Day 2: Assietta Abandon

 After a reasonable nights sleep, the alarm went off at stupid o’clock and so started the general faffage and packing. 

It’s fair to say I was carrying a healthy slug of trepidation - today looked like a really tough day. Since the 18.5 euro a night campsite didn’t bother with luxuries like breakfast, we headed off in search of a supermarket, which we duly found about 3km down the road. 

Once we’d successfully upset the cashiers by not sticking the little barcode thingy on our croissants and bananas, we headed into the morning sun and devoured the makeshift breakfast in the car park, accompanied by 3 jovial Dutch riders who were also tackling the TNR.

The first climb of the day - Colle de Finestre- began almost immediately and soon settled in to its somewhat offensive 9%. It wouldn’t drop below that number for 18.8km. 

After 11km, road turned to gravel - nowhere near as rough as yesterday’s effort, but enough to make 9% sting on fully loaded bikes. 

Drew was still carrying good legs and disappeared up the road. I was not, and although there was no sign of the cramps which had affected me yesterday it remained slow going. 

It was gone 1pm by the time I reached the summit, and after a recovery and a pep talk from a local English native, we set off for the next section; the Strada D’Assietta and the first of a few gravel military roads which we would be riddling on our journey south. 

The Assietta was a 30km rough road at 2,700m, the first part of which was an 11km climb. I started the climb but my legs were not on a good day. After 6km I bailed out and descended back down to the road which ran reasonably parallel to the Assietta. Drew was obviously feeling significantly stronger than I was, and he plugged away on the gravel, with plans to meet me again some 40km down the road. 

The mistake I made was not fully realising that the road would drop me into the valley, meaning that I then needed to climb the 16km Col de Sestriere. Not what I needed.

After a long slow haul I finally reached the ski town of Sestriere. Highlights? None. Except perhaps for my accidental destruction of a flower bed. Time to leave 

The descent from Sestriere was quick. Luckily the car hill climb that had been taking place had long since ended, which prevented a second lengthy and hilly detour. Soon enough, I re-joined the main route and waited for Drew in the picturesque village of Cesana. 

All we had left was an 8km climb up to Montgenevre followed by a 16km descent into Briancon. The climb was ok, not too steep but interspersed with tunnels which were no place for a bicycle. The second of these, at 1.8km long was definitely no place for a bicycle - bicycles were permitted freedom of the adjacent tunnel which had a galleried view over the valley. 

I didn’t spot that. And so I endured 1.8km at 8% in a cacophony of noise from cars, motorbikes and vans which shared my little pain cave. 

Emerging from the tunnels we despatched the final 3km of the climb and set about the glorious descent into Briancon

 It was fairly evident that we were about to get rather wet so we hid in a bus stop and donned waterproof jackets before heading through the historic town and towards our campsite. 

2 words: Pizzeria and Bar. 

Over dinner, Drew described the day as the toughest he’d done on a bike. I politely pointed out that he’d ridden the whole day on a breakfast of 2 croissants. Chapeau. 

Tomorrow we have 2 more mountains to conquer, although both are on tarmac and a total of 600m less in elevation. So just the 2,700m.