The last European adventure on bicycles took us into Holland and Germany, where we were eager to explore all that Northern Europe’s cycling trails could offer. Unfortunately, the main adventure was around what clothing could prevent us from getting completely drenched within 5 minutes of setting off. Answer: none.

Chuckle Brother 2 announced that he was never going back there again (you have to take this with a bit of a pinch of salt, as there are many things that he’s sworn never to do again), but he was joined in his refusal this time by Bean, who claimed have never to have got completely dry until several days after we got back to Blighty. However, this being CB1’s 50th birthday, we decided to stretch ourselves a little bit and to travel South, and also to extend the adventure from myself, CB’s 1 & 2, and Bean, to two more guests. It was important in choosing the two members of the team to have emergency help on hand for the trip, so they were selected for their specific skills, and consequently, we were joined by The Paramedic and The Hairdresser.

France, being all very enthusiastic about cycling, gave lots of opportunities to us, and few more so than Provence, where Mont Ventoux seems to hop out of the ground, pretty well unannounced, as something that needs to be got over. You might have seen Mont Ventoux on the Tour de France, it’s a absolute beast of a hill, about 21 km directly up, no matter which of the three routes you take, and it’s on lots of people’s bucket lists as something to cycle up, ideally without stopping.

Is called Mont Ventoux for good reason. Mont means mountain. Vent means wind. And toux means, well, all the bloody time. So it’s pretty well named, but the name doesn’t really do it justice – a better title would be something like “That bloody great hill that’s possible to get to the top of without completely breaking down in tears, and where the wind threatens to send you into the rocks on the way up. And down into the canyons on the way down”. That would be a bit more accurate, although I fear that it might be a bit of a struggle fitting that onto a tea towel, so Mont Ventoux it is.

So, we roll into Malaucene on day one, hire bikes, and ready ourselves for the big assault on Sunday. The Paramedic, who is something of A Serious Cyclist, is of the view that all three of the climbs need to be undertaken in a day, and who are we to argue. After all, it’s just a question of pedalling in a low gear to the top, no? Well, no, as it happens. You start climbing on a fairly steep incline, then you start going more uphill, and after about an hour you start getting really tired, just as the slope starts to maintain about 10% gradient. By this point, you’ve pretty much run out of gears. Then after about 15km, you come out above the tree line, the slope gets tougher, there’s no vegetation, and you suddenly realise what the Vent bit was all about. Mont Ventoux has its own microclimate, and the Mistral knocks you about like there’s no tomorrow. One minute it’s behind you, which feels great, the next minute it’s in your face,and you really struggle to stay upright,and then it swirls around and threatens to knock you off the side of the mountain. CB2 and I were literally blown a couple of metres across the road, and could quite easily have landed on a gorge a few hundred feet below when we were climbing one of the ascents.

Which brings me to the prickly subject of Health and Safety, or as we like to call it in France, “Laissez Faire”. There are signs as you go up to the top of the mountain, saying that it’s open, and apparently it’s shut in Winter or when the winds get up to more than 65km/hour. As it happens, the wind was only about half that when we went up, and we could easily have gone over the edge, not least as, more often than not, there’s no guard rail and pretty much a vertical drop. Which I suppose does make you focus a bit, even when you’re knackered.

So you get to the top of the climb, and on two of the ascents, you go round the final hairpin at the end, hit a wind that stops you still and you fight to get the bike up the last slope. It’s a bit like finishing a marathon, as you’re completely frazzled at the point at which you cross the line, at which point…well, there’s a sweet stall. You see, there are so many people climbing Mont Ventoux these days that you really need to be on a shopping bike, over 70 years old or possibly riding a unicycle to get any sort of attention. Years ago, I rode from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and when I’d finished, went to the pub next to the famous signpost. Ordered a celebratory pint, and told the batman that I’d just finished my epic trip, perhaps not realising that every other customer had a similar story.

“Oh yes, he said? We had someone in yesterday who’d just done it on roller skates”

So it’s relatively easy to feel a bit flat at the end, and you also get incredibly cold, and my fellow cyclists were kind enough to point out that I was displaying the signs of an early onset of Parkinson’s disease. So, for fear of ending up being a tedious self important professional Yorkshireman with a penchant for Billy Connolly, I tried to warm up, which was easier said than done.

