We then went into 10k or so of gentle uphill through lovely forest, lovely smooth roads, didn't even feel like we were climbing. After an hour or so we summited the 850m col, which we both sniffed at, seasoned climbers both these days :) 850m isn't a Col, it's a bump
We knew we had downhill now but no idea what it would be like - busy, rough surface, steep, no idea at all.
What we got was utterly sublime. This was 40 minutes that I will remember the rest of my life. The road was so smooth, it was like a freshly ironed shirt, barely a bump or ripple all the way down.
You don't peddle, you brake sometimes for corners. Your bike moves gently under you as you sweep through bends.
You are surrounded by forest, opening sometimes as you pass small villages or homes, then closing around you again, the sun filtering through the trees. You snapshot small things around you - the centipede in the road, the sudden sound of water as you pass a waterfall, cherry trees laden with huge deep crimson fruit, time seems to slow down for an instant as you take these things in, during the downwards rush.
Small patches of wildflowers; their scent quickly and briefly filling your nostrils. It sounds peculiar but there is everything and nothing - you are lost in those moments, gently moving the bike as she responds to the road and your lean or steer.
Sweeping wide through bends, watching as cars climb the hill, you feel relaxed, in control and completely as one with the bike and the road.
Everything is smoothed into a gentle whole, your perceptions narrowed but somehow feeling so much wider, everything felt as though in a dream, with small corrections made, and random thoughts fill and leave your mind. It was for me an almost perfect state of bliss, a few albeit brief moments of perfect solitude, a glorious headlong rush on beautiful roads, through luscious forest filled with bird song on a perfect day.
My words cannot really describe the sheer joy, the overwhelming sense of freedom, space and the utter sense of moment. It was perhaps one of the most beautiful things to have ever happened to me, that I have been a part of, that I will always remember.
It was a cyclists perfect moment writ so large, and I am left with such a huge sense of completeness after it, no sense of loss that it is behind me at all.
A few moments of such beauty, clarity and perfection. That will stay with me for a very long time.
15k. Sheer bliss.
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