November Flashback

Road to Gavarnie

November, 2005

It’s early November when author and ESL teacher, Jeremy Taylor and I head off on another cycling adventure through southern France. It was a last-minute decision – I threw a random collection if winter-weather gear together (ski gloves, layers of sweaters and hiking boots) and hopped a flight from London to Pau on Ryanair for about 20quid. This time, our journey is a short 3-day bike ride up to the Cirque de Gavarnie, a 3,000 metre amphitheatre-like mountain about 100km south of Pau, France.

I’ve been steadily cycling uphill (or, rather, up mountain) for two hours when I experience the psychedelic effect of cycling under so much exertion: the beginnings of a bonk. I’m no longer grinding up through the Pyrenees range between France and Spain, but rather, floating through an old crushed-velvet picture. The landscape pops out like a giant 3-D miniature, all carefully crafted and delicately placed, but certainly not real. The colours appear florescent, tinted with autumn’s black brush. The art teacher in me wrestles with the cyclist and it isn’t for another half an hour that I realize I’ve been looping this thought, repeating with awed realization, that I am cycling through a black, fluorescently crushed-velvet painting. After that, I pull over to give my over-stimulated brain a break  and my body some much-needed nourishment – baguette, brie and saucisses.

Brain aside, it’s my body that takes the biggest beating that day. We covered roughly 60 kilometres from our journey’s start in Lourdes to the only hotel open at Gavine. 60-km is nothing miraculous or particularly tough. That is, unless it’s the “8-hrs of climing up a mountain” kind of 60 kilometres. In altitude we gained nearly a kilometre. Picture taking a straight stretch of road and yank one end so it dangles from the clouds. Then imagine cycling up that for a whole kilometre. Of course, in reality, it’s not straight-up, it’s a much more gradual accent, so move the cloud in your imagination 60 km away and you get the idea: a giant, twisty ramp.

Of course, it’s not really like that or else I might as well stayed home and cycle at the gym. The rewards, besides the physical exercise of cycling, are the breath-taking view of the Cirque at the top, the delightful little village to explore, and the ability to experience something I’ll vividly recall for the rest of my life.