Gravel to gravel, dust to mud
Cycle to Tuscany for the Strade Bianche said the little voice in my head. The Italian Riviera in the springtime; the Cinque Terre and the Med always to the right.
Pisa and pizza and then finishing between rows of cypresses on the infamous Tuscan white roads, watching the pros zip past in dust and sun.
A gravel bike ride to a riding gravel race – the sort of concept the little voice in my head knows I cannot resist. It could have been a short shorts and shaved legs ride: what could possibly go wrong?
February is the cruellest month, TS Eliot almost wrote, but actually February was fine. February 27th, February 28th and the sun shone, though it gave out little heat. The bike was loaded and the Wahoo programmed to take me along the coast and then into the hills.
Camogli. I stopped here once before, I remember, when I was a student, travelling on the train with friends. That day we took the last room in town, overlooking the pebbly beach, and watched the setting sun burnish the walls of the room with gold. Then we swam in the cold sea, heads bobbing over the dark blue, faces disappearing and reappearing in the swell, lens flare in the last rays. In the evening the locals processed statues of Saint Fortunato in the streets, fried fish and made spectacular bonfires on the beach. This time, years later, seasons earlier, it is too cold to stay outside, and so I drink brandy and think with trepidation about the next day’s cold. Snow in piles in the shade, the sun setting and the Cinque Terre rising before me.
The bike route across the first hills to Portofino becomes very climby, following timeworn tracks used by walkers and pack animals. Even now they are patrolled by tiny trucks. In Italy there is an industry still making diminutive vehicles for these tiny steep lanes between the olive trees. In some places I have to get off and carry my bike, but there are three-wheeled Apes here hardier than I.
In the warmest corners there is the smell of wild garlic, sole reminder of spring, but elsewhere my tyres crunch through frost. In Portofino, Russian girls in yachting wear and furs pose for a camera, but as soon as the lens cap is on they dive into the cafe where I am having coffee.
Out of town up in the hills the landscape drains of colour. There are tiny birds lying frozen dead on the road. On the north side of the hills the road is frigid monochrome and on the south it is white from salt stains and snow melt. A 10-kilometre descent calls for an emergency pizza.
Finally stopped, after 150km, I wash my base layers – two, and two neck warmers – in the hotel sink and go to a restaurant, where I shock the waiter with how much food I eat.
The next day is 1 March and though that is the calendar start of spring, it is also when the Beast from the East comes to visit. Outside the hotel there is snow on the ground and it is snowing, a wet, cold, cloying snow. By Pisa, 40km south I give up and try to catch a train. But there are no trains running into the hills of Tuscany. Lines closed.
I have to get to the Strade Bianche. I have to interview a rider for a magazine, and besides my bed that night is in the team hotel, an expensive luxury to miss. I stand around in Pisa station for a while with crowds of tourists who want to go to Florence, not knowing what to do. And then you realise that you keep putting yourself in these situations and that there is only one way out. I get back on the bike.
Hours of zero degrees, sleet and dirty snowmelt road spray. The headwind the icy breath of the Beast from the East. I stop at the next station, still no trains, and no taxis too. The kindness of strangers in a café and a tobaconnist where I stop to drink coffee and eat chocolate. No photos and nothing to report beyond the tip of my nose. Empty handlebar pack, all my clothes are on. Eventually, with 30km left, I find a cab that will take me to my warm shower and bed. I drip all over the inside as I warm up.
The view from the hotel is white. Two days before the Strade Bianche and it’s not just the roads in Tuscany that are white – it’s everything. The teams trickle in through the hotel lobby doors in cold gusts of apprehension, sheltering from winter’s revenge outside.
The next day I recce the course with the team, and the snow has mainly gone, but it is all mud rivers and slush piles instead. How many, tomorrow, will be truly up for it? Will the battle be won before the start?
Riding down to Siena that evening, rows of cypresses stand guard in the gloom over the infamous strade bianche.
The women’s race starts and ends in the rain, all embrocation and sounds of brakes in the wet. The men get wet and are strafed by stormclouds all day. But heroes rise out of this mud. Heroes like Anna van der Breggen, and Tiesj Benoot, Wout van Aert and Romain Bardet. And they would not be the heroes we need them to be if these races were easy. Why do we try to do things that are so hard, I ask myself. And then I realise that I keep putting myself in these situations and that there is only one way out.