Page 13 - DLNsep2015-998

made it and got our first stamp on our brevet cards! For the first time it
actually started to feel like we were in a race, having seen none of our fellow
competitors for days we were suddenly surrounded by them at this check
point. We have all plotted our own routes to the end so there is no guarantee
that any one will travel the same roads as us and to be honest it seems
Katie my partner has chosen the roads less travelled!
Ventoux took longer than planned so we dropped behind schedule by @20miles
and stopped in Brioncis for the night. It was a long hard day which saw a few
tears from Katie by the end of the day

- a once in a lifetime road! So for those of you have become
dot watches, you will probably notice that after climbing the Col d'izoard and
the climb up to Sestriere, to checkpoint two, it then took us 8hrs to do 40km
along the gravel pass!! The pass was truly stunning, in fact the most amazing
road I think I have been on, but it is NOT for road bikes. Everyone expected it
to take 3hrs... Oh how wrong we were! We past someone who was on their
10th puncture, and saw A number of people on their 5th. Neither of us got
a puncture, but we took it very slow for my bike. We took the bag off the back
and made some straps with an inner tube so I could wear it as a backpack
to take any extra strain off the cracked frame. The frame made it my cleats
didn't, so onto my spare pair already. After the gravel pass we then climbed
a seriously steep little bugger up to the Col Fenestrelle followed by another
long descent on gravel but no where near as bad as the other one, (but had
been used for the Giro this year). Our wrists and feet took a hammering, and
I think Jayne emotionally took
a hammering at the state of
her expensive S-Works bike. So
the epic ness of the day means
we are 190km behind schedule
so we need to get our skates
on! Alps are now behind us and
the organisers really tested us
all. Tomorrow we will make a
start to cross Italy.

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