After a huge breakfast, we poked our noses out the door - too cold - back in the warm by the fire, and watch the TV. A few souls went in the van to be dropped at Grenoble for a lok round. Grant, Andrew, Amy and myself, and we went up in the "gondolas" cable cars to the old Bastille, had some lunch then bacj to the "Old Schoolhouse"
It might clear.
Sure enough, about 2:00pm, Andrew was keen to get out for a ride and his enthsiasm rubbed off on to me who initially was going to have a rest day. Andrew suggested going to Bourg to the bike shop, whereupon I had an idea - I knew a better route than simply descending the col D'ornon and riding into Bourg - we could go via Villard Notre Dame, which involved going up a bit, across a section that is a bit rough places and descend through 2 pitch black tunels. Andrew, Amy, Grant, myself, and John (he comes from Kent - his first day here) set off. Descending part way down the Ornon, we turned off at the junction signposted Villard Notre Dame 10 km. We dropped down for about 500m cossed a bridge that didn't look like it would take the combined weight of all of us together, then started climbing. Steeper and steeper, higher and higher we went, round insanely tight hairpins higher and higher (Andrew kept reminding me - "it goes up a bit) - which turned out to be climbing for 9.5 of the 10km and vertical height of 1,870m - almos as high as Alpe D'Huez, then we looked cross and could see Huez opposite us on the next peak. By now it was getting cold with the temperature dropping and the height.
We slipped and slithered over boulders and rocks dropped down and turned on rough ground (I did say it was rough in places). We eventually reached the road and I warned that there was a bit of gravel in places, although at one point Grant and I slid sideways on a loose patch. Our hands (in mitts) were frozen, but we continued our fast descent, taking some fast bends at a furious pace - mainly because we were too cold to brake!! Amy and Andrew followed at a more suitable pace wearing gloves.
We descended for what looked like ages and stopped by a hairpin bend that looked down into Bourg and laughed - how could we have descended that far and Bourg still look so tiny?
Continuing on, we came to a "ROUTE BARREE" sign, but no way were we going all the way back up, so barrelled on, past a digger that occupied all but 10cm of the road, with a frenchman gesticulating wildly and shouting at us that the road was closed.
Then we approached the first of 2 tunnels (which turned out to be 3!!) and with a slight bend in, was absolutely pitch black, even with my and Amy's font light, we were bouncing off the walls. Eventually after much laughter, we popped out the other end. The next tunnel went straight though and could see a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel (no pun intended), but was very disorientating and caused ne to wobble left and right, overcorrecting the movements, but we al got through.
At the third tunnel, Andrew reminded me that I had said there were only 2, but c'est la vie, I forgot this one, which was the worst of the lot. We spent ages waking, scooting, bumping, bashing, searching for the right walls before we again negotiated to the light outside.
An amazing experience.
Then we dropped own unventfully into Bourg and Andrew splashed his plastic in the bike shop, with a steady ride back up the Col D'Ornon for a shower before an amazing 3 course meal........
.