There’s lots of people all gathered at the top, in front of the famous sign saying Mont Ventoux – 1912m, which, interestingly, is just above the road marker that says 1911m. You might want to point that out to any of your friends who’ve been fleeced for the official 1912m Tshirt. After our group photo, there were a group of French motorcyclists, who’d been buzzing cyclists all the way up, and gradually making themselves fairly unpopular. I don’t know much about motorcycling, so it may have been a phenomenal achievement for them, but it struck me as a bit weird that they were celebrating how strong their right wrists had been for half an hour. Actually, it also struck me that they’d be exercising the same wrists when they got back to their hotels, but that may have just been because they’d irritated me a tad.

So, after all that, you get to the similarly important bit of getting down the hill again. I’m not a massive fan of going completely out of control on a stupidly fast descent with no idea where the next hairpin, oncoming car or slippery bit of road is coming from, but I seemed to be in the minority in my group. One minute I was bombing down, trying hard not to use the brakes, going at about 30 mph, the next minute The Paramedic was bombing past pedalling for his life (his fastest speed for the three days was about 50 mph, which doesn’t bear thinking about). Anyway,it takes absolutely ages to get to the bottom, which is not in itself surprising, but it does make you appreciate how hard you’ve worked to get up in the first place. And of course, as you’re bombing down, you’re seeing flashes of these poor buggers still going up, and quite a fair bit of you wants to tell them to save it, that they’re going to have a bloody awful time, and that it’s really windy, and that they’ll be really disappointed with the sweet stall, but of course you don’t.

The Tour de France goes up Ventoux on 14th July this year, and they’ll be going round the hairpin at the end, although probably at a slightly faster lick than we managed, and hopefully they’ll be a slightly more exciting reception for them, possibly not involving overpriced liquorice. They’ll also have raced about 220 km before they get to Bedoin, which is the hardest of the three climbs, then they’ll race up the mountain. With about 3 km to go, they’ll pass the monument to Tom Simpson, who famously died in the Tour at that spot in 1967, after pushing himself not only to the limit of his body, but also from whatever amphetamines and brandy were knocking about in his system to get him to the top, a prescription that even Lance’s Dr Ferrari might have baulked at. There’s a bit of an irony, that we’ll be looking out for slower times this year to prove that the riders are clean, but, assuming they are relatively so in this years tour, good luck to them – this year they have a rest day after Mont Ventoux but they’ll be flat out for the following week.

As to our challenge, a few of us tried to do the three ascents in a day and only The Paramedic managed it. CB1 had his second puncture of the day on the second descent, I stopped to help, by which I mean I stopped and watched while complaining of being cold and getting cramps, at which point The Hairdresser gave me a massage straight out of the deleted scenes in Brokeback Mountain, and we limped down to the Ski Station, which is about half way down, to meet the Paramedic. At this point, I’d been thinking about throwing in the towel, and as I stopped the bike, my left leg kindly made my decision for me. I’ve had cramp many times before, but not quite as dramatically as this. I was not only completely unable to get off the bike through the pain, but when I looked down at my leg, there was a gap, about the size of half a tennis ball, where my lower quad had previously been. And a matching half tennis ball lump, further up my leg, where the muscle had not only spasmed but had refused to move.

“You’ve got to put your leg up”, said CB1, whose own cramp had eased off, and he helpfully lifted my foot off the floor. This not only miraculously eased the cramping in the quad, but within seconds, completely cramped up the hamstring. At which point, according to my fellow riders, I became quite abusive, and almost unappreciative. Quite what the diners, enjoying a quiet Sunday lunch in the ski station, made of the entertainment in the car park is anyone’s guess, as the collection of middle aged Lycra lads desperately tried to hang onto bikes, legs and other body parts without falling over. The Paramedic, meanwhile, was observing this with a mixture of puzzlement and quiet reflection. My suspicion is that he’s let his medical skills slip a little over the years, although he may have just been mentally tuning up for the next climb. Anyway, the rest of us limped back to Malaucene, although we did manage the third ascent on the third day.

And so, what was all that about then? We could have trooped off for a light bit of exercise and a few beers around the pool, and that might have been a bit more relaxing as a birthday celebration. But while you can still do these things, you should. After all, when you break your collar bone on one of those descents, or dropping off the edge, then that might be a good time to head for the pool. In the mean time, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Just make sure you take your own sweets for when you get to the top.

There is a danger, that every now and again, this blog will descend into the sort of territory occupied by those gawd-awful American self help books, the ones with titles like “Everything I know of life I learnt from cooking chicken soup with my grandmother”. Because, as regular readers* will know, I have a fairly intense obsession with running, and I think there’s a pretty good link between stuff you know and stuff you learn when you’re running.

