Tour Climbs: The complete guide to every mountain stage on the Tour de France. Chris Sidwells
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food and other essentials. Wear thin cycling socks and cycling-specific shoes.
Short-fingered gloves called track mitts provide extra grip and soak up sweat. They also offer protection to your hands in case of a fall. You should wear a cycling helmet. Modern ones have plenty of ventilation, so you won’t overheat.
You can get very hot climbing mountains, even though the air temperature on some of the tops can be quite low. If you have no one in a motor vehicle supporting your attempt on a given climb, then it is wise to carry a thin windproof sleeved top and a pair of thin windproof gloves for the descents. They make the descents comfortable and safer, because cold hands aren’t good at applying brakes. These two items roll up and will fit in the pockets of a cycling top, or in a small bag that you can secure under your saddle.
You should also carry at least one spare inner tube and some tyre levers in that bag. Plus a mobile phone is a good idea in case of emergencies. And always take a serviceable bike pump with you.
Descending technique
What goes up must come down, but coming down a Tour de France mountain isn’t just a question of letting gravity take over. There are certain rules you must follow. The first is to do with braking.
Speed is great, you get a real feeling of exhilaration when descending a Tour de France mountain. But speed must be controlled. Go into a corner too fast and you are going to crash, the laws of physics say so. The same will happen if you leave your braking until the corner, it must be done well before. And with the rim brakes fitted to road bikes and some mountain and hybrid bikes, there is an added complication.
Excessive braking makes the wheel rims heat up. This causes the air inside your tyres to expand and can result in disastrous tyre blowouts. The best way to avoid problems is to not let excessive speed build up in the first place.
When descending a road bike is easier to control if you hold the bottoms of the dropped handlebars. You also get a more powerful pull on your brake levers in that position. Your arms should be slightly flexed to absorb any road bumps. However, to stop excessive speed building up you should straighten your arms occasionally so that your body is raised and acts as an air brake.
It also pays on long straights to do a bit of braking now and again just to stop speed building up. Don’t apply your brakes on and off in a jerky way. Just gently pull on the levers, front before the rear, and let the brakes scrub off a bit of speed now and again. That way you won’t have as much speed to take off with hard braking before a corner.
Approach the bend a little out and cut the apex
As you approach a corner, begin to slow down in plenty of time. If you can’t see how tight the bend is then err on the side of caution and take off a lot of speed. In any case all your braking should be done before you make the turn. A wheel under braking could lock and skid, and it tends to track straight. So either way your bike is not under control and you risk crashing.
For a right-hand bend in France, if road conditions allow, move slightly out towards the middle of the road, having checked for other traffic behind and in front of you first. Then turn in across the apex of the corner and end the bend slightly out towards the middle of the road again. For a left-hand bend you start right out towards the right and cut in a bit towards the apex and end up out on the right again.
These are the most efficient ways of cornering. They cut down on your braking and allow you to carry some speed through a corner, but you should only use them if the road conditions, surfaces and other traffic allow you to. You must never move out more than halfway towards the middle of the road in any case, even if it is empty. And if there is any other traffic near you, the road surface is loose or wet, or you can’t see right around a bend, you must slow right down and take each bend right over on your own side of the road.
Mountain bikes and hybrid bikes fitted with disc brakes have a big advantage on descents. You can use these brakes exactly when you need to and don’t have to worry about them overheating your tyres. They are also much more powerful than rim brakes, although that in itself can cause a wheel to lock up. So the key even with these brakes is anticipation. Always brake smoothly and in a straight line. Never snatch at your brake levers, and always apply your brakes gradually.
Your body position is also important when cornering at speed. Crouching lower than your normal riding position lowers your centre of gravity and reduces the forces trying to push you outwards in a corner. Pointing the knee that is on the inside of the corner out slightly, and lowering your inside shoulder, helps to guide you through a corner. At the same time pressing down with your outside leg helps stabilise you. If this sounds complicated look at some pictures of Tour de France riders taking corners on mountain descents. The shifts of position and the angles of their knees and shoulder are subtle, but they can be seen.
The most important thing to remember though is caution. Descend and corner at a speed at which you are comfortable and build up your skills slowly. There are a number of good cycling instruction books that will help, but a lot of the skills are subconscious and you will pick them up very quickly.
Good cornering technique is essential for safety
The Eastern Pyrenees run from Bagnères-de-Brigorre nearly to Perpignan on the Mediterranean coast of France. They can be subdivided further by their geology. Most of the Eastern Pyrenees are like the rest of the range and made from igneous rock. This doesn’t erode easily and is responsible for the rounder, older more permanent look of the Pyrenees when compared to the Alps. However, the Ariège Pyrenees, which run in an ever-widening triangle with an apex near Andorra, are limestone, so this is a land of deep gorges and light grey cliffs.
But even the igneous mountains are different in character. The climbs south of the town of St Girons, like the Col de Menté or the Portet d’Aspet, are lower than those in the East and in Andorra. This means that they are generally covered in trees or pasture, whereas the far eastern climbs are topped with straggly grass or bare rock.
The towns of Andorra La Vella or Font Romeu make good bases for the far eastern climbs, where you will see plenty of examples of the Occitan language that is heavily influenced by Catalan Spanish and was spoken in this region in times gone by. Best bases for the Ariège Pyrenees are Ax-les-Thermes or Tarascon-sur-Ariège and Foix.
A number of the climbs that have been used by the Tour de France in this region are wholly in Spain, where there is another face of this region to be enjoyed. The Spanish climbs, especially the Collado del Canto and Port de la Bonaigua, are in lonely and quite sparsely populated areas, where you can ride for miles without seeing a soul.
Arcalis
‘ANDORRA’S PRIDE’
Length: 18 km
Altitude: 2225 metres
Height gain: 943 metres
Average gradient: 5.2%
Maximum gradient: 10%
WHAT TO EXPECT