Time for shunting

I've always been fascinated by railways and canals. Both are featured in the top photo which shows a small dock served by a siding. In the middle picture, running tender first, is a Britannia class loco. In the third picture a small shunter propels coal wagons around the steam shed. Dwarfing the shunter is a big blue loco, named City Hereford, waiting for the right of way to enter the shed.

On the radio

 

It’s good to talk, said the ad.

RADIO communication between riders and their team cars is now commonplace in pro races. Is this a good or a bad thing?  The controversy simmers on. Radios were banned in the Olympic road races.

Surely it’s bad, if the same rule that applies to using a mobile phone while driving also applies to race radios.

Chris Froome fiddling with his radio ear piece, Tour de France, 2017.

The Transport Road Research Laboratory proved years ago that when using a mobile phone the remote voice in your ear distracts you more than fiddling with any other in-car device, rendering your reaction times slower than if drunk.

Following these findings a law was introduced to ban the use hand held mobiles while driving, but not hands free, even though the danger applies equally to hands free as to hand held. Hands free were allowed, I understand, because the police said it would be difficult to detect if a driver was using one.

So are  some of  those bunch crashes caused by riders being distracted by talking or listening to instructions on their radios?

There have always been crashes in bike racing, always will be, but the riders themselves have said they seem to happen with more regularity.

A few ago a few  riders suggested wearing helmets might be leading to crashes because they are making some riders feel invulnerable and they take more risks.

It's difficult to prove, unless the rider himself owns up. I know for a fact that when I rode the latest design Campagnolo brakes I certainly started taking descents and corners far faster than I would normally have done.

No mishaps, mind.

Radios are good, some riders say.  If the team boss and a rider need to speak better they do so by radio. It’s safer than in the old days when the manager had to drive his car inside the peloton to talk to his rider.

Good point.

But critics say riders have become too reliant on the team boss to decide race tactics for them, instead of using their own initiative.

Such as when to start bringing back a breakaway group. The blackboard with written timings and splits provided by the motorbike is apparently no longer good enough.

Now the team manager in the car has the timings between groups and he can instruct his riders when to chase, or indeed, when to fart or stop for a pee break.

So riders can sit back, close their minds and not think too much.

Here’s an imagined transcript obtained by an eves-dropper drone flying over the Tour.

Miguel (Quickstep rider) to Director Sportif (DS): “Boss, what day is it today?”

DS:  “It’s stage 8. You don't need to know what day it is.”

Mig: “Thanks, how many roundabouts and dodgy right angled turns today?”

DS: “ None for 90 kilometres, then 10 roundabouts in the next 100 kilometres, with three of them in the last five. Two dangerous right handers with 4km and 2km to go."

Mig: “Thanks boss, are they big roundabouts or small ones?”

DS: “Don't you read the manual?  Keep your head up and eyes open.”

Mig: “Ok, boss: speed is going up, can I change up a gear yet?”

DS “Yes, just a couple of notches. Then if the speed drops, go down a notch or several.”

AGHHHHHHH NO... Smash, bash, screech of metal on road, dozen riders down.

Commissaire: chute, chute.

Chorus of radio calls to managers from  teammates of the fallen riding ahead: "Should we wait for them? “What should we do now?”

The truth is in such a situation the riders who more often than not will decide for themselves, and if the race is not fully on and going for the finish, they will often ease off and wait.  Although the other day on the Vuelta, they did this when only 10km from the finish when almost two thirds of the bunch were held up by a stack up. 

But there will be a lot of radio traffic, you can be sure and I can imagine various team bosses wanting to call the shots...."We're all gonna have a chat and decide whether you should slow down and wait or push on. Stand by for further instructions."

Civvies land is also a wash with too many messages crossing the ether.

We have the daily telephone calls from scammers trying to convince us our broadband is about to be disconnected, or an illegal payment is about to be extracted from a bank account. They presumably go on to ask for bank details – but I never let the caller get that far.

I may recite a children’s nursery rhyme to them, such as this one:

Hickory dickory dock

The mouse ran up the clock

The clock struck one

The mouse ran down

Hickory dickory dock.

That usually gets rid of them

Brrrrrrrrrrr. 

The mail tracking system is well-intentioned but do we really need to be kept informed where the package  is every step of the way.

First text: Your package has now left the factory.

