This ride was sparked off by seeing a fabulous photograph of the famous Alpe d’Huez ascent. 27 hairpin bends going up what seemed to be a vertical wall; 1000 metres of ascent, what more could a man want? I’d imagined that the views would be great and there was a little bit of me that wanted to see how I would fare climbing a Tour de France icon. The mountains on the other side of the valley seemed much higher than the one I was going up but as I slowly climbed they became level and eventually lower! Each hairpin had the name of a famous Tour de France winner painted on it.