19 October. Big climbs and icy rain!

The last few days have been a bit intense! Yesterday morning we started our never ending climb up to the Col du Lautaret from Grenoble from where the infamous Tour de France climb over the Col du Galibier starts. It was 86 km to this point and it was a slog! At La Grave we popped into the tourism office and were told by the helpful lady that they were expecting snow the next day and the Col would be closed. So we took the decision to go for it and try and camp somewhere on the other side. It was 4 pm at the time.  We scaled the Col du Lautaret by 5pm and were on the top of the Galibier 8km and 600 vertical meters of climbing later just after 6. It was 2 degrees C and seeing that we did not have winter booties or windproof gloves we duct taped some plastic bags around our hands and feet for the icy descent. The snow on the surrounding peaks had us concerned about freezing ourselves to our bikes. I ended up with a chorizo packet. My left hand still smells like chorizo. The bags helped but a 20 km descent still froze us solid. We eventually hit the ski town of Valloire which as per usual was closed so we set up camp near the river and dined on coffee to defrost followed by fig rolls, soup and tuna. All separately of course!

Today dawned overcast and rain was likely. A quick ascent and descent of the Col du Telegraphe had us in the valley. Despite it being downhill from here we still struggled to go fast thanks to a head wind. And then it started raining. Icy rain. We pushed on eventually pulling into the wifi heaven of MacD's in Albertville. Over coffee the rain intensified and there were rumours of snow further up. Seeing that our kit was limited to lycra bib shorts and a few base layers we decided to find a cheap hotel. We found the Fast Hotel.... Our fast room is covered in wet kit and the heater is on full blast. Smells like a wet dog but at least the showers are hot. Chamonix tomorrow but first some wine! James