Col de la Ramaz

Col de la Ramez is a grade 1 climb, which is the hardest graded climb, 5 being the lowest. It was not the easiest thing in the world, and not particularly relaxing considering that this is supposed to be a holiday!

The whole climb was alrady camped out with Tour fans, almost 48 hours before the tour was due to come through. Many of them greeted us with traditional cheers of "Alez Alez!". When we reached the top of the climb the sun had set, but the night was warm and clear, so we put down our ground sheet and slept under the stars, which were very bright, considering the proximity of Geneva.

Come the morning we found we were surrounded by cows - which hadn't been nearby the previous night (the cows roam quite free up here in the alps). Although alpine cows are pretty placid, it was quite intimidating to wake looking up, at these towering animals with crushing, dinner-plate size hoves. Worse still, the cows had eaten our baguette! The loss of the baguette was partiularly tragic as we had brought it up well over kilometer in altitude since we bought it, so we had been through a lot together.

We'll be on this Col for another night, so we relocated from our 'cowboy camp' spot, to the opposite field and have pitched the tent on a grassy area about 50 metres away from the road; hopfully when the tour comes through tomorrow, we won't get our things crushed.

There are hundreds of people camped out on the mountain (although 99% are in camper vans, a few are in tents, but we've seen only three other cycle tourers).Read more