Fife - The beautiful machine: a life in cycling, from Tour de France to Cinder Hill

The beautiful machine: a life in cycling, from Tour de France to Cinder Hill — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The beautiful machine: a life in cycling, from Tour de France to Cinder Hill" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...74

This book is dedicated to:

Bosia, Jo, Katy and Roger, for heart-cockle-warming affection

Richard and Carol, dear friends of long date and lasting care

Geoff and Gill, who blessedly came out of the blue and stayed on

Simon and Silvana, for Accrington, Timbuktu, Mongolia and open doors

Luke and June, for unfailing good humour and dependable sanity

Dave and Carol, for the incalculable gift of being there

Bob and Linda, who happily announced themselves one day

To you all I say: Hurray

About the Author

Graeme Fife is a full-time writer who has worked much in radio and written a number of books on a variety of subjects, published in the UK, the USA and Holland, including the bestselling Tour de France: The History, the Legend, the Riders and Inside the Peloton: Riding, Winning and Losing the Tour de France. A keen cyclist, he has ridden most of the celebrated cols of Tour legend.

THE BEAUTIFUL MACHINE

A Life in Cycling, from

Tour de France to Cinder Hill

Graeme Fife

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licenced or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Epub ISBN: 9781780572208

Version 1.0

www.mainstreampublishing.com

Copyright Graeme Fife, 2008

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

First published in Great Britain in 2007 by

MAINSTREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY (EDINBURGH) LTD

7 Albany Street

Edinburgh EH1 3UG

ISBN 9781845963149

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for

insertion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

Introduction

Cycling along a lane towards Kemsing on a bright crisp morning in early December, needing to cleanse my system and clear my head as delivery time for this book approached like the peloton hunting down a break in the closing kilometres of a Tour stage I was overtaken by another cyclist, who said good morning and streaked on. I assessed his speed: not that quick but certainly a lot quicker than I was going this dozy interim. I pondered chase, no more than reminding myself that I can respond, at least, to challenge. The will is not always there, nor the energy either, but something pricked my spirit. I gave chase, caught him some distance along and, as he turned left (thank goodness) up towards Kingsdown Hill, I wished him a pleasant ride and continued, at brisker pace now, towards the slighter cusp of my own loop via Watery Lane, Oak Bank, Bitchet Green, Fawke Common and the southern perimeter of Knole Park to Sevenoaks. And I reflected: When your concentration starts to flag, what do you do? You pick a fight... with yourself.

I live in Bat and Ball, which is a sort of wart on the chin of Sevenoaks, but I wish to scotch the ugly rumour that Bat and Ball is twinned with lAlpe dHuez... as being another dead end.

I was in the Pyrenees not long ago. I spend a lot of time out in the mountains on a bike, cycling around, avoiding the sort of people who creep round with pamphlets of dubious intent to knock on my front door and ask: Have you found God? to which the only sensible answer is: No, have you lost him? In early December 2006, I went out to France to reconnoitre a climb to be included in the Tour de France route for the first time ever in 2007: the Port de Bals. Since I was, at the time, also finishing a big book about the great cols of the Pyrenees and hadnt mentioned the Port de Bals, its sudden appearance among the climbs of legend was a bit of a bugger, to be frank. I thought that must be my fault not that the Tour had found it but that I had missed it. So I did the needful and went down to scout it.

Since I was also working on this book to a tight deadline which is worse than a tight waistline because you rarely do anything pleasurable to deserve a tight deadline I was very short of leisure for gallivanting. However, I flew to Pau and on the way surveyed this rogue climb on the map... it didnt exist, which is why I had excluded it. The eastern approach petered out on the pass into a squiggly thin black line as if the Michelin cartographer had dozed off after a good lunch and let the pen run on down the paper. No metalled way, just a forest track. Well, I went up the road that was there from the east and, lo, at the summit, another road joined it, up from the other side. What do I do now? I thought. Sue Michelin? Sue the Tour de France? Burst into tears? No, I braced up and continued on down the 5.88km of new tarmac, all shiny black and no graffiti, though I dont rule out the local foresters coming out with their pails of white paint and brushes and daubing Make tracks not Tour instead of the more usual The bears are back, get your rifles out to the hunting brothers.

I stayed overnight in Bagnres-de-Luchon. The baths were shut and so was most of the rest of the place, but I found a hotel and then asked at the tourist office what was this about the Port de Bals, which seems to have been welcomed back like a prodigal. Turns out the Tour de France has had its eye on the crossing for a year or two, and, by the usual methods money it finally coerced the local asphalters you know, the blokes who pitch up to suburban houses at eight oclock at night with an offer of a new drive or else a hole suitable for a swimming pool on the front lawn to lay a new road. Thats what happened. One day, no road and the village at the head of the valley is all full of itself for being a sort of El Dorado destination up an inaccessible mountainside. Next morning, they wake up and theres a rush hour flying past down the new throughway where there used to be a donkey ride.

At first light the next day, I drove back over the Port de Bals and stopped in a village on the other side that had probably resented not being a cul-de-sac for years but could now gloat because the smug bastards on the other side had lost their exclusivity at last. I talked to a couple of locals about this and that and bike races and cross-country skiing and what they call cuckoo-time snow and other things, and the man said: We dont get many cuckoos down here now, its all helicopters and not much skiing, and you ask a lot of questions. To which I replied that I was the foreigner and isnt that what foreigners do, ask questions which was a bit Jewish, really, now that I think about it, because they are famous for answering questions with another question.

At that, the woman said: You look as if youve just come back from Pontoise, which is French for Youre a bit out of touch, arent you? She said it quite nicely, and it may, of course, be true... perhaps its not for me to say whether it is or not. But the weird thing, the really odd thing, is that Sevenoaks is

Next page

1234567...74

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The beautiful machine: a life in cycling, from Tour de France to Cinder Hill»

Look at similar books to The beautiful machine: a life in cycling, from Tour de France to Cinder Hill. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

May Fife McCallum

Fast and Bonnie: History of William Fife and Son, Yachtbuilders

Bruce Fife

The coconut oil miracle

Cyclist Magazine

Cyclist Ride: The greatest cycling routes in the world

MacGregor

To hell on a bike: riding Paris-Roubaix: the toughest race in cycling

Ellis Bacon

The Cycling Anthology: Volume Five: 5

Fife G.

Inside the Peloton: Riding, Winning and Losing the Tour de France

Ellis Bacon

The Cycling Anthology: Volume One: 1

Ellis Bacon

The cycling anthology. Volume two 2

Ellis Bacon

The cycling anthology. Volume three 3

Fife

Extending Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Cookbook

Tim Moore

Gironimo!: Riding the Very Terrible 1914 Tour of Italy

Tim Moore

French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France

Discussion, reviews of the book The beautiful machine: a life in cycling, from Tour de France to Cinder Hill and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.