What it feels like to ride up a Tour de France mountain

Alpe d’Huez is brtual. No, it’s not the longest climb in the world, nor is it the steepest, but it is relentless. It is 14.4km long and 1100m high and has an average gradient (or steepness) of around 7.9 per cent – a flat road being 0 per cent.

To put that into context the highest climb in the UK, the Cairnwell Pass in Scotland, is just 670m high, 8.2km long and has an average slope of 4 per cent. Suffice it to say, I had never ridden anything like Alpe d’Huez before and if I’m honest with myself, I did basically no training. This was going to hurt.

Halfway up the mountain, sweat dripping on my sunglasses, I look up from my bicycle handles and see the alps spread out beside me, sharp blue ridges in the distance beneath what few clouds there are in the sky. The tops of the very tallest peaks are brushed with white snow. Yet all I can think about was finding a place to stop pedalling.

I’d been riding for over 30 minutes and my legs were tight. But there was nowhere reasonable to stop and, anyway, I wanted to get to the top without stopping. The problem when you stop once is that it makes it easier to stop again and again and again. I look up the mountain, at the winding road. The end was in sight, but so very far away, so very high up. I looked around for a place to stop.

Bourg-d’Oisans is a small village at the foot of the Alpe d’Huez, an 1,800m mountain which operates as a ski resort in the winter and a cycling mecca in the summer. There are a few restaurants and bars in the village, and on the day we passed through they were all busy with people watching the Tour de France on TV with cold, golden beers. It was sunny and warm, and Europe was entering the July heatwave. The cycling pilgrims sought shade and left their bikes outside the bars leaning against each other in the sunlight.

It already felt like a festival, and yet the Tour de France was not to pass onto the mountain until the following day. But in order to get a good spot in the village, or on the road snaking up the mountain, one had to arrive early. This was helped by the fact that on the next day, not only would the cyclists climb the famous mountain, but it was also Bastille Day, a national holiday in France, the anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille.

We arrive in the morning in Geneva and drive down to a lake near the village. There is a fair breeze across the lake and it is cool, but as we set out on the bikes, and pass through the Bourg-d’Oisans, the wind dies off…