Tignes - Rest Day(s), Sat 7th July 2007

Ok, this is going to take some explaining, but basically we are in Tignes having our official rest day, the same as the pros will have. The only thing is that due to various circumstances we have two days not riding much.

We had extremely ambitiously entered the extracurricular 'Marmotte' race for the Saturday, the day of the official rest day, and so added another to compensate and had bumped all the remaining stages down another day. But due to Kyle's shoulder and various medical forms that were required to enter, we decided not to.

I still had ambitions right up until the eleventh hour, but the 2.5 hours travel time kind of ruled it out. So we ended up with two days off the bike, but the original schedule stands and there will be no tinkering.

Right, explantions over, the sun is now out...with a vengeance.

The previous two days had seen high winds at altitude which had shut the lifts, but this morning the sun was out and I wolfed breakfast down to go and hire a snowboard. Not sure this is a standard rest day activity, but when in Rome.....

I didn't have any proper snowboarding kit, but it's amazing what you can achieve with some cycling leggings, gloves, hat and a pair of 'lads on tour' shorts. I looked a bit acceptable in the eighties, but it kept me warm at 3500 metres.

I have skied Tignes before, but there is always something novel about snowboarding in July. The super-fast funicular whisked me up to the top and I got a few runs in before heading over to the terrain park. I wanted to reprazent by hitting some kickers and rails, but a lack of helmet and the thought of crashing out of letour forced me to only make modest attempts. The other reason is I can't do any of the above tricks anyway.

Matt and Brian joined me for lunch and we gobbled some frites et saucission whilst various ski teams from around the world mingled around (most notably the Russian female team). Tignes still labels itself as the capital of summer skiing, but like everywhere else the glacier is melting fast and they don't reckon there will be skiing available outside of winter for more than a few years to come. Still, lots of snow at the moment and the recent bad weather has resulted in excellent conditions on the glacier. No ice at all, some video here.

As regards the others, Laura went for a spin on the bike, Amy and Kyle chilled in the chalet and we all ate fine meals and drunk beers and wine and generally relaxed, nice. We are now watching the fake (real) Tour de France prologue on TV.......looks like the riders are just beating our times round the London course, the absence of 70,000 barely moving cars and torrential rain obviously helps.

So, enough of this lounging around, we have the Tour de France to ride ! That fact seemed to get me a 30% discount in the snowboard shop which was good, they were very friendly.

Tomorrow we have the giants of the French alps, the 2700m col de l'Iseran, col du Telegraphe and the mighty col du Galibier which involves 1900 metres of climbing from the valley. All of this has to be gained pedal stroke by pedal stroke.

We are back to work tomorrow, everyone is keen and partially recovered and we are now hoping that the 35 degree heat in Marseille is not going to become as difficult as the recent cold. Wish us luck, we are breaking out the sunscreen.

Extra feature bonus material - some short video of Amy, Kyle and Laura riding past a cliche sunflower field on a previous stage here