Cycling at the Speed of Flies
Feb 10th
So yesterday we cycled the legend that is the Blue Nile Gorge. I have been aware of it since meeting Marty about 6 weeks before the tour began. He was telling me about it, and showing the route to me on Strava. It also sounded like he was already training for it - up and down hills in Wellington. In years before it has been run as a time trial, this year (as the tour is no longer a race) it was simply a bike ride. The last 5 weeks have been building to the gorge. It is one of ‘THE’ cycles within the cycling community, comparable to cycling in the Alps - so Alistair informed me. I didn’t quite understand what the hype was all about. I am not a cyclist, I just ride my bike…and don’t understand the significance of such things. The day was here. Starting from our Forest Camp,
we had a 50km cycle to the lunch truck. An undulating cycle to more or less the top of the gorge. The party bus set off together. It was a chilly start, luckily there was a hill within a few hundred meters of camp to warm us up. I have had a cold for the last two days, and was feeling congested. Harriet gave me some Sudafed, which I took. I was struggling a bit with breathlessness while cycling and put it down to my respiratory infection, Alistair was also feeling his asthma…it later prevailed that this was a unanimous feeling, and likely due to altitude. We rode at an easyish pace. Passing quite a few other riders. The local people were lovely. We had no issues with stones, or sticks, and more often than not everyone would wave and smile. The best one was when Alistair sat up and started clapping as he passed them, the group of kids joined in, which meant by the time I passed there was a mass of applause. It felt like I was riding in Tour de France! This part of Ethiopia, between Bahir Dar and the Gorge largely consists of large scale non-industrialised arable farming.
Even at 7 on a Saturday morning the fields were full of people carrying hay over their heads, or throwing the crop in the air to separate it out. Industrialisation would greatly streamline it, but so many people would be left without employment. At one point we passed some youths - from about 8-15 years of age - wearing white marshall arts clothing, doing their stretches on the roadside bollards. They were hugely excited to see farenji (white foreigners) cyclists missioning past on the downhill. We decided it was a Saturday morning Tae Kwon-do (spelling?) session, by the side of the road, in the middle of a farming region.
We reached lunch by about 9.30am (it has been renamed second breakfast). It was about 2km into the gorge, and gave perfect views of the road we would be climbing up on the other side. Spirits were high, it really felt like this was the ride alot of people had been waiting for. Eager anticipation. I was actually more nervous about the descent than the ascent. It just felt more dangerous. Joost thought this was because the decent you have to trust your bike, the ascent it is all dependent on you. I think it is partly that, but also the descent you tend to be going quicker and therefore have less time to react to wandering donkeys, goats, cattle; traffic coming behind you or round the corner on the wrong side of the road; kids with stones/deciding to walk in front of you.
A light lunch and we were on the road. Alistair disappeared off, he loves his fast descents. David and Jenna were shortly after him. i had decided I was going to enjoy the ride and take pictures. Karen had told me about an app called Relive - it tracks your route, geotags the pictures you take, and creates a route video afterwards - I was trying to use that for the day. The road condition was questionable, there were some rolling drops, unpaved sections, and even corrugated tarmac at the bottom!
It was 22km of descent into the gorge. It took all of about 30mins. Twice I had to stop because my brakes were making an odd sound. I poured water over them only to have it sizzle and evaporated - such was the heat generated by the friction. I had even got air over some of the rollers - purely accidental. The route down the gorge took us through 4-5 small settlements, with wooden stick houses and tin roofs. I cycled over one unpaved section to the sound of rocks raining down around me. There were some kids up on the bank with very poor aim - it was pretty comical.
The bottom of the gorge was signified by a bridge of the Blue Nile. Once again the authorities are very protective of their bridges (similar to in Sudan) and had a strict no pictures policy. Alistair, Jenna and Davis were long gone, but Anton had stopped on the other side to take some layers off before the climb. 22km and over 1300m of climbing. The boys had talked about average gradient but that didn’t mean much to me. It started with a fairly steep switchback, and immediately we were greeted by 10 baboons, including their babies!
