With no journey in the morning to speak of (the walk to the car park doesn't warrant a mention) in fact no driving of any sort today I was concerned that it could be a quick blog today.
The Andorran hotel has already surpassed my previous stay in the capital, where one morning on deciding to take the stairs I came across a massive rat gnawing on something non-edible. The rat just looked at me and said 'what?' The wifi has been great and the breakfast was good to, the first one to provide hot food.
I had plenty of time to faff about and couldn't put it off any longer, it was time to climb the mountain. The Andorra Arcalis or Arcalis Ordano is 18km from Ordino to the summit, it must have been a nightmare deciding where to say that the climb starts in a country that appears to be on one long slope. I would assume they teach geography in Andorra as France up and Spain down.
So the climb may well be 18km but I would throw in the extra 10km of uphill as well to get from my hotel to Ordino. Setting off from the hotel I joined an increasing amount of cyclists heading towards the mountain. As it has been for the last few days now, it was hot, stifling hot and if there is anything I hate (and remember I am no climber anyway) it is the heat. The climb proper, once you get to it, isn't the hardest you would encounter but it's just long (and hot). I had two emergency pit stops, one to buy the best two calippos I have ever had and the second to buy and neck two cans of coke in roughly 2 minutes. The first few kilometres weren't great but I settled in to it. At just short of 3km's the Police stopped me riding any further, whether for my own good, the good of cycling or due to the race is debatable. I could see the summit but to be honest I wasn't going to argue.
I met a very nice group of Brits on my way up, they had a camper van parked up and there were about 8 of them having a picnic. The crowd was very much dominated by Spaniards with an impressive turnout of Colombians and Norwegians.
Once settled in to my spot it was the tried and tested routine of lunch, wait, caravan, wait. We had a couple of unexpected rain showers but nothing untoward. Then a funny thing happened. The Norwegians, a couple of hair pin bends up, started to do the Viking chant that Iceland made popular in the Euros, it must annoy the Norwegians to have lost their crown as everybody's favourite Vikings. They had done it a few times but on this occasion, with perfect timing there was a clap of thunder at the end. People cheered and they went potty. There were a couple more claps of thunder but we didn't think anything of it. Then it started to rain, scrap that, it was hail the size of M&M's. I have nothing but my cycling kit and flip flops and it is hammering it down, at one point as the race was coming through a man was shouting 'English' to beckon me under his brolly.
Then cyclists arrived...I had a great spot right on the corner of the hairpin bend, so I could shout in their ears, while waving my flag and ringing the cow bell. This is one of the days when you appreciate how lucky you are to get this close to the action (too close on some occasions) and I think on the whole the cyclists do realise the effort it takes to be on a mountain for a stage like today. The field were so split out it was over half and hour between the first and last riders.
Back to the weather, which showed no signs of easing up, if anything it was getting harder and we have more claps of thunder. On any other stage, the crowd would not move until the 'Fin de Course'
van comes past but today there was no way they could keep people in place, hundreds were making there way down before the last two big groups had come through. Basically, you can re-read the description of getting off the Aspin on stage 7 and then imagine it 10 times worse. Road bikes don't brake as efficiently in the rain, now imagine hundreds and hundreds of them trying to descend in torrential rain, with rivers appearing on the roads. There was a 200metre tunnel at one point and it was full of people sheltering from the rain. Frankly, once you are soaked you might as well get on with it, my biggest problem was my hand seizing up from so much breaking.
Thankfully the Police made the decision not to let any other vehicle move on the mountain to try and get the very wet cyclists off first. I did see one post-crash rider being attended to by an ambulance but thankfully no more. So, after the slowest descent in cycling history we were off. On the way down I was overtaken by the 50 motorbike Police who work the event and a number of team cars, filled with riders a couple of which gave knowing glances.
Back to the hotel and the bathroom is full of drying stuff, dinner was fine apart from appalling service and there is now a very large party going on outside as the sizeable Portuguese community in Andorra celebrate their win in the Euros.
I was thinking about today, the tough climb up but still made it, the weather, looking in the whites of their eyes and then that descent and came to the conclusion that I wouldn't have changed any of it. I will never forget coming off that mountain and it makes the trip just that bit more unforgettable.
Couple of other stories
Some of the floats on the caravan have microphones and they call out to people, normally it's just marketing spiel but some do go off script. On seeing my flag today, the microphoned man says 'we love you England (it's always England) even if you don't want to be in Europe anymore'
And I meant to include this one yesterday, as walking into Luchon yesterday, who should walk past but Chris Boardman. 'Hi Chris' I say, 'Hi, how is your trip going?' he replies...get in. I asked him how his trip was going and he said 'nearly the rest day' which didn't feel that positive.
Stat, stat, stat
Miles driven - still 1701
Miles cycled - 116 HC, cat 1 and 3 x cat 4
Nights since pizza - 3
Tat of the day - a neck tie thing given out by a float from a local region which I wore all afternoon. I was also given a polka dot tshirt which I wore on the descent for an extra layer.
Cheese of they day - when nearly in Spain it has to be manchego
Tomorrow is the first of two rest days, so I will try and have some shenanigans to blog about, in the meantime, one final story from today. I'm standing there in the pouring rain, ringing my bell when suddenly the thing that I have imagined happening for as long as I've been watching bike racing but will obviously never happen, happened. Out the corner of my eye, a green Team Cannondale bidon had hit the floor and was rolling towards me. It was discarded by a rider which is the key factor but in a way that it would gently roll across the floor to me. I do understand that I am 43 and it is just a bidon, that I could buy...but I don't care :
Massana on the way to the climb
Calm before the storm (literally)
And in the storm
No cyclist pics today so you get me on the tele
More storm
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