placid_casual – Member
I rode up it one day in July 2000 on a Marin hardtail.
There seemed to be some kind of event happening that day. We met lots of people on the way up including a smelly man in a devil costume and some drunken orange people.
I was there on that day as well, about 4-5kms up the road after Virage d’Esteve. 8)
I’d ridden the Etape a few days before, 155km Carpentras – Ventoux. Being young and fit 😉 I managed the first 130km in 4 hours exactly. (Not overly difficult as I sat in the biggest groups I could find and let them do the work!)
As I rode into the last feed area before Ventoux I got talking to a rather grumpy old bloke from up North about why he had an Olympic badge stitched onto his club jersey. (Coventry Wheelers, maybe?) Turned out he’d competed in them and been on the same team as Tom Simpson back in the 60s.
2 hours and twenty minutes later I crawled over the summit. I was so exhausted that I barely noticed that it was just about to snow. (It had been over 25 degrees at the bottom of the hill.) The wind after Chalet Reynard was so strong that it would stop me completely at points. I had run out of energy so completely that I stopped to eat three times between the Simpson memorial and the top. The drop down the other side was fantastic because of the temperature increasing with every corner. 🙂
I’ll go back and ride it again soon.