Coming round the mountain
‘Yeehaw!’ Gaby dispatches a whoop of delight that echoes around the valley before she clips in and sets off in hot pursuit. Not far ahead is François, whose bonkers brainchild this ride is, and the enigmatic Nicolas, endurance rider extraordinaire.
As the trio drops out of sight, I’m left to consider how I have come to find myself staring down a frighteningly steep Alpine footpath that might generously be described as a goat track, but only if we are talking about adrenaline junkie goats. We’re in Italy, I think, but it could be France. The border is around here somewhere but in this rugged landscape there are no signs or border posts.
When Cyclist’s editor emailed me a month or so earlier, offering a big – very big – autumnal gravel ride around Mont Blanc, I had replied immediately. Fifteen months into an unprecedented pandemic, I had barely been beyond my southeast London postcode on more than a handful of occasions, so of course I said yes.
That was before I checked the profile of the ride: 216km of distance with over 8,000m of climbing, divided into two days. That would be a significant challenge on smooth tarmac, but this ride is largely off-road, and not the kind of off-road that means crunching gently over gravel while discussing what to have