Second text: It has now been loaded on to the aircraft.

Third text: your package has now been offloaded from the aircraft by a guy in light blue overalls  who is chewing gum.

Fourth: It is in sorting at the airport.

Fifth: It is now at the local depot for dispatch to you tomorrow………

At 7am next morning text message number six wakes me to say that Royal Mail will deliver a  package between 11.32 and 12.32 this morning. 

An hour later the message is repeated.

Shortly after that a no-reply NHS message informs that the flu season is almost upon us and jabs will be made available.

An hour later Royal Mail repeat their message and 10 minutes after that so do the NHS.

Another text tells me the package is now 100 yards away and closing fast.

Knock on the door.

On the step the package, at 12.05 precisely; postman walking away.

A text message with a photo attached, showing the package at my door, informs me the  package has arrived.

Indeed it has.

And so on. Impressive in a way. But totally unnecessary.

Madness takes many forms. Here’s another version.  The other day I observed a local woman from a nearby shop taking care to, as I thought, dead-head flowers in a flower box on the high street. Local traders take care of the town this way, which shows community spirit.

I watched fascinated as she slowly and methodically cut out every single flower on a bush at the centre of the display, every single one, upwards of 40 perfectly formed white flowers. Chopped from their stems. Dropped into a bucket.

Thankfully she gave the rest of the display only scant attention.

Then she stood back, scissors in gloved hand, to admire the now bare green stems she had robbed of their splendid decoration. 

If that shrub had the power of thought, it would be wondering what the hell it had done to deserve that.

She wouldn't have got away with it with Trifids! Remember them? Scary.

 

 

 

 

 

HOW CYCLING CAN HELP AVERT CLIMATE CHAOS - CYCLING UK

 

ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH, DEAR CYCLISTS, ONCE MORE*

You have to admire Cycling UK’s campaigning team. It’s August 2021 and they are setting out yet again on their never ending quest for decent government funding to make the roads safer for cycling.

But are they wasting their time?  Will they succeed before the end of the world?

Apparently “We have seven years to avert disaster” says the message on photo of the Climate Change Conference venue in Glasgow published in Cycling UK’s magazine.

In the foreground several cyclists are riding past that dire warning sign, all of them sporting big smiles! What?

Is this an echo of the previous blog about all that smiling going in to commercials? Now Cycling UK is at it, on the one hand panicking us with an end of world scenario they want to help avert while on the other, offsetting the doom laden message by portraying smiling cyclists in the foreground. Shouldn’t they be screaming in terror?

Maybe it’s all fiction, like the book Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. In  the story  the earth is destroyed to make way for an intergalactic bypass (or in our case, the £27billion road scheme the government is still insisting on).

Then in the climax, the Earth is happily restored by the Planet Maker (played by Bill Nighy) in the excellent film of this hilarious book.

But seven years, eh. No laughing matter.

Just enough time for one more Olympiad, perhaps two, a World Cup, a few more Grand Tours, to build more roads and airports, you know all the things that matter, such as driving with your bikes on the roof rack to go cycling a few miles down the road instead of riding there.

Surely we can hang on to see if cricket is successful in bidding to become an Olympic sport. Their target is the 2028 Los Angeles Games – unless California has been consumed by then.

But anyway, thank God Cycling UK have faith and still think getting more people out of cars onto bikes can play its part in reducing carbonisation which is at the root of all this evil of our own marking, since the Industrial Revolution.

Their task is to make government see it this way!

The problem for cycling is, successive governments – Tory or Labour – is that they have never fulfilled their promise, under funding cycling every time.

Cycling UK has a long history of fighting for cyclists’ rights, begun by their founders in 1878, under the title Bicycle Touring Club, renamed Cyclists’ Touring Club in 1883 until the recent change to Cycling UK.

It is because of the Club’s work we enjoy the many “freedoms” we take for granted today.

Here’s a few of their successes. –

1885: The Royal Parks of London are opened to cyclists as a result of CTC action.

1888: Local Government Act declared cycles to be “carriages” with right to use the roads, as a result of CTC action.

1950: CTC obtained removal of clause in Wolverhampton Corporation Bill which sought power to control cyclists’ use of local roads.

1968: Cyclists win right to cycle on bridleways and long-distance cross-country routes, incorporated in new Countryside Act.

1977: Cycles carried free (with some exceptions) on trains after 99 years of sustained campaigning.

