Annes.

Sharon – conquered all the climbs despite being a time trial specialist.

Lynn and Jan – Less chatting and this pair might get to the top a bit faster!

Anne – Only went up the steepest hills!

Dave – thought he was going on holiday not doing a 2 week stage race

Miles – Prefers playing football!

Kevin – most farting! But without a doubt one of our most improved riders he showed fine form on the climbs

Cols climbed

Joux Plane 1722m

Encrenaz 1433m

Ramaz 1559m

Colombiere x2! 1613m

Aravis 1486m

Annes 1722m

Croix-Fry 1467m

Glieres 1440m

Collet 1390m

For the first week we based ourselves at Samoens and the second week Le Grand Bornand. These two pretty alpine villages are just south of Geneva only about an hours drive apart. Moving for the second week meant we had lots of new hills without having to drive anywhere. After the best part of a day In the car driving from the ferry, apart from the odd trip to the supermarket, the cars remained parked on the campsite!

As well as being the easiest part of the Alps to get to, the climbs here, although tough, are not as long as some of the more famous cols and were a good taster of what riding in the Alps is all about.

Both are ski villages in the winter but remain lively holiday resorts in the summer and as well as all the cycling there were plenty of other things to do like rafting, parapenting, walking, swimming…..

Here’s what we got up to:

Just as planned everyone arrived in the right place at the right time and as luck would have it we had chosen 3 pitches that didn’t turn into a swimming pool after a day of torrential rain. The Saville family had wisely brought along a tarp which put the finishing touch to the Samoens basecamp

Since the Beresford’s were arriving a day later we decided to see how everyone got on doing a climb up to Samoens 1600 ski resort. It was steeper than I remembered and I was a bit worried that it might put Hannah and Sharon off for the rest of the holiday. I should have known they were made of sterner stuff!

By the time the others arrived at 9.30pm it was raining and we had a frantic half hour trying to get the tents up in the dark. Unfortunately this continued on Tuesday and there was nothing for it but to put on your running kit!

By Wednesday the sun was out again and we decided on a mass ascent of the Col de Joux Plane where Floyd Landis famously broke away on the Tour only to test positive for drugs.

It was already becoming obvious that Tom was in his element on the climbs, only Darrell could keep ahead of him and he scared a couple of very fit looking cyclists by sitting on their wheel for part of the climb.

Another fine day on Thursday and we all headed for the Col de la Ramaz also used in the Tour de France (I think Virenque won the stage a few years ago). Whilst the others were busy going round the block looking for each other Tom and I took advantage and formed a breakaway. Some confusion over where the Col was led to us all losing each other temporarily and Darrell and I made it to the top first since we were the only ones who new the way!

Fortunately we had chosen Friday to go white water rafting. Lots of rain made the trip much more exciting as the river was really high. The instructor narrowly avoided a punch on the nose when he told me that women and children had to get out for the gorge section!! Hannah managed the record number of dunks in the river!

Saturday was fine and sunny again so we headed off over the Col de la Colombiere (Scene of Linus Gerdeman’s lone breakaway to win the Tour stage last year). 105k with a 1600m Col this was a tough day out, but everyone made it in fine form.

On Sunday whilst the rest of the team had a ride up the valley I went for another trip up the Joux Plane to keep Anne company.

Monday we moved to the next campsite at Le Grand Bornand

But still had time to climb the Col des Aravis with great views of Mont blanc in the background

At Le Grand Bornand we were joined by Jan and Jean-Pierre.

Since they had never been up the Colombiere the next day we decided to keep them company as we had previously climbed it from the other side

Since this didn’t take long we thought we would nip up the Col des Annes which was just a short way up the valley, it turned out to be the steepest and roughest road we had done the whole holiday. For me the descent was worse than the climb, but Russell showed us he hadn’t lost any of his old skills and disappeared into the distance.

Having forgotten to time how long it took him Tom did this one again on his own the following day!

Wednesday whilst some of us went over the Col de Croix-Fry

The others did a bit of summer luge!

Since we were so close to Chamonix we decided a trip on the Aiguille Midi cable car was a must. The James Bond style telecabine holds 72 people and takes you up to 3800 metres. Just walking up the stairs at that altitude was enough to make you feel dizzy not to mention the huge drops down from the viewing platforms.

Our last climb turned out to be the toughest of the trip, 6k at an uncomfortably steep gradient up to the Glieres Plateau

Saturday morning the Beresford’s got the shoe horn out to pack the car and Darrell and I went over to the Jura so he could have a rest from holding off Tom on the hills!

We had a great two weeks and would certainly be keen to do something similar next year if anyone is interested. There are still plenty of Cols to be climbed in the Alps!