A RAID PYRENEEN DIARY

with the Old Portlians and assorted odds and sods

6 – 11 June 2005

By Graeme Fife (all rights and corkscrew reserved)

Gatwick. Thursday 2 June. Anniversary of the Coronation . 6am.

Rendezvous 

There’s not a lot you can say – not a lot that’s repeatable, at least – about Gatwick at 6 o’clock in the morning. In fact there’s nothing repeatable you can say about Gatwick at 6 o’clock in the morning. Jezza said it anyway.

Toulouse baggage hall. 11am

Bad news: ten bikes have gone missing.

The good news, if you’ve just looked at the Raid itinerary and col profiles again and begun to have serious doubts about your sanity, the good news is: ten bikes have gone missing and Diplomat and Icicle. are going to have to uphold the honour of the Old Ports on their own. If they can find it.

'Dangerous' Dave ventures the fact that he thinks he saw the buggy with the bike boxes being re-routed off the tarmac away from the plane at Gatwick but, pressed on what he’d eaten at breakfast, confesses that he may have seen a mirage.

‘No one’s riding a Mirage, Dave. A Mirage is an obsolete jet originally deployed by the French Air Force. ’ (Guess who.)

Massat: Trois Seigneurs Hotel. 2.20pm

Graeme, in a brief interlude of wakefulness and lucidity, manages to persuade the staff of the hotel to lay on a late (unscheduled) lunch. They produce steaks. Everyone lays in. In exchange, Graeme promises to taste the wine at supper, most of it, and inexplicably falls asleep during soup and wakes up with ice cream. This won’t happen again.

Friday. Trois Seigneurs front garden.

An ugly rumour begins to circulate that the bikes have been found and will be delivered by midday. Matt is overheard to mutter: ‘Don’t be so pessimistic’. In fairness, Matt has done most of his serious training in a Mercedes cafeteria, arm-wrestling bratwurst Dagwood sandwiches and overflowing steins of lager (‘singing’ not ‘fighting’).

The bikes arrive. Tears are shed. Someone offers to sing the Old Ports anthem. Laughter breaks out.

Icicles front wheel punctures on the way out of the box. In retaliation, he flings the machine to the floor with the blatant intention of smashing either his brake levers or the rear mech. He gets the brake lever.

Fatherjac discovers that he has forgotten to bring his seat pin holding bolt, thus rendering the entire bicycle unrideable. It’s a special Look seat pin holding bolt specially designed to be a right pain in the arse, as in ‘oooh, look, John, you’ve got no seat pin holding bolt’.

 

 

Fatherjac finds he has no seat bolt!!

The bikes assembled, the Old Ports set off for a warm-up ride, and head for Seix, eager to dispel any scandalous notion that they are past it…Seix. In their absence, the Highlanders, Alan, Brian and Graham, arrive, speaking a strange incomprehensible language. They are from Aberdeen, which is no real excuse but the best they can come up with. They’re anaesthetists. This could be useful. There have been mutterings about having to put a stop to Jezza. Money changes hands, surreptitiously.

 Alan an anaethsetised anaethsetist

Stuart and Grant, from America, arrive. Stuart appears to have a complete US Marines survival kit taped to various tubes on his bike and has already done the Raid more times than is sensible. Word is he’s only doing this one so he can be absolutely sure of booking early for the next one. Grant used to play drums professionally, then he ran a bike shop in New York. This might seem perverse, like setting up a milk bar in the Old Ports club room. Grant, however, is a realist. His outsize bike box may well double as a coffin.

Stuart and Grant

 

Saturday

A young lad in the local garage improvises a lookalike non-Look cotterpin as a working substitute for John’s seat pin holding bolt. His startling and precocious ingenuity and enterprise is heartlessly rendered redundant that same afternoon by the securing of a bona fide Look spare via contacts in the Saint-Girons bike shop and a rustic cheese-maker in a barn halfway up a mountain somewhere near the Col de la Crouzette.

 

That same evening, Kermit performs his celebrated Bansai cabaret act at the dinner table and is later overheard chatting up a glossy photograph of Princess Stephanie of Monaco outside the paper shop, in passable French.

Kermit performing

 

Sunday morning.

‘We most certainly did not break the door down’ explained Jezza. ‘We knocked and they opened it. Okay, it was dark…
’‘What time, exactly ?’
‘How’m I supposed to know ? There were no lights on. Anyway, they were pleased to see us, you could tell.’
‘How ?’
‘They switched the lights on.’

