One of the luxuries of solo travel is not worrying about knowing where you are, I might never be truly lost, I always have the choice of a left or right turn and sometimes stopping and looking back is all that is required to get exceptional clarity on life – being dwarfed by nature often puts things into perspective.
Tag Archives: Places
Hillclimb Cuneo – Col de la Madeleine
Laying in the grass trying to cool down but no shade for miles as I reached the top of the plateau from a road off the Col de la Madeleine. I decided to follow the tracks of the famous 1920 hillclimb route as I snaked the sixty odd kilometres between the French and Italian borders through the edges of the Vanoise National Park on the SP212 and into Novalesa. Easy on the CRF1000, but i wondered how the original hillclimb enthusiasts managed in the 1920s on such sharp includes with unforgiving and unprotected edges?
La Coupole
Hewn from the soft chalk, I wandered on my own through rough cut tunnels and chambers carved through the rock by labourers overseen by the German Army, the sound of running water never far away and despite the outside heat in the open air there was a cold chill and damp which quickly penetrated down through my jacket into my bones. An eerie place, yet I could not help but be in awe of the massive civil engineering efforts that were delivered at a cost of 1000’s of lives to create La Couple. The huge bunker was built by the Todt Organisation between 1942 and 1944 and was the base for launching the V2 rockets against London. The complex was bombed mercilessly by the Allies and the scars of the high explosive detonations can be seen in collapsed chambers and offset concrete caps and arches. La Coupole was abandoned during the summer of 1944, after the Normandy landings and is now slowly being reabsorbed back into the tranquil french countryside.