1996: CTC instrumental in creation of National Cycling Strategy (launched by government and rendered pointless because there was no funding!)

2001: Cyclists Defence fund established by CTC, to fund cyclists’ rights in the courts.

2014: Successfully campaigns for strategy for cycling and walking infrastructure and by law government to provide funding to meet it, which they never have.

That last one – the lack of proper funding - has become the current sticking point this latest effort hopes to address.

And they are pursuing this with their usual vigour and passion. It’s as if they’ve forgotten they’ve been here many times before over the last few decades, and government has ducked the issue every time.

But it took 99 years to win free travel for cycles on trains, so that tells you the campaigners understand the long game. But will change come in time?

It is heartening to know that Cycling UK insists on trying to beat sense into government. They are seeking the Holy Grail of cycling, a casket containing several £billion to fund the government’s own Active Travel initiative.  For Active Travel read cycling and walking local trips instead of always driving.

The Active Travel initiative was one of those throw away lines government used to grab the headlines, this one surfacing when climate change combined with the pandemic called for a response from government.   So they allayed people’s fears with a few soundbites.  There was never any real intention to actually do anything beyond funding “pop up cycle lanes” last summer, a number of which have since been pulled out by local authorities running scared of minority groups of vociferous   motorists.

Cycling UK know they have an uphill task.  It is to be hoped their newest campaigner, Keir Gallagher, is up to speed.  Like his predecessors they say he is full of enthusiasm for the task ahead.

Good luck, Keir. Has anyone told you the country is run by a backward looking public school educated bunch of self-serving individuals called the Establishment scared that backing cycling will upset the roads lobby?

I firmly believe that doing anything perceived to be anti-car is seen as a vote loser, which explains government inaction.

This goes back to the late 1950s, early 1960s, when car ownership soared and the government of the day – Conservative – saw a vote winner.  Their mantra became that people should be able to drive where they want when they want.

This helped create the unshakable belief which still exists in the minds of many today that the roads were motor roads and anyone else using them should clear out of their way.

In the late 1990s when Labour’s deputy Prime Minister John Prescott announced his integrated transport policy to reduce car dependency it signalled the first major move by any government to address transport problems. But Prime Minister Tony Blair immediately removed transport from Prescott’s brief and his plans were binned.

The car remained king.

Which is why no integrated transport policy including cycling has ever received more than token investment?

Many fine proposals to boost cycling have never been backed by either the cabinet or the treasury.

Their latest gig is to push cycling as a means to help combat climate change.

Doubt was cast recently that our prime minister,  stand-up comic Johnson won’t even be going to the UN Climate Change Conference  in Glasgow in November, in which case, what chance he will back the call for spending big bucks on cycling?

Nevertheless, Cycling UK are not to put off.  Indeed they are encouraged by this year’s spring elections when the focus locally was on climate change and the need to try and do something to combat it.

In his report in Cycle, UK’s bi-monthly magazine, Keir Gallagher says that since the spring elections

 there has been a “steadily building cross-party consensus” across England, Scotland and Wales which recognises cycling has a key role to play in decarbonising transport.

He hopes this signals a move away from the “sometimes contradictory polices adopted by governments UK-wide when it comes to offering the public greener transport options.”

As an example he singles out the Department for Transport’s commitment to spending

 £27billion on road building in England, which would encourage greater use of cars.

He takes encouragement from Wales where new road building schemes were frozen to allow a review, with the stated intention of “redirecting investment”.

Good luck Keir Gallagher, the latest in a long line of Cycling UK campaigners to pick up the baton.

You must hope the Department for Transport will follow Wales’s example and give a chunk of that £27b to the Active Travel policy.

I’m not holding my breath.

*Apologies to William Shakespeare’s King Henry

 

 

 

THEY CAPTURE OUR SOULS WITH A SMILE

 

There are TV commercials I like and those that I don’t.

Ads can be good. They can promote good ideas which bring benefit.

At their basic, they are providing information.

But the ads also get their claws into you  the moment you buy anything on the internet, clocking your purchase and then every time you switch on, interrupting you to entice you with more stuff.

They bend our will; try to coerce us into buying something we may not need. And then sell it to us with a smile.

