Col de Madeloc

Mark Knoppfler is playing on the iPod, creating a surreal musical backdrop as I glide through the villages on the side of the Alberes, old women walking back from the boulangerie with baguettes in arm, the sun playing through the mountain mist above Laveil.

'... just lay me down in marble town...'

After an easy spin yesterday from the beach on tiny backroads and the hard ride to Montpins the day before, my legs are feeling... odd. I decide to take a run down the Cote de Vermeil, turning around at Cerberes on the Spanish border if the legs don't feel good, or turning uphill at Banyuls sur Mer if they are. That's the beauty of this area and the attraction for many top Euro riders; one can do mountain cols or spin in the flats within a space of a few miles.

I dip down to Argeles sur Mer and skip the first two Collioure signs, before choosing the last, a C or Commune road that hugs the sea. With new pavement and little traffic, I roll under palms, oak and chestnut trees until the rondpoint above Collioure when the Mediterannean spreads out in front of me. Legs feeling good now, I climb out of town and towards less touristy Port Vendre on the D114. Ok, I'm going to do the Madeloc.

My first time up the Madeloc, we took the middle road, just south of Collioure. This time I decide to do the longer route leaving Banyuls centre ville. Immediately after turning away from the sea, the road lurches up, pushing me into my lowest gears. The sky at the bottom is sunny, but a vapor of cloud obscures the tower at the top of the climb. Might be cold up there.

As the road rises, it narrows, dodging almond trees in full bloom and blending into the vineyards terraced by Romans two thousand years ago and again by the Knights Templar a thousand years later. On a tight hairpin, I slow enough to hear bees and detect the sweet scent of almond nectar on the breeze. An older mountainbiker pulled over on a turn, admiring the view, looks up and smiles. 'Bonjour, ca va?' I ask. 'Oui, ca va!' he shouts. The road continues up. A woman with her dog, eating lunch hunched by her car and a quiet 'Bonjour'. A taciturn shepherd with his goats eating the lower leaves on some cork oaks. And then after 4.7 miles, the road flattens enough that I can coast, stretch and shift to the upper ring.

The mist shrouds the view and lends an ethereal quality to the scene. Or is that just the effect of climbing 1500 feet? The road from Port Vendre rises to meet me and I'm briefly tempted to descend right now. The feeling that I've earned this ascent and don't want to give up those vertical feet so quickly. I spin a bit more and then follow the 'Hermitage de Consolation' sign. Now the road is familiar both visually and in the pain seared deep into muscle memory.

The top comes quickly and I stop to look around. Ribbons of road draped over the terraces, bursts of white and pink blossom against the stony earth. A moment of absorption and reflection and then the descent. In fifteen minutes Argeles returns with it's tourist shops and restless people moving on the sidewalks, talking on cellphones and honking their horns, but the memory of the Madeloc is now burned a bit deeper.