So before you know it, there’ll be a gawd-awful book called “Everything I learnt from life I learnt from going running on Sunday with the Flying Postman”. Then I’ll file my next blog entry from the Cayman Islands, before the inevitable protracted battle with TFP, who will claim that he deserves 50% of all pre-tax profits. Our friendship will be at an end, he’ll make his fortune from a vitriolic response called “Running with the f***wit” or “We need to stop talking about Kevin because he’s an ill-informed git”, and our collective contribution to mankind will be add up to nothing.

And here are two interesting stories from the last couple of weeks that prove, if nothing else, that there’s still a long way to go before those books get an airing.

I’m running along on Sunday with TFP, talking about this and that, musing over the economy of the world and life’s rich tapestry, while trying to ignore the fact that this used to be an easy run at a minute a mile faster than today and now feels bloody awful, when we take what a poet might call ‘the path less travelled’. We both really like going off road, so this was great, and it not being too wet we were boinging about on the path like two young terriers. Well, two young terriers with advanced arthritis, but you get my drift. And, just as we were almost enjoying ourselves, I felt the sort of pain in my head that you only really get when you run head first into a tree. Which was largely because I’d just run head first into a tree. Well, a branch at least, and one that seemed very much used to getting its own way. The collision itself must have made quite a noise, as TFP turned round before I had a chance to make a blood-curdling yelp, which I did, with a certain amount of gusto. “Blimey”, he said, “that must have hurt, from the sound of it. What sort of tree was it?” I politely pointed out that if I’d had a chance to identify the tree I might have also taken some steps to avoid it.

The funny thing was, I’d had a lingering headache for about three weeks. Being a bloke, I thought it best to ignore it and see if it went away, and I was surprised to find that, after I’d literally seen stars** for a few minutes, the headache was gone. Really completely gone. It’d been replaced by a bit of a lump, but it was like having a weight completely lifted from just on top of my brain, and, honestly, I’ve been headache free ever since.

And what do we learn from this? Well, simply that if you have a headache, one that’s a real lingering dull pain that just doesn’t seem to go away, just give it a bloody good slap and all will be well. Be sure to remember this next time you get canvassed by UKIP.

And on to lesson number two. I’m running for a couple of miles a few days later, and decide to have a bit of a blast around the local lake. It’s about a mile in total, and although my time wasn’t anything to write home about, I was, as we say around these parts, ‘well shagged’ by the time I finished the effort. I stopped, and just about managed to stay upright by putting my hands on my knees. A woman, who I reckoned to be about 5-10 years older than me, ran past me and stopped.

She: “Are you ok? I saw you go past when I came over the bridge and you were going really well”
Me: “Yes, fine, just a bit knackered. I’m sure I used to be able to do that much faster, and a bit further”
She: “I know, I can remember running 6:50 miles, now it’s all I can do to do 8:50’s”

And so we talked a bit back and forth about running, about getting old, about injuries (I have loads, she has none), about racing and clubs, and so on. I must have asked her how old she was, as I don’t think she told me out of the blue.

She “I’m 73, so I’m slowing down a bit now. I only really race cross country now”

I was pretty lost for words. She told me that the thing she really liked about running was being able to run with her grandchildren, and that she couldn’t really understand other grandparents who wouldn’t want to do that as well. If she had a secret, it was that she just kept running, wherever and whenever she could.

After a while, we both agreed that we needed to continue our runs. I said I was going to run along the river.

She: “You go on. I won’t be able to keep up with you.”

I wasn’t so sure, and I had a fairly lively spring in my step for the rest of my run, just in case.

So that’s lesson number two. I’m quite keen to be running when I’m 73, and I’m pretty sure the secret will be, well, just to keep running. And that’s the new motto: Keep Going. Keep Going. Keep Going.

So, until next time. Carry a large stick at all times to knock away irritation. And Keep Going.

 

* Hello, Mrs E

** Really,  I mean like proper bright stars spinning around in front of your eyes. If it hadn’t been so humungously painful, I might have quite enjoyed it, in a spacey kind of style.

Many, many moons ago, before the whole world went digital, Q magazine ran a feature on how record companies dealt with new bands. They sent off a demo tape* to a dozen companies along with a covering letter asking for feedback and whether there was any chance of being signed. In those days, being signed to a record company was probably a higher achievement than playing in an FA cup final or getting into the Olympic team. Or, as was the case in the mid 80’s, having a job. Anyway, the tapes all came back, and all but one of them had a message along the lines of ‘we’ve listened very carefully to your tape, and, regretfully, it’s not the sort of thing we’re looking for at the moment’. Only one company wrote back and said ‘we’ve tried listening to your tape and it appears to be blank’. Which of course they all were.

