A dramatic bulge of crumbling cliffs and monochrome peaks erupts around us as though we have flipped the page of a pop-up picture book
The road to the legendary Col du Galibier has been splintered and shattered into a mosaic of broken rock. As I cycle up this river of rubble, my tyres judder over stones the size of prehistoric eggs and slide through puddles of scree. Every turn of my pedals is met by the crisp, crackling sound of crunched gravel. High above me, between moss-green meadows and the blazing late summer sky, is the fabled 2,642m summit of the Galibier, which has graced the Tour de France on 67 occasions. But this is not the Galibier as we know it.
I’ve cycled up the Galibier, which straddles the Hautes-Alpes and Savoie border of southeast France, many times. But today I’m following l’ancienne route, a little-known gravel road on its southern flank that traces the original route of the heroic Tour pioneers of the early 1900s. Formerly a rustic track crossed by salt smugglers, bandits, soldiers, farmers and vagabonds, this trail was shaped into a rudimentary road in 1879, long before the modern road was built, slightly to the west, in 1938. So from the Galibier’s first Tour appearance in 1911 until 1938, this route was how cyclists conquered the col.
Tour founder Henri Desgrange loved it. For a start, the original track was agonisingly steep. From its beginnings near the 2,058m Col du Lautaret below, the old route packs 555m of ascent into less than 6km at an average of 10.4%. By comparison, the modern road from the south offers a gentler 8.6km climb at 6.8%.
Émile Georget, the first rider over the Galibier in 1911, was one of only three cyclists