Advertising - tall stories sold with a smile

Take the cure-all pills for indigestion, for example –swallowed and hey presto, big smile, off you go clubbing, or to meetings, ailments cleared up. Er, not always, and certainly not as fast as that.

Mostly I try to avoid the commercial breaks.

Especially on ITV4 during their cycling programs.

I record these to watch later, when I can fast forward through their very long tedious commercials, so long I forget what I was watching.

There is an interesting trend these days in that the content of the ad you are watching, the story they have concocted to grab your attention, has nothing to do with what they are selling.

The scene being played out is simply to hook you until the name of the product is thrust upon you.

Advertising, especially ads promoting life style are re shaping our behaviour, even our posture.

Great example of this is the mobile phone, by turn a brilliant and evil device. 

We are evolving into a species which walks head bent staring at the thing resting in the palm of our hand.

I once observed a woman with two children in tow, all in single file, all of them heads bowed in thrall to the small screen, unaware that they were about to step under a bus.

Holding conversations with a remote voice as we walk not looking we are going.  Unaware of our surroundings; in .dream land, absent from the world, no longer in the present.

There is a side benefit from this trend. It means you can talk aloud to yourself on the street without raising passer-by’s eyebrows. Unless they, too, are on their pesky phone!

One ad I hated to begin but which now amuses me is the one with the fat opera singer guy belting out “Go Compare”.

I presume this is a website offering to find you competitive prices for goods and services.

The story line has developed over time, which is another way of hooking you.

Betting ads. I hate them. Tempting people to get into debt. How can that be allowed.

 As for the Peloton promotion these ads may be a sign that cycle sport is now accepted as a main stream activity.  So, good in a way.

 I first noticed them during the pandemic, showing how you can train and get fit at home.  Of course, you will need to spend a small fortune on the bike/computer screen kit. 

The ads annoy the hell of out me.

Probably because they are aimed at the well-heeled.

The pedalling scene appears to be set  a large swell apartment, perhaps a converted warehouse costing a £million, and the peddlers are all smiling.

Everyone in every ad is smiling, grinning from ear to ear.

Smiling is nice; you do so in reaction to seeing or hearing something. But we don’t go around with fixed smiles as we carry our day to day tasks. But they do in ads.

Woe betide you do not smile in an ad! All the ads are full of annoying beaming people, one ad after another. I’m all for a good smile, but one after another; it’s just too much when there is nothing, absolutely nothing to smile about in this world! Well, there is cycle sport on the tele, the Tour, the Olympics. These events make me smile. But that’s fantasy land compared to fall out over Brexit, the pandemic scaring us shitless, climate chaos kicking in, con merchants like Johnson running governments.

I imagine that the ad world is following government dictate – to put a smile on people’s faces and distract them from what’s going on in the real world  

So, back to the ads: In ad world a smile registers as positive – sells the product, even in impossible situations.

Such as in the Peloton ads where they are all grinning while busting a gut riding along on their state of the art stationary trainer linked to computer and or zoom, urged on by a coach!

Like they are out for a stroll on the prom instead of the more likely tense expression when pumping iron with lactic acid burning the hell out of legs, heart thumping, and sweat running – put a towel over the handlebars! And they are always smiling!

What are they on?

Then the coach on the screen - she’s grinning like a maniac too - calls out. “There you are. All done and dusted.”

In one of these takes someone will collapse and when they do, they should show it.

I hope that when people buy into this scene they are given good advice on how to build up the miles / hours, slowly and regularly. Because on home trainers it is so easy to overdo it. Gone are the natural restraints met in the real world – hills, wind, road surface, and the view from the saddle- all of which can act to temper athletic aggression more easily than when on a stationary trainer.

This is especially important for those who have led a sedentary lifestyle.  To suddenly go from that to training very hard could do them a mischief.

In my day I learned you needed 1500 to 2000 miles of steady riding before the season started and you got down to serious race training!

You can tell a fit athlete by the prominent veins, a condition known as vascularity, when the surrounding skin looks thin, enhancing visual appeal and this is partially due to low levels of subcutaneous fat which helps achieve defined veins and muscles.

You don’t reach that condition overnight!

You need to develop muscle mass, lose body fat and get your blood pumping.

But you can’t rush it.

The impression I get from these ads is that anyone can get in the saddle and go flat out immediately, which at the least might result in strained muscles, at the worst, a heart attack.

Not something to smile about.

But hey, never mind that.