It was very hard to get a break in those halcyon days of indie music. When I was in my first band, our guitarist ran into John Peel in a car park. I say ‘ran into’, whereas I really mean ‘cunningly stalked’. He sidled up to the nation’s favourite DJ and asked if he’d be good enough to listen to the tape that he was eagerly pushing into his hand. ‘Sure’, said John, ‘I’ll put it with the others’, and opened up the boot of his car, which was literally full of cassette tapes. And that’s one of the many reasons** why we never got onto the John Peel show.

Anyway, back to Q magazine, and their article, which was obviously trying to show that everyone has terrible preconceptions and can’t be open to new ideas. Which is a delightful segue into this weeks blog, which will contend that a) the Great Gatsby should never have been made into a film, that b) Leonardo de Caprio should never be allowed near the lead role and that c) we are all going to find the knock on fascination with all things related to the Jazz Age intensely irritating by the end of the year. And the neat Q-related aspect of this film review is that I have no plans to go and see the film, so I am going to use every single fibre of my stupidly biased and ill informed being to help me along the way.

So, here’s the thing. The Great Gatsby is my favourite book ever. Ever. And, to be fair***, part of what makes it fabulous is all the things that will be brought out in the film. The opulence built on terribly shallow foundations, and the beauty surrounding the American dream will all be there in spades, and it’s absolutely what Hollywood does really well. But I worry that it’ll finish there as well. It took me at least three reads to even start to understand what the book was about; it’s about the paucity of love, the pathos of religion, the desperation of want, the transience of passion and the illusion of love, and it’s probably about another twenty things that needn’t trouble us here. The point is, that these themes are interwoven into what, ostensibly, is a semi-tragic love story, and you have to look for them, and the only way you’ll do this is by reading, and probably reading again. Otherwise, you’ll get the impression that it’s just about a mysterious rich man who falls for a woman he can’t have. I know it’s a terribly middle class thing to complain about the dumbing down of any filming of a book, but, well, when you’re talking about F Scott Fitgerald, you’re kind of talking about the man I love…

Which is not how I’d describe LdC. I’ve got absolutely nothing against the little chap. He’s no doubt kind to those around him, gives generously to small children and cute animals, and I’m sure he’s really talented. The problem I’ve got is that he’s him. So, no problem with him being in Titanic, or Catch Me If You Can, but a big problem with Revolutionary Road, and The Great Gatsby. I’d read most of Revolutionary Road when I saw the film, and as a result, really struggled to finish the book, as what I’d made up in my mind’s eye as the main character was taller, thinner and, well, just a bit more grown up than LdC. And I can’t really blame him for being shorter, wider and younger than some bloke several thousand miles away had imagined him, but I’m afraid I blamed him nonetheless. Well, that and the fact that I realised that Revolutionary Road was in fact not much cop as a book or a film. Other than the bit about the white horse.

So there’s a real problem with LdC as Gatsby. Pretty much everything above really, and in addition, I’d like a couple of cheekbones in my Jay G, which seem to be notable by their absence wherever LdC is concerned. But even if I didn’t have these narrow preconceptions, I’d still have a bit of a problem. And i think this boils down to the ambition that most actors seem to have of wanting to appear to want more than one movie. So, if you’ve seen, say, LdC in Titanic, there’s a reasonable chance that your understanding in Gatsby of one of American literature’s more important figures will be slightly tempered by your memory of him strangling the bejesus out of an Irish accent while charming the pants off the first class travellers with his hilarious observations and, er, line drawings.

I do have a solution to this problem, should you care for one. Give every actor one role, and one role alone, and then we can always imagine him or her as the same person. Initially, you might think this might be a bit restricting, but Basil Rathbone managed pretty well in the 40’s, and you could argue that Vince Vaughan, Will Ferrell, Mike Myers and many more have played pretty much the same character in every film they’ve ever been in. It would just be so much simpler, and we wouldn’t have all those painful interviews about having to ‘get into character’. Also, there’d be a chance that they could get proper jobs afterwards….

* this was in the form of something called a cassette tape – you may need to ask your parents.

** others included lack of talent, painfully naive lyrics and an unfortunate belief that the first Simple Minds album was a natural foundation for the new sound of happening Norfolk.

*** ‘to be fair’ – please shoot me if I ever write that down again