Tell us about your weekend ride

It wasn’t a cycling holiday, it was a trip to Tuscany with a bike in the car.

   More or less by chance, from the northern Italian town of Cuneo we took the road leading to the Colle della Maddelena towards France and home. I did not finally decide to ride until a coffee stop in the tiny village of Sambuco (3697 feet)  when I pointed out to my other half that since the day was Sunday it was my normal day for going for a ride. It would have been criminal to drive all the way up with a bike in the car waiting and crying out to be ridden.
So there was no preparation for this ride, no careful eating, no massage, abstention from alcohol and no bottle of magic potion.

  The road at that point climbed gently, and with a tailwind I made rapid progress. By English standards the surface was good and the traffic light as I rode up a pleasant valley with a fast flowing river close to me and mountains rising on either side. The gradient here is not more than about one in twenty, but it is persistent with occasional steeper sections. With over 2800 feet of climbing there have to be some hard bits: the odd hairpin, but also some straight sections where the gradient increases imperceptibly so that a rider may begin to feel he is weakening.
  The real climb begins after the small town of Argentera (5524 feet). The vegetation becomes sparse, there is a tunnel to negotiate, bits of old and abandoned road can be seen, often sprinkled with fallen rocks. The hairpins begin to be numbered. I have a faint memory from a previous trip that there are eighteen numbered turns, but this proves to be disappointingly false since there turn out to be twenty, with still a little climbing to do after that.
  The mountain forms a wall at the end of the valley and the zig-zags just climb up the side of the obstacle. A few of the corners are steep, but not impossibly so.

Soon after the start of this section there is a roadside plaque commemorating Coppi’s great ride in the seventeenth stage of the of the 1949 Giro, Cuneo to Pinerolo.  The plaque marks the point where he broke away to ride alone for 120 miles over another four major climbs to win the stage by nearly twelve minutes from his rival Bartali. The third placed rider, Alfredo Martini, said to be the first of the mortal men, was twenty minutes down.

Although it was a pleasant summer Sunday afternoon there were no other cyclists on the Italian side, and only a few on the descent on the French side – perhaps they’d got up earlier than us. The summit is at 6,548 feet, and the fourteen miles had taken me an hour and forty five minutes, but at least I felt fairly healthy. I might have gone a bit harder to start with if I’d been more confident.

For those interested in equipment, I rode an old 531 frame with 43/53 chainrings and a block with 14,16,18,20,22 & 24 tooth sprockets. I did use the 24, not very much but it was more use than the outer chainring.

As I rode I was conscious that I am lucky to be able to be able to ride on those roads at my advanced age even though it may be slow, but how I wish I’d tried to do it in earnest when I was in my twenties.

I should mention this ride was done on the 5th September. I've been too busy to post until now.