Just in case why not book your cremation in advance.

Funerals are the latest to feature in TV commercials.

Yes, the marketing wallahs are pushing bargain price cremations at

competitive prices, undercutting undertakers

Why not organise the deal now, get some peace of mind, and with te money left over for your family and friends to give you a good send off.

The death business must be the last remaining bastion of the human condition to be taken hostage by the ad men.

At least they’ve made death sound so wonderful a great many people now have a death wish.

Buy one get one free.  Organise your cremation with a …wait for it…with a smile. Done to a crisp.

Money back if not satisfied.

An ad typically features a big family gathering, a party, cupcakes, tea, maybe  wine.

Perhaps it’s a barbeque (Don’t ask!). It’s a wake in advance and they are all smiling at the soon to be deceased who has a got a deal to die for. And he/she is smiling broadly back at them.

These ads have surely done a lot to take the fear out of dying.

They’re all jolly japes, as if instead of booking in with your maker, you’ve won the Lottery, or a luxury holiday for one, but with a one way a ticket.

Then there are the ads for the more earthly matter of mopping the floor with a magic formula. I don’t wear a smug grin when mopping floor.

I don’t smile beautifully at the taps when I turn on in the shower. I don’t smile at the grill when cooking chicken. OK, there will probably be a hint of smile at the aroma of the gravy.

Then there are the car ads of one sort or another. One of them features that grinning Phillip Schofield stroking a cat, or parachuting in to a car salesroom.

Finally, an ad which did put a smile on my face.

It was a poster ad for Guinness, recalled g from the 1960s. This was on a huge poster site near St George’s Hall in Liverpool, which my bus would crawl by every morning.

My fellow passengers and I couldn’t avoid this huge advertising site. It was concealing a big project to build what would become the ugliest shopping centre in town.

Over the weeks, the advert would subtly change to keep us entertained, or hooked.

The message – or unique selling proposition – consisted of a picture of a pint glass of the black stuff with creamy head, and the wording writ large, 6,000,000 Guinness drank every day.

 A week or so later, a new poster would go up: gone were the bottle and the large Guinness logo. The message was the same, 6,000,000 drank every day, except all those noughts were Guinness bottle tops. Very funny.

The final design served to prove how the ad men insert messages into our minds.

The new and final ad simply stated: 6,000,000 drank every day.

No name. No image of the product.

Just a meaningless message!

Except we all knew the message by then. It made me smile!

 Clever bastards.

But not that clever that I bought  their product.

I used to work in small ad. Agencies at that time, hence my interest.  

I read “Confessions of an advertising man” by David Ogilivy of a leading ad agency, Oglivy Benson and Mather. It was a fun read in which Oglivy alludes to the dodgy image of his profession – in general, of creating a need where none existed before, of bending the will of the customer.

Oh, so you work in advertising, do you? Says the woman to Oglivy, clearly alluding to advertising being a shady profession, like being an MP.

“Yes,” he admits, catching her drift,   adding. “But don’t tell my mother. She thinks I play piano in a brothel.”

Finally, Oglivy tells of the fussy client who wants too much say in the creation of their advertising campaign.

When pitching for one big account worth £millions, the company stipulated the conditions each agency must comply with at their presentation.

Each had 10 minutes to present their case.

When the 10 minutes was up a bell on the desk would be rung and the agency people would then leave.

Oglivy suspected this client  may be too demanding.

So he turned the tables on them at the presentation.  When he entered the room he said, before we begin I have one question for you.

How many of you will be involved in approving our ideas should we win your account?

Six, they replied. 

“Ring the bell,” said Oglivy and walked out.

 

 

 

GOOD TIMES AND BAD

 

Watching Le Tour on TV has been my happy refuge this past month. A place offering respite from the world outside.

Inspirational stories from Le Tour captured by the media on their sports pages contrasted vividly with front page headlines of unprecedented climate change disasters including devastating flooding and loss of life in Europe, unbearable heat and raging fires in North America and the threat of Covid. 

The saying: 'keep calm and carry on' is beginning to wear thin.

Here’s a random selection of the good, the bad and the ugly, in no particular order.

Le Tour organisers say they intend to reduce their  carbon footprint.

Cavendish equals Merckx record stage wins in Tour…Mark Cavendish sprinted to his 4^th stage this year – for a total 34 stage victories at the Tour de France to equal Belgian legend Eddy Merckx's all-time record.

