I'm not much of a forward thinker, and though I've had my fair share of excellent adventures (most documented on this blog), it is rare that I've sat down and wondered what I'd like to do... A long sequence of bad months through 2012 mad...
I'm not much of a forward thinker, and though I've had my fair share of excellent adventures (most documented on this blog), it is rare that I've sat down and wondered what I'd like to do... A long sequence of bad months through 2012 made me think very carefully about the winter of 2013. I didn't want to endure a long, dark winter again, and felt that something to look forward to would both provide an excellent experience in its own right, but which would also literally give me something to look forward to, brightening the months in between.I've long thought I'd make a pilgrimage to the home of cycling, Europe, when Kaitlyn started slamming doors and screaming "I hate you Dad" - a rite of passage of all teenagers, surely?! Whether or not this ever actually happens remains to be seen, of course.Nonetheless, towards the end of 2012, I found myself in the shape of my life, and figured that while waiting for another 6 years for Kaitlyn to finish college would make some sense, the riding opportunities I currently have might not exist then. In the space of a few hours, tossing and turning in bed, I came up with the basic framework which still defines my upcoming trip.I decided I'd head to France, and do a cycle-tour with a few differences. Spurred by the riding I've most loved over the last few years, I conjured up a one-man Brevet. A pre-defined route and schedule, over which I'd travel light and fast, just the way I like it. Being time-poor (work, parenting, volunteer work at Makara Peak, riding, and, of course, depression), I decided not to research and design the route from scratch. Instead, my investigations would focus on pulling together old race routes to form a single loop through France. And, not just any old race routes - I'd draw from the most prominent race of all, and connect historical (and a few future) stages from the Tour de France. The next day, I started planning. Off to the internet...!Le Cycle-Tour de France was born.The official Tour de France website made a good first-port-of-call, and I started by taking notes of the 2012 race. The first sheet in my Google-Docs spreadsheet featured stage number, length, notable details, and a link to the official webpage. I was thorough with the 2012 race, but by the time I'd done the same for the 2011 event, I realised how much data I was compiling, how repetitive it already was, and how daunting my task would be if I continued! I quickly started taking short-cuts, and summarising and linking only the mountain stages.That weekend, Kaitlyn and I went off to Whitcoulls and got a pair of (double-sided) maps of France. I'd been trying to ignore the huge box Simon and my tandem had arrived in, but realised it would make an awesome pin board. That evening I mounted the maps on the board, and started adding coloured pins to it: a flag denoted the start of a stage, and a standard pin (of the same colour) the end.That too quickly got out of control, but it was a good way of getting the lie of the the land, and to start narrowing down some options.There's hills in amongst those pins! In the meantime, I'd had a chat to the boss, and had noted the 5 weeks free of teaching between Saturday 8 June and Sunday 14 July. That was my window of opportunity.The Pyrenees and Alps are the highlights of any Tour de France, and so should they be the highlights of this tour. I also thought it would be cool to visit the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, and maybe cross a border or two. A common feature of the race is long transfers, but since I'd have no team support, I was keen to keep transitions to a minimum. In short, I was looking for a big loop, with as few (and as small) gaps as possible.As with planning for any rogaine, a basic route quickly started to crystalise - anticlockwise, leaving Paris to the south-west, a 1000km blast down the Atlantic coast, the Pyrenees, across to the Alps via Mont Ventoux, a few days in the Alps, and then, north-west back into Paris. After na