Sur Mer

There’s a slight chill in the air this Wednesday morning as I roll up to the rondpoint in Le Boulou. The sun is just breaking on the Le Canigou; last week I saw the reddened peak on my way up the D618. We seem to be losing quite a bit of light in the morning, adding it to the end of the day.

Geoff is right on time, his new carbon Giant gleaming underneath him. While his bike is the latest model, full of carbon bits, his kit is a bit of an anachronism. He wears a yellow foam helmet and large mittens and an old pro jersey from the 80’s. Beneath the yellow helmet, he beams a ‘Bonjour!’ and we’re off on our 100k Wednesday ride.

Today’s route will take us over the now familiar climb through Vives and Llauro, north to Thuir and then east to Perpignan and coffee in Canet en Rousillon, then south along the Med to St Cyprien and Argeles and then up the Alberes range to our village of Villelongue. My legs feel a little tired yet from Sunday’s hard ride up the Vallespir, but a day off yesterday did wonders.

Geoff and I again pace each other up the Vives climb. The rises in the road are familiar now, and I know where there’s a bit of respite around this turn, or a mind-blowing panorama to distract me from my sore muscles around another. I notice more of the desert flowers are blooming this week, long slender green plants with lavender flowers. A slight fragrance is on the wind and it’s quiet enough to hear the echoed breathing of me and my riding partner. The descent comes just past the right turn away from Llauro. Geoff warns me of the sweat on the roads, condensation from the moist air and warmer road surface. Some days this can lead to black ice or ‘verglas’ but today is not so bad. One fast turn, at speed, is blind and particularly moist and it gets filed away for future caution. Just a couple taps on the brakes and I’m sailing into the flats between the vineyards, direction Thuir.

Between Thuir and Perpignan there’s an old rail line that’s been converted to a bike path, beautifully paved and offering a diversion from some of the broken pavement and pave in the villages. We jump on the path at Thuir and cruise along at 20mph, roughly abreast except when passing a jogger or slower cyclist. This is vineyard country and the dry stumps stretch in rows away from us, sometimes an old man or woman pruning the new growth away or just out for an inspection with a dog. The town of Canohes comes and goes. It seems like new road construction is happening in every town here, a testament to the rapid growth the area is experiencing.

I’m feeling good today and we keep the pace above twenty, steaming along the flats towards the sea. Geoff is a champion time-trialist, something that seems to be in the blood of British cyclists, and I try to glean bits from his form and technique. Once the basics are mastered, cycling is a nuanced art. It’s hard to pinpoint the necessary moment to accelerate, ease up, push through a pain, try to relax a muscle. Or the art of perception, of self, of others, of how to present yourself to others. In a peloton, riders are constantly looking at each others’ faces, looking for weakness, exhaustion, listening for hard breathing or watching for jerky movements on the bike. I know I’m being schooled a bit and enjoy the experience.

Our coffee stop is in Canet en Rousillon, a seaside suburb of Perpignan. Geoff scans futilely for an outdoor café, but we settle for a PMU on the main street. It’s smoky inside, a couple of patrons are into a second beer at 11am. The PMU is a state-run betting café, but the large screen tv on the wall is dark and it’s quiet. Geoff and I talk about travelling to the states and his idea about buying a 49 Buick with a straight 8. He saw one on Ebay in Iowa with 50,000 miles on it for 500 bucks.

The caffeine from the café crème moves me like a slow electric shock and we move our pace up to twenty-two on the seaside bike path. If you don’t look at the road signs, the scene is a carbon copy of the road between Laguna and Newport Beaches. The broad expanse of the sea, the grasses growing thinly in the sand and the misty grunge of salt and sand on buildings. St. Cyprien comes fast and a rear portion of my brain realizes I haven’t been eating much, so I now begin feeding. I’m sure that Geoff picks up on this right away; I’m not very fluid now, waiting for the carbs to get my blood sugar up, but he’s been following my wheel since Canet, so maybe he’s feeling the effort as much as I am.

Soon we’re in Argeles sur Mer and things are familiar. I’m feeling good again as we zip through rondpoints past closed tourist shops and the internet café, Web Mania. We pass the ‘feu’ and turn onto the D2 heading for Sorede and I point out the old Maison de Village sitting there, courtyard overgrown, but still projecting a gentility that comes with being over a hundred years old. A Vendre reads the sign and my visions of running a cycling gite in France come back. I’m sure the land alone is out of my price range, but who knows…?

The climb up the Alberes is hard, Sorede didn’t seem like it was this far before on my recovery ride the other day and Geoff has decided to pound away now. There’s a tiny muscle in my back that is spasming, stretching out into a time-trial position seems to help it, but that’s sends exactly the wrong signal to Geoff and our pace increases. I just about lose his wheel into Sorede, but the climb eases in town and I gain some recovery. There’s an adage in cycling that if you’re hurting, the other guys are too. This is helpful to remember and I chant it to myself as we attack the final climb into Villelongue.

I crack, the temptation of easing off on the pedals is too much, the shooting pain in my back too intense that they offset the concern I have for losing Geoff’s wheel. It’s just 50 meters and I coast up to him at our turn. He asks me for the ride numbers for today. “Not bad. That’s about 30k an hour. Most riders around here would think you were a star if you told ‘em you did that for a ‘undred k.” Then a pause. “You’ll fit.”

61.0, 3:20, 1940