 

Deforestation and climate change are altering the Amazon rainforest's ability to soak up carbon, according to a new study.

Significant parts of the world's largest tropical forest have started to emit more CO2 than they absorb.

Pogacar dealt a demoralizing blow on the first day of the Tour in the Alps on Saturday, when cycling’s precocious star claimed the yellow jersey with seeming ease in stark contrast to his rivals who found this 8th stage a gruelling test.

Former race leader since day two, Mathieu van der Poel finished more than 20 minutes off the pace when he faded fast midway through the brutal stage.

The following week a double stage victory in the Pyrenees gave Pogacar an unassailable lead.

Boris Johnson’s plan to lift all of England’s Covid-19 restrictions on July 19 is “unscientific and unethical” and could result in vaccine-evasive variants, international experts have warned.

 

Van Aert wins monster Ventoux stage, proving not only is he a feared sprinter but he can climb too, and time trial.

Evidence his victory in the penultimate TT stage followed the next day with a sprint victory in the final stage on the Champs Elysees.

 

 Climate scientists have warned the world is already experiencing extreme heat events that were only predicted to occur on a much warmer planet. The extraordinary heat that engulfed the north west of Canada and the US last week broke temperature records by several degrees, with temperatures settling above 40C for days and reaching 49.6C in the village of Lytton, Canada.

 

 

Former Tour winner Geraint Thomas dislocated his shoulder in a mass pile up on stage three. The doctor popped his shoulder back and the hard man carried on.

 

At least 160 people died in Germany and 31 in Belgium, and hundreds more are missing in the “historic” flooding.

Emergency workers are still hunting for survivors, while others begin the enormous task of clearing debris, in the hope of preventing further damage.

But people have been warned that danger remains imminent, with dykes along one river from Belgium to the Netherlands at risk of collapse, and officials in Germany telling people: "No all-clear!"

Large parts of a dam near Cologne in the North Rhine-Westphalia region have broken away and there is "enormous pressure" on the structure because of the high water level, posing "an acute risk" the dam could rupture. More people are being evacuated from the area today.

 

 

 

Dutch cyclist Mathieu van der Poel pulled out of the Tour de France on Sunday after his spectacular star turn in the overall lead came to a shuddering halt in the Alps.

Van der Poel's withdrawal came on the same day 2020 runner-up Primoz Roglic decided he'd suffered after last Monday's crash and an embarrassing meltdown on Saturday, when he finished 35min off the pace.

Van der Poel, a Tour rookie, spent six days in the yellow jersey, but now heads to Tokyo and Mount Fuji, where he will go for Olympic gold in his preferred mountain biking discipline.

 

Southern water pumps raw sewage.

Harmful water pollution that can affect human health and wildlife shows "no signs" of slowing, campaigners say.

Environment Agency (EA) figures suggest the number of incidents rose by almost a quarter in the year to March 2021 compared with the previous year.

River Action UK said reductions in enforcement meant polluters continued to put "filth" into waterways.

An EA spokesman said it took strong action against those who break environmental regulations.

However, agency resources to monitor the agriculture sector have been in decline for a number of years.

 

 

Final stage winner Wout Van Aert, who also won the giant Ventoux stage and the penultimate stage tt, has been called the next Eddy Merckx.

“Merckx won the Tour five times,” said Van Aert. I am just a really little cyclist compared to Eddy.”

 

 

NASA says the Moon will be going into a wobble phase 12 years from now, resulting in higher tides and flooding here on planet earth. 

 

Twice over the Giant of Provence

 

RIDERS will  twice race over the feared Giant of Provence, the legendary 1910-metre high Mt Ventoux on stage 11 of the Tour de France in July!

Twice in one afternoon!

Wow. That was my first reaction, upon seeing the course in my Tour guide.

My second reaction was to ask, is this wise?

It is 54 years since Tommy Simpson died after collapsing in intense heat on the cruel slopes of Mt Ventoux, in the 1967 Tour. The temperature was over thirty two degrees Celsius.

He had been unwell. Drugs were said to a contributing factor, as was alcohol and a stomach complaint. 

The tragedy further tainted the mountain’s reputation as a hostile place, unlike any other climb.

Punishing mountainous terrain routinely push riders to their physical limits.  On the grand tours they represent the ultimate athletic challenge.

