Route of The Rider
Read the book, ride the course
To download this route go to cyclist.co.uk/60therider. Leave Meyrueis on the D996 along the Jonte Gorge. Turn right at Le Rozier, cross the bridge over the Tarn and turn right on the D907.
Turn right at Les Vignes, cross the bridge and turn right again. This is the start of the climb up to the Causse Méjean. At the top follow the road and bear right at the next two junctions. This will take you on to the D986, which leads back down to Meyrueis. Follow the D986 out of Meyrueis, then take a right signposted Lanuéjols. Follow this road on to the Causse Noir, before beginning a highly technical descent in to Treves.
From here, turn left and follow the signs for Camprieu and Mont Aigoual. After Camprieu, turn right on the D986 before taking the next left. Take the next left signposted for the Pra Peirot ski station. The route now continues to the Col de Perjuret (with the option of a detour to your right to visit the weather station at the actual summit of Mont Aigoual). At the crossroads marking the col, the route turns left and follows this descent all the way to the finish in Meyrueis.
To visit the Riviere monument, turn right and descend for 4km (it is on the right) but be prepared for a steep return trip back up to the crossroads.
are both big fans of the book too, so they were the obvious choices as co-conspirators in my mission.
Ideally, we would have been riding in the company of Krabbé himself – now aged 73, he joined a group of Dutch riders to cycle the route as part of a 246km ride around the Cevennes in 2014 – but in view of the relentlessly masochistic tone of his book, it might be a lucky escape. He writes, ‘Road-racing is all about generating pain,’ and dismisses shifting down a gear as ‘a kind of painkiller’. It’s an unabashed celebration of suffering and a compelling insight into the psyche of a racing cyclist.
But the point of today’s exercise is less about emulating the pain suffered by Krabbé, and more about celebrating a great work of literature with a leisurely ride and plenty of food stops. A sort of hommage avec fromage.
We aren’t going to meet any of the characters Krabbé encountered – neither the ‘pretty girl’ he grows to hate in just a few pedal strokes as she cheers the ‘journalistic cliche’ of cycling rather than the riders themselves, nor the four old men in the village of Treves who acknowledge him as he murmurs ‘Battoowoo Greekgreek’ to them (a random phrase he invented during a race) – but it will be fascinating to ride the roads that inspired his musings.
Fresh meat
The first 20km section takes us along the Gorge de la Jonte to the village of Le Rozier. It’s a fast, gently twisting
‘The wall we have to go up is waiting for us across the river a real bastard of a climb’
descent between soaring pinnacles of rock. Krabbé refers to swimmers in the river to our left, but today the activity is airborne: groups of people at the roadside are scanning the skies with binoculars. A glance towards the cliff tops reveals several dark specks circling overhead – just a few of the 600-strong colony of vultures that has been resident here since 1981 (four years after the Tour de Mont Aigoual took place).
At Le Rozier we turn right, cross another river where swimmers and kayakers float in the crystal-clear water and swing into the Gorge du Tarn. By this point of the fictional race, there is a breakaway of seven riders. A spectator urges the peloton to go faster, prompting Krabbé to observe, ‘Probably thinks bicycle racing is about going fast.’
Krabbé and the rest of the bunch are also apprehensive about the first challenge of the day: ‘The wall we have to go up is waiting for us across the river – a real bastard of a climb.’
Sure enough, as we approach the village of Les Vignes, Gerry and I see the road zig-zagging up the rock face on the other side of the Tarn. ‘Anyone still on his outside ring when the hill starts is in for trouble,’ notes Krabbé, although
this was in the days before compacts. Gerry and I don’t feel the urge to shift to the small ring until after the first hairpin, when the slope nudges 15%. (Krabbé completes the climb in a gear of 43/19. ‘How about 43/20? No, on the first climb you can push things a little,’ he writes.)
He recalls riding with Dutch pro Gerrie Knetemann and asking him what it’s like to be dropped on climbs. Knetemann – who would go on to become Road World Champion the following year – replies, ‘It’s too bad, sure, but nothing to make a fuss about’.
I try to adopt an equally stoical attitude when Gerry – Patterson, not Knetemann – gives me the slip as we approach the top of the climb and the Causse Méjean, a vast expanse of emptiness where the wind whips up and a succession of faux plats, awaits to try to break our spirits.
Back in 1978, Krabbé painted a bleak picture of this high plateau, describing abandoned farms, empty houses and ghost towns.
Things don’t look so grim today. Cultivated fields hint at an agricultural renaissance, Rouveret’s golden sandstone buildings looks like a mirage floating on a sea of barley. But the remoteness of our location is inarguable – apart from a group of scouts in full backpacking gear, we haven’t seen a soul since climbing up from Les Vignes.
With a headwind tempering our enthusiasm, we grind over the last faux plat and start the descent back to Meyrueis. While the riders in the Tour de Mont Aigoual would have been focused on the wheels or few square metres of tarmac in front of them, Gerry and I are able to enjoy the spectacular panorama of the Gorge de la Jonte that unfolds as the road swoops downwards for the next 8km. We stop at a bend for photographs. Opposite is a granite overhang with hundreds of metres of nothingness between it and the road upon which we’d started our ride.
Krabbé was a nervous descender and contemplates the worst as a car with German plates appears from the
Add to this his existential ruminations on everything from nature – how we