Tallis had told us not to smile at them, as they would see our teeth and become aggressive - I’m sure this was a joke, but didn’t risk it! They were walking around, sitting at the side of the road, some were even having a bit of a fisticuffs. Naturally I had to stop to take some pictures. The climb wound it’s way up the first hillside in a series of swtichbacks. The tar on this side of the gorge was undulating, but alot better than the road surface we have just come down. There were also less settlements on the way up. We passed quite a few people sitting in shelters with sacks of charcoal that they were selling at the roadside.
One of the landmarks was a quarry. I had spied it from about 2km up, and the road meandered up to it, and then past it.
I’m not sure what they were mining, but there was a digger balanced on the ridge line- significant given the lack of mechanisation we had seen previously. Right past the quarry the road suddenly turned very steep, probably for about 200m, but enough to increase my heart rate. I was actually feeling alot better, and alot less breathless than earlier that morning. I find that generally on the hills, I get in the lowest gear and set a rhythm. It feels like an endurance effort rather than a sprint. I try and find a pace that I can maintain for a prolonged period of time, that doesn’t feel draining i.e. low heart rate. My average speed was just over 8km/h. Not quite fast enough to keep the flies away - apparently at this speed they are quite happy to fly around your face, and land on you…cycling at the speed of flies! Mentally I had told myself to get to 78km, and then I was halfway up. I passed Alex, Maurice, Jenna and Neil before this marker point. The advantage of starting early is that the heat is not so intense. Nevertheless by about this time I could feel the sun. I had forgotten to put sunscreen on at lunchtime, managed to apply it while still cycling but my poor nose was stinging! There was a 'coke stop’ in a village at about 79km. Marty, Joost and Alistair were stopped here. I had enough water, and wasn’t in need of a break so continued on past them, maintaining the steady effort. The village was big by Ethiopian village standards, there were people trying out chillies on tarpaulins, and even someone drying out a cow hide by the side of the road.
The road levelled out for about 1km, leaving the village, which was a good opportunity to gain some speed before settling into the climb again. At about 83km a boy appeared from the side of the road and pushed me up the hill for about 200m! Definitely provided some free power. A bit further on I was passed by a red truck, a lorry with a full load. About 100m in front of me it pulled up, and a man jumped out. I thought they were going to pull me over. And then I noticed the water running down the hill underneath it. Radiator malfunction! Three faces appeared over the top of the load, and looked down, and then another man jumped out the passenger side. It must happen all the time, these heavy and ageing trucks going up and down such a steep hill. I had read a few blogs about ‘The Blue Nile Gorge day’, and it sounded horrific. One girl, who actually seemed pretty outgoing and humourous, mentioned tears and tantrums and bike throwing on her way up. Not at any point in the climb did I have any of these emotions. In fact, I think the sign of a good ride is when you are counting up in km’s, instead of counting down until the end. I didn’t countdown at all. About 1km from the camp there was an unsealed section, I was determined to cycle through it, until a bus came up behind me, engine roaring. I was concerned I would get mowed down and so jumped ship…needn’t have bothered, it was about 200m away and going slowly!
Maybe it was a good excuse to walk the last 3rd of the unsealed section. Back on the bike band about 5 hairpins left to go, David appeared over the cliff top. I must be close! 30m left of climbing he said! I was still feeling strong and continued, even cycling the off road section from the road to the truck. :) Blue Nile Gorge success. I was the first female into camp; Richard, Tom, Craig, Aedo and David had arrived before me. All just over two hours. I think it took me about 2hours and 10mins. The last 5km I had been dreaming of a bucket shower and someone selling cold drinks, it was even better than that - we were camped somewhere with toilets, a single cold water shower, and a bar! And a view over the gorge.
