Beautiful, brutal and almost broken

I'm not going to update after every day, as wifi is irregular and frankly you would get bored. But yesterday deserves a post on its own.

I guess the serene beauty of the Auvergne was going to reveal her nasty side at some point. And she gave us both barrels yesterday - the day that had everything. Our best days cycling combined with the most brutal day so far.

We thought we had conquered the best the Auvergne could throw at us by summiting Mont Dore on Thursday after a gruelling day in the saddle. It isn't possible to be more wrong.

Aware of an arduous week ahead if we are to make Chamonix in 5 days, we left the campsite at Mont Dore at 7.30, too early for receptionists so we got off to a great start by not paying for our last 2 nights camping. Sometimes it's all about those small victories, especially when on a strict budget!

Immediately after breakfast we were straight into a 7k climb to the top of Col du Morand, which at 1401m was a fairly brutal wake up call for the first 45 mins of the day. Awesome views and justified celebration when considering there weren't any cyclists schlepping up there on creaking hybrids burdened by 25kgs of panniers. We were then treated to a stunning descent of about 30ks down to our lunch stop in Issoire where we refuelled and got completely over confident that we had broken the back of it for the day.

How wrong we were. The rest of the day was pretty much uphill, bar the last 10k. So 118 in total, 70k uphill. In 35 degree heat. And baking sun. And with totally inadequate water supplies. We are crossing the Massif Central, and rather foolishly thought there would be plenty of villages to top up water bottles as went went. Wrong again. Halfway up the second col of the day, we were both completely out of our now rationed water, dying for shade of which their is precious little, and to be honest things were starting to get a bit interesting. We pushed on thanks to a couple of out of date energy gels until we found a cafe at the col's summit. 2 iced teas, 2 Oringinas and copious litres of water later and we were able to speak again. Christ knows what the staff at the cafe were thinking as these two bearded, sweaty, exhausted men slumped in the shade drinking furiously and then sat under the tap to cool down.

Refreshed and having rung an unbelievable amount of sweat from the material of our bike helmets, we kicked on for the final 20ks to our destination of Ambert, which the cafe owner had told me was downhill. Either he lied or more realistically, my French just didn't cut it.

Wrong again. Straight into col 3. By this point, we are losing the humour, until a car full of Brits roared past shouting Allez Wiggins. Perfect. We summited the third col (too tired to note their names for the fanatics out there, sorry), to find Cheeks had broken a spoke and his rear wheel was wobbling about more than Mr Blobby in his heyday. And with a 10k hairpin descent ahead, that made things quite interesting.

With the tour in jeopardy, up stepped Francois, an immediate tour legend. We got Ambert, found the bike shop which was closing as it was after 6, who despite our predicament of the Blazing Pedals tour being severely endangered, was too busy to help us. So he sent us up the road to his mate. Who owned a lawn mower shop. Brilliant.

However, our suspicions were unfounded. As Cheeks took subtle pics of the ubiquitous soft porn adorning the walls of the workshop, Francois got to work and sorted the spoke, pumped up our tyres, tried to sell us all manner is strimmers, lawn mower parts etc and then sent us our merry way for a mere €20. Quite possibly the best €20 we'll spend on the trip.

The day that had everything and left us exhausted, almost broken, yet ultimately winners.

C