or Hell on Wheels, L’enfer c’est les autres, They paved Paradise, put up a parking lot…all of the above. And I have to include us as part of the problem. Slapped wrists, naughty step and bed without supper.
It had been decided that Ventoux would be visited on a hot day. Today was said to be the hottest of the week so off we went, taking in Ventoux Coop at Bédoin for supplies of their finest.
But we could see the looming horror as soon as we left town on the road up to the climb. Many many cyclists, some riding two or three abreast, clumps of cars trying to pass, oncoming downhill racers taking the bends on the wrong side…nightmare. What is normally a lovely rise up through changing forests became a nail biting ordeal.
We realised we should never have come, not in the middle of school holidays and just after the Tour. Everyone and his dog, children, granny and selfie stick was on the slopes.
We pulled off just below the summit at the usual flat plateau but even here there was devastation and spoil heaps from the so called improvements up top. Fewer people thankfully but still groups of walkers with poles, trail bikes.
On top of one heap someone had made a flat relief Tour logo rider out of sand but you’d need to get above it for the full effect.
We decided to retreat across the summit and down to Malaucène but even that was fraught with hazard. The vehicles going up had to negotiate parked cars and vehicles coming down. We were behind a ruddy great motorhome that couldn’t get its fat arse through and kept stopping, eventually given a police escort by the Gendarmerie van! Pedestrians crossing to go up the ghastly new concrete flight of steps. A Horror Show. No chance to see if bench had by some miracle been spared.
Once on the relatively quieter descent we decided a Crestet Ice Cream would soothe the nerves but here too hopes were cruelly dashed. It was 1 o’clock, the sign said open, but no one came in response to my phone call to the number on the door -“tell them I came and no one answered, that I kept my word I said.”