Jezza

The coach arrives and, once packed, everyone aboard, is ready to leave.
Mike heads for the Casino, to do some shopping.

Hendaye, 6.15pm

André and Françoise Darrigade arrive for a vin d’honneur, Cava and hero’s welcome. They are charm and grace personified. A huge honour – to be waved off on the Raid by a rider of such stature. Françoise even kissed everyone good luck. Amazing, given the opposition. Geoff gets a shirt signed. Everyone gets a postcard signed. Diplomat gets the runs

                        

 

Monday 6 June anniversary of D-Day. Morning.

Philippe asks if anyone wants bars. Fatherjac is confused. He’s already got bars, it was his seat pin holding bolt he’d been missing.

‘Shut up, John.’

Nick points out to Graeme that he isn’t wearing cycling shoes. Graeme suggests to Nick that if he were wearing cycling shoes with those lumpy cleats on the soles it’d be a bugger trying to locate the pedals while driving the van.

The clocks ticks past 9.30am, the tampons go down – plop plop plop - and the Old Ports and hangers-on embark upon the Raid Pyrénéen.

Early on, Keith makes a brass-necked attempt to get out of it by clipping someone’s wheel, thus decking himself and clobbering his rear hanger. Unluckily, bike remains serviceable, just, and his escape bid is foiled. The cuts sustained during this shameless act of suicidal hooliganism fool nobody and he rides on.

A long 110 mile day. The circling Lammergeier vultures – Europe’s largest – didn’t swoop pounce, which probably says more about the constituency of the possible prey than their own digestive system. Asked how he felt when he came in at Arudy later that evening, Geoff said nothing. There is eloquence in silence.

Keith proudly diplays cut

 

Tuesday

Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled…blah blah…Graham makes a desperate lunge for freedom and a ride in the broom wagon by shearing one of his footplates. Pat and Kevin will have none of this and ruthlessly frogmarch him and his conniving accomplice Brian to a bike shop in Pau where, taking an undisclosed commission on an outrageous sum of money (serve him right for finagling, whispers an anonymous voice), they get the man fitted out with a new pair of shoes. Meanwhile, Alan, acting as a decoy, has raced ahead to the Aubisque, fully expecting to be able to pack in sympathy when the bitter, the lamentable news of his pals’ abandon comes through. He is later found weeping inconsolably outside the cake shop in Luz – shut – when news filters through that the dastardly plan has been scotched. Touché.

A small but select group of designated lanternes rouges gathers in the Tourmalet café for afternoon tea, hot chocolate, beer. Philippe communes with the lamas. Geoff gets his shirt signed before recalling that it’s the carnet he has to get the stamp on. Nick admits that he hates bananas. On a need-to-know basis, says Matt, do we need to know that ? and then ruefully admits that the bratwurst is beginning to kick in.

Tourmalet Caf

Sainte-Marie-de-Campan. Bar

The whip is in full swing when Kevin, in real life a fireman, asked whether he was having a good time, reflected for a while, took a gulp of beer (‘fighting’ not ‘singing’) belched daintily, glazed over and said: ‘What was the question ?’

Apparently Derek, who watches rivers for a living, arrived just after lunch with the Americans. Fascinating little place in which to while away a free afternoon, Sainte-Marie-de-Campan, if it weren’t shut, which it always is, in the afternoon.

Wednesday

‘How many cols today ?’ says someone.
‘How far ?’ says someone else.
Howard says not to worry, he has the solution. ‘It’s easy’ he says. ‘Just pretend it’s a club run.’
‘How’s that going to help ?’ says someone not so far mentioned.
‘You just follow everyone else’ says How'ard. ‘You don’t even have to think about it. First one in orders the pizzas.’
‘Right, How'ard. AspinPeyresourdeAresBuretPortétd’Aspet140km. Club run. That should do it. That and a cheese omelette en route. Fine.’

How'ard "It's just a club run!"           

Massat again.

Diplomat and Icicle, keen as they are to begin each day with freshly laundered and pressed bobby socks, are discussing whose turn it is to do the ironing in their habitual genteel fashion.

‘I do assure you, old chap’ says one ‘I do believe it’s your turn.’

‘Phwar phwar phwar,old boy, I think you’ll find you are mistaken’ says the other, ever mannerly.

