Central London CTC blog

My guide and coach turned up at my hotel at 6 on the dot as I wheeled out the bike he had prepared for me. Setting off together was the first time I had mounted the bike and, indeed, the first time it had ever been ridden. It was the first time I had cycled in Italy, and the first time I had ridden a full-on carbon race bike, the same model Focus as Milram campaigns. I had my own Look pedals, and the 3T front end – forks, bar and stem – was instantly familiar. The bike was dauntingly light, and it picked up the pace remarkably. This was all to the good, as my guide wasn’t hanging about.

Already the commercial traffic was building up. The province of Bergamo is a thriving commercial region and, because it’s so hot in the middle of the day, people start work early. To the north, the Lombardy mountains, our destination, were still wreathed in mist after overnight rain, but on the plain the temperature was already in the mid-20s. As soon as we crossed over the Milan–Venice autostrada the road tilted up, alongside the Torrente Imagna. Traffic was streaming down, but was agreeably light in our direction. The shaggy foothills of the Alps closed in around, hanging over the valley road. Inevitably, we soon turned off the valley floor to engage one of the minor roads, snaking up the mountain to Berbenno.

Now for sure you will hear Sean Kelly at some point in this year’s Tour de France commentary telling viewers that Continental climbs are not a bit like those in Britain, oh no! they are much longer. Well I guess this one would barely be categorized but it was an awful lot longer than anything on our patch. On and on it went, through a succession of steadily higher and more antique villages, perched spectacularly over remote, wooded valleys. The grade wasn’t too bad and it would have been all right taken steady, but my guide was on a schedule. Holding his wheel was cruelly taxing, especially after a breakfast of no more than a drink of water.

Leaving Berbenno on an unsigned road, we took five in the morning sunshine. Wreaths of cloud still coiled about the heavily wooded hills. Cows with clonking bells ambled about lush meadows dotted with log-built homesteads and barns. It felt quite Alpine. My guide passed me an energy gel to quell my incipient hunger knock. I was really longing for a fat coffee and a bun.

The next few kilometers of the unadopted corniche road were still damp beneath the dwarf oaks, and in places broken and treacherous with gravel run-off. Plunging down a sudden dip towards another of these sketchy bends, I thought it wise to take off some speed. Wrong! The brakes, still new and snatchy, locked up the rear wheel and in a heartbeat I was heading crabwise towards a deep and evil-looking concrete culvert. Unblocking, I whistled past the ragged edge with about half a metre to spare.

My guide, who had not seen this horrible manoeuvre, reassured me that the asphalt improved in a few kilometers at the next village, Gerosa. Indeed it did, and the road tilted down. And down and down, plunging back to the plain. It was just like TV: at any moment you expected the camera to tilt down to the moto’s speedo. Below me, my guide was describing crazy angles through the lacets, but I let him go, judging discretion to be much the greater part of valour. Even so, it was an almost out-of-body experience to hurtle down the perfect surface, picking the line, braking into the apex, and sprinting out. We just don’t have descents like that.

All good things come to an end and after this magnificent descent we soon found ourselves tangling with the now-busy commercial traffic on the plain: cement trucks, panel vans, and espresso-crazed commuters. This brought out the street side of my guide, who told me he will be taking part in the fifth edition of the Milano–Venezia in fissa race on 24 July. I had to draw deep on the smarts learned in years of fixed-wheel London traffic jamming to keep him in view as he weaved in and out. By and by we rolled up to my hotel, on the dot of 9, with around 70 km covered. Time for breakfast and the day’s work…