HIGH SOCIETY
To cycle up a mountain is to pedal into a world of paradoxes. Mountains are a playground and a torture chamber; a means of outdoor adventure and inner discovery; an opportunity for wonder, a guarantee of pain. Call of the mountains In this glorious grind against gravity, a cyclist will experience brutal suffering and sublime beauty in equal measure. A mountain can drag you to despair but leave you soaring with joy.
When we think about cycling, mountains erupt into our imagination: a snaking Alpine pass or the curling grey ribbon of a Pyrenean hairpin. The most iconic moments of the Tour de France have taken place at altitude; photobooks of snow-capped cols adorn our coffee tables, and riders make pilgrimages to legendary peaks. But we rarely pause to think how strange this fascination really is. Road cyclists are not drawn in the same way to forests, fields or flatlands, although those landscapes feature in our rides and races. Mountains form the architecture of our cycling dreams. But this obsession cannot be explained simply by the physical challenges of elevation. And neither did this story begin with the Tour de France.
As the author Robert Macfarlane