The benefit of being early into camp is a shower without a queue. The water was ‘fresh’, so much so that i found myself standing just out the stream and washing by jumping in and out of the moderate trickle. It was refreshing, and more than what I had been hoping for. The corrugated steel door didn’t close properly, and at one point a goat tried to join the party - I heard the boys in the queue usher it away. It settled for lying and guarding the shower room instead. Over the next few hours there was a steady trickle of riders into camp. I am continually impressed by our group, I think there were only 2 riders who started the day and didn’t complete it. An amazing achievement. A few celebratory beers, and we all slept well. Blue Nile Gorge for some of the riders seems to be a spiritual achievement. I still fail to grasp it’s significance. We cycled up a hill. We made it. It had nice views. I think I still am a bike rider, not a cyclist. One day I will understand it’s significance. I did wonder as I was cycling up the hill, if i will ever be fit enough to just bash it out like that ever again. I hope so. Another day, another hill. This morning I was still pretty congested. It was the first day I have woken up and felt like I could quite happily not cycle and sit on the truck instead. I had three issues this morning - runny nose and cough, sore bum from being in the saddle and an infected big toe from falling down the stairs the night before. Despite all this I had actually had the best night’s sleep in the whole trip. I hadn’t woken up and checked the time once all night. Usually I wake up at about 12.30 and decide that the ground is really hard, then again at 2.30 feeling too hot or too cold, and then again at about 4-5am. I decided I would cycle to the lunch truck and see how I felt. There was no urgency to get out of camp today, and I think the whole party bus felt the same. Harriet gave me some Fusidic Acid cream for my toe, so I cleaned it all up and put some of that on.
Hobbled around in my cycling shoe. We hit the road at about 7. The altitude was making us all breathless. It also had this weird effect where your legs get tired within about 20m of climbing, and just feel empty. We passed through numerous small villages, taking it pretty easy. I think average speed was about 20km/h. I took the front once or twice, but tried to stick behind. The road surface wasn’t ideal either. The ruts on the road hurt my toe as they forced it against the front of my shoe, for the first 20km I unclipped and held it to the side for any rough patches. Toe steadily improved throughout the morning, by the time we got to lunch it was no longer throbbing and actually felt pretty good.
Another day, another climb. We were to reach the highest point on the whole tour, at about 50km - 3122m. I didn’t really believe people when they were saying that the altitude was causing the breathlessness and fatigue. That is until they compared the height that we were at with French ski resorts, apparently we had reached an altitude higher than the ski resort Val Thorens, which I have always considered high. And we had actually come from sea level under our own steam. This has also helped put the achievement that is the Blue Nile Gorge in perspective.
We had a 9km climb to lunch, and then two more climbs to 70km. Then downhill for 17km. Stone throwing was particularly bad today. Most of the kids are doing it for fun. It;s just unfortunate there are painful consequences. I had a handful of gravel to the face, Alistair has a nice bruise appearing on the inside of his knee. David’s patience wore out shortly after Alistair’s incident. There were about 4 boys throwing stones as we passed. David dropped his bike and legged it after them, throwing stones at them. I thought he was just going to chase them into the trees, but he continued after them. It was like a scene from Father Ted or something. I had made it to the top of the hill and looking back I could just see David’s fluro cycling jersey chasing these boys across golden, harvested fields. He chased them all the way to the village! If only that taught them all a lesson! We stopped at a coke stop at he beginning of the descent. At about 11.30. Marty was on his third beer already. We ordered beer and coffee, and sat keeping an eye on our bikes. There was a large crowd of boys - 7-15years old again who were most interested in our bikes, One of the older boys seemed to take it upon himself to guard the bikes a shoe people away, intermittently effectively. he even carried rocks and threatened to throw them at the boys - no wonder it is a unanimously acceptable practice! A few of the boys had yellow buckets and were cleaning shoes. Tom, Jenna and Alistair had their cycling shoes cleaned for 5biir (15cents U.S), the beer was also only 40cents a pint!
After na hours interim we were back on the road. It was an easy and quick downhill on great tarmac.
We rolled into camp feeling fresh at about 1pm. Alistair had been teaching Jenna and I how to sit on the bike for downhills. Now we both look like mini Alistair’s on the downhill. With our feet at 9 and 3, crouched down on our drops. It amused me greatly. Camp was pretty hot, the sun out in force. After pitching the tents we all huddled in the shade of the canopy from the truck. Marty was the last into camp - for the first time ever.. He had been collected from the pub by Harriet, who was riding sweep this afternoon. 11 beers later he was pretty merry, struggling to get on and off his bike! At one point at the pub some of the boys had attempted to touch his bike, an alcohol fuelled Haka served to scare them off, but ultimately drew more spectators than had been in the initial crowd! 107km to Addis Ababa tomorrow, and the end of Section 2. We have 4 riders leaving us, and 6 joining us.