And the Ventoux is prone to sudden changes in the weather, strong winds which can blow you off your bike, extreme heat, extreme cold even in the summer months, fog.

Officials halted a sportive there some years ago now, when riders became distressed as the temperature dropped to near freezing at the summit.

This year, the race climbs it twice in the space of two hours, ascending via the south face as is usual, and descending the north, to pass through the lovely town of Malaucene at the base, finishing there next time round.

In 1967 Tom had been clearly unwell in the days before the Ventoux stage. “Why don’t you pack it in, Tom?” Sid Saltmarsh, reporting the race for Cycling, said to him, not unkindly.

Stopping was unthinkable for Tom, the first Briton to wear the famed Yellow Jersey

of race leader in 1962 when he finished 6^th overall.

He was a star of the single-day classics, most notably winning the Tour of Flanders; Bordeaux Paris; Milan-San Remo; and in 1965 a famous double, the World Road Championship followed by the Tour of Lombardy.

In 1967 he was lying seventh overall in the Tour, where he led a British team. He desperately wanted to win outright.

His dream cruelly ended two kilometres from the summit, when he collapsed when trying to a bridge gap to a group of favourites.  He was flown by helicopter to hospital where he died that same evening.

The Tour was shocked. The tragedy was reported across the world.

The memorial to Tom Simpson, erected and paid for with contributions from readers of CYCLING.

Was the Ventoux culpable, asked Mirror Sprint in their detailed report the following week.

Non, said the majority of riders.

So perhaps I’m over- reacting. After all, there are only two fourth category climbs before the two ascents of the Ventoux which is rated 1^st category.

Tour stages often include four or five, even six cols.

In 1967 that fateful stage covered 211.5 kilometres, not much further than the 198.9 this year.

But the overall distance of the ’67 Tour was much, much longer at 4,779.8 kilometres, making it 1,400 kilometres longer than the 2021 edition.

Modern day Tours are much shorter, so it is argued less stressful. On the other hand the speed is now higher.

Whatever the differences may be, the Simpson tragedy still sends shivers down the spine.  Tour riders feared that mountain more than  other climbs. Do the current crop of supermen feel that way?

It was 20 years following Simpson’s death before the Tour went up the Ventoux again. This was 1987 and I was covering the Tour for Cycling Weekly. The stage was a time trial, held later in the day, to avoid the midday day sun.  It was won by Frances’s Jean-Francois Bernard.

The rule is, never ride this mountain around noon, the hottest part of the day. And that goes for anyone, not just the Tour riders.

Mount Ventoux holds a special place in my heart. For in 1997, on the thirtieth anniversary of Tom’s death, I joined his daughter Joanne and a small group of her close friends and relatives including Tom’s teammate Barry Hoban to ride the mountain. The group included a grandson of Tom, who rode part of the way, plus his nephew, Chris Sidwells.

We were blessed with fine sunny weather, not too hot, hardly any wind.

Joanne’s aim had been to take the name Simpson to the top, to complete the course for her dad. And she did so in style; leading our group past the memorial to her father.  She was four years old at the time of the tragedy .

Then we all retraced to the memorial two kilometres below the summit, to the spot where he fell.

There we met up with the rest of the party. They included Tom’s widow Helen (now married to Barry Hoban), Joanne’s sister Jane, plus Vin Denson, another member of that ill-fated British team.

It was both an emotional and enjoyable occasion for Joanne and everyone there.

I have crossed most of the major mountains in France when covering the great race - by car. The Ventoux is the only one I have ascended by bike.  And descended the other side!

Clearly I will be glued to the television coverage of stage 11, to relive my own experience.

Having raised my concerns at the severity of the Tour crossing the mountain twice, it should be noted that that the first approach is via the less severe climb from Sault – the Lavender Route - our chosen route back in ’97.  It is a less arduous ascent at 5 per cent average, but longer at 24 kilometres.

The traditional shorter but far steeper route via Bedoin is 21 kilometres of climbing.  And they take this route the second time up.

Both routes converge at Chalet Reynard, where the gradient ramps up for the final six gruelling kilometres above the tree line. Here riders are exposed to the glaring sun reflected back from the barren white rocky, lunar-like landscape.  This place can be like a furnace at the height of summer. 