Dangerous, who has been evicted from his room to make way for Pat and her massage rack, overhears the altercation as he strolls aimlessly along the corridor swathed in a damp towel and, with that suave urbanity for which is justly known, steps in to arbitrate. ‘Shut’ he says ‘the fuck up.’

Thursday. Breakfast.

‘How was it for you, How'ard ?’

‘I can’t remember.’

Diplomat appears kitted out all in white, which must mean that he has completely regained his hygienic confidence.

Col de Port, easy roll, great descent, hairpins and a laugh through Bon Prat – my, but these French have a droll sense of humour, who’d call a village Nice Pillock, eh ? Green hills and smooth road, whole point of the ride to feel the bike run free and all the training paying off all the way to Tarascon where the slog begins, the long haul to Puymorens. Fumes ? The idea. In-line bogey wheels, red hot radiator grilles, homicidal lorry-drivers and 6 million brake horse power right up your Selle Italia, yes, oh yes, but fumes ? Phew, not a hint.

Graham and Brian anaesthetising Cows

 

Seeking for further amusement, Dangerous and a few of the cooler crowd, crossed over from Bourg-Madame into Spain for a light lunch of paella and tortilla. The Spanish don’t do fast food. By the time lunch arrived, it was tea time in Blighty.

We dined on pintade al fresco in Prades and it was tasty and the night was balmy and we were happy. The Americans had pizza. Howard strenuously denied that this had been his idea.

Friday. Final 85km

Neal spoke, seemingly for the first time all trip. Asked at the breakfast table how he felt on the verge of completing the Raid Pyrénéen, a singular achievement for a self-respecting cyclist by any standards, a triumph of moral and physical fitness and resolve, he swirled the dark sludge of synthetic diesel oil in the bottom of his cup and murmured: ‘I don’t know how they can drink this muck. The coffee’s much better at home.’ Since Neal lives in Nottingham, this is stretching credulity a little far, we thought.

Derek, Grant and Stuart left early, in case Cerbère turned out to be shut.

Jezza, Diplomat, Icicle, Smallsprocket, How'ard and Matt set off in good time, in case Cerbère had moved.

Alan, Brian, Dangerous, Graeme, Graham, Fatherjac, Kevin, Keith, Kermit and Neal set off at a pace oscillating between leisurely and frantic in case they overshot Cerbère altogether.

Graham, Grant, Brian, Icicle,Fatherjac & Diplomat 'oscillating'

Even at this late stage, the spirit of miscreancy was not dead. Kermit cynically punctured on a strand of barbed wire. ‘We’ll be here an hour’ said Dangerous as Kermit called listlessly for a pump then set about the leisurely task of working out which way round it went in lingering hope that the broom wagon would show up. Dangerous refused to budge, however, and, by slow degrees of attrition, Kermit was compelled to remount and ride on.

After a general regrouping of waifs, strays and other examples of the genus Old Portlianum, the peloton descended upon the tiny fishing village which marks the end of the Raid like the legendary wolf on the fold. Jezza sportingly gave Pat a lift to the  beach and slid her into the sea like an ice cube into a fresh gin and tonic. She larkishly tried to prise his swimming trunks off and, luckily, failed in the attempt.  Fatherjac took the photos.

 

'Jezza Sportingly gave Pat a lift to the beach..'

‘Thing about How'ard’ says Dangerous over a plate of moules and frites, ‘he can keep going all day. I bet if you turned him round he’d ride all the way back to Hendaye.’

‘That’s a good idea. Why don’t we give it a try ?’

Alas, alas, like so many best-laid plans of mice and men, this excellent wheeze got caught up in desultory wrangling about whether to start another whip or keep going with the one in place, whenever that started, except no one could remember and whilst one lobby was for renewal another lobby urged that this would take up precious drinking time and, then where were we ? Probably Toulouse. Howard quietly boxed his bike, in case.

Saturday morning. 8 am

As your diarist luxuriated in the glistening waters of the bay, he watched with unfeigned and heartless pleasure as a poor bastard in lycra rode along the road past the hotel on a bicycle. ‘Poor bastard’ he mused.

The coach arrived, Sam mosied round to lick a few legs and get his last fix of exotic suntan oil and lotion and we waved goodbye.

The End

Cast of Nicknames:

Dangerous - Dave Hickman

Diplomat -Chris Whitelock

Fatherjac - John Mulvaney

How'ard - Howard Deller

Icicle - Chris Ogilvie

Jezza - Jeremy Hancock

Smallsprocket - Geoff Evans

Kermit - Mike Curtis