(Host) Commentator Willem Lange’s been watching the Tour de France and remembering the day he and Mother spent on the course.
(Lange) Mother looked up at the mass of Mont Ventoux. “I am not going up there!” she said.
“There’s a good highway right up it, just like Mount Washington. We go down the other side, and we’ll be in Provence.” I read from the guidebook, omitting the sentence that had first attracted me: The road that slides up the 1900 metres and down again with such consummate, if convoluted ease was built for the purposes of testing prototype cars… Yes!
Mont Ventoux’s in the news this month because one of the stages of the Tour de France goes up and over it. It’s the southernmost of the upthrust Alps north of the Mediterranean; and because it stands alone, it gets terrific weather – gusts of wind over 150 miles an hour, and a cap of snow from November to May. It was first climbed by the Italian poet Petrarch in 1336.
We rarely have an itinerary when we travel, and almost never reserve a room ahead. It was already mid-afternoon. We’d have to hustle. The mountain loomed above us, a whaleback ridge, with its top gleaming beige and white. Fitful rain showers chased each other across the westering sun. That turbodiesel, though, just loved the steep grade, and I swung around the curves like 007, with Mother nervously playing Q in the passenger seat. To reassure her, I said, “You think this is bad, wait till we start down the other side.” Not an inspired remark.
The top was in a blizzard. But we stopped briefly at a monument beside the road, its base decorated with cycling shoes, water bottles, and frozen flowers. This was the spot where in July 1967, Tom Simpson, England’s greatest cyclist, succumbed to exhaustion and an overdose of amphetamines. Clearly, he still had admirers.
The road had climbed the north side in gentle traverses and hairpins; on the south, it was one long squiggle, and pretty exciting. There were no guard rails, and the ditches, a meter wide and deep, were made of cut stone.
A couple of miles down, a tiny French car had missed a curve and dived into the ditch. The headlights and grill were shattered, the front wheels hung in the air. Two men were looking for help to pull it out. We got into the ditch and tried to lift the front; no soap. Then here came an old International Scout. The driver stopped and dug out a tire chain to do the pulling. It occurred to me that, if that chain broke, I was going to die in. I got out of the way. A few seconds later – voila! – the little wreck was back on its feet. The two men climbed back in, and with fenders flapping, roared off down the mountain.
“Ah!” said Mother. “The joie de vivre!” Joie de vivre, eh? How about nuts?
This is Willem Lange, sweltering in Etna, New Hampshire, wishing I were over there.