The fastest schedule has the riders crossing the summit first time at around three thirty in the afternoon, the second time at around five.

The road over the Ventoux literally goes over the very top of the mountain, passing to the right of the observatory there which from afar looks like a rocket poised to go the stars.

They will catch the first glimpse of their target as they pass through Sault, the slim outline of the observatory atop a white summit ablaze in sunlight a long way away.  

Unlike many other mountain climbs which zig zag their way to the top, the

final six kilometres of the Giant of Provence makes a bee-line for the top. The road,  a thin ribbon of tarmac snaking  up around the  exposed flanks of the bald mountain under the glare of the sun,  rising inexorably  towards its distant goal, up there in the sky.

 And once the summit is reached you really are in the sky. There is nothing higher.  It is spectacular, a breath-taking panorama on a clear day.

Our “Simpson” group took an hour 40 minutes for the 24km from Sault to the summit.

We rode a measured pace, taking our time, chatting away - until conversation petered out on the steeper slopes after Chalet Reynard!

The race will climb this first ascent in just under an hour. Probably not much talking going on.

I took 40 minutes to descend cautiously the 21km to Malaucene afterwards.  It was both amusing and a touch disconcerting see a hang glider riding the thermals – below me!

The fastest Tour riders will take 20 minutes!

Malaucene is the stage finish, so the temptation could be to take risks on roads which broaden out as they sweep down to the valley. Perhaps crashing on this descent is where the real danger lies this year.

 

 

Froome, a shadow of his former self

 

I don’t know about you, but I can’t see Chris Froome being picked to ride the Tour de France for his team Israel Start Up Nation when it starts later this month. Not on his poor showing so far this season, as he struggles to find form after recovering from that horrendous crash in 2019,  when  the four times Tour champion was doing a recon of the tt course in France’s Criterium du Dauphine.

He’s riding the 2021 Dauphine as I write this - traditionally a selection race for the Tour. He's won it three times in the past! 

But he lost two minutes to the winner of the stage three 16km TT on Wednesday, won by Kazakh Alexey Lutsenko (Astana), an event he would normally be expected to win.

Commentators were agreeing Froome must be doubtful for the Tour, even though Froome himself insists he will be ready. Out of respect for his reputation as giant killer and for his resilience in refusing to give up, they are reserving judgement.

I’m watching ITV4’s nightly review of the Dauphine and enjoying every minute of the expert commentary from Ned Boulting and Dave Millar.

I prefer to record the program and view it immediately afterwards. This enables me to fast forward through ITV4’s  commercial breaks which are so long I almost forget which program I am watching.

ITV4’s cycling shows are every bit as incisive as the Breakaway team on Eurosport’s Giro coverage last month but minus the wow factor of Eurosport's  presenter Orla in her dazzling outfits.  

Of interest to Ned and Dave was the fact that the stage four time trial at 16.4 kilometres  was more or less the same distance of Boras’ Lukas Postlberger’s  surprise lone breakaway when he gamely held off the charging pack to win stage two and take the yellow jersey .

Would knowing the distance was the same inspire the Austrian national road champion to greater efforts in his defence of the yellow jersey? It probably did, and wearing the coveted leader's jersey is known to boost confidence. But a solitary  race against the watch  brings with it different pressures.

Boulting asked Millar to compare the effort required.

Millar explained that really there can be no comparison. In a stage race time trial (not withstanding it comes in the middle of event) you start fresh. 

Whereas to attempt to time trial away in lone break late on a road stage after already putting in a few hours hard work in a long breakaway with others (as Postlberger had done) your body has changed and you’ve got a different head on.

Which brings me to Postlburger himself who raised his game and surprised by battling through the time trial to hold on to his overall lead by a slender margin.

He’s funny, a great sense of humour. His unusual hand gesture as he crossed the line when winning stage two had everyone guessing – his hand cupped in front his nose. What was that all about?

That hand gesture?  That was his way of saying the effort he had made was so bad his brain hurt.

I’ve got lactic acid spewing out of both ears he said, grinning behind his mask.

He didn’t expect to keep the lead for much longer. His job was to look the other more likely GC contenders in the Boras team.

As I write this, Geraint Thomas, INEOS top man for this event and the Tour which follows, confounded everyone after his disappointing result in the time trial yesterday by winning stage five today. Postlberger surprised again, by clinging on to his overall lead.