Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

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2024 Mash Up
2024 Mash Up
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The beach
The beach
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Lundy
Lundy
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The Alpe
The Alpe
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Allez Allez
Allez Allez
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A perfect day
A perfect day
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Ironwoman Part 3
Ironwoman Part 3
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Cycling, Sea Kayaking, Triathlon, Ironman, Scuba Diving, Photography, Cave Exploration, Cave Diving, Offshore Life Christine Grosart Cycling, Sea Kayaking, Triathlon, Ironman, Scuba Diving, Photography, Cave Exploration, Cave Diving, Offshore Life Christine Grosart

2024 Mash Up

2024 left me gobsmacked. So many things I’ve always wanted to do, a bucket list of joy and so devastatingly interrupted by the passing of my Uncle Phil. I needed sport more than ever to keep me going.

Sitting around doing nothing is not a good way to recover from loss.

Not for me, anyway.


I trained in #lanzarote and #mallorca , climbed #sacalobra (again) completed my first #ironman 70.3 in Venice (when sick!) raced #annecy #triathlon olympic distance, went paragliding over #lakeannecy climbed #alpedhuez for real, learned to fly a drone @djiglobal sea kayaked the length of #menorca camping on sandy beaches with just the best people @muchbetteradventures raced Weymouth 10k, circumnavigated #portland by kayak with @channeleventsuk and saw a dolphin, learned to roll my kayak (work in progress) Dived with #lundy seals and bought some shares in racehorses!! I don’t think I’ve been caving or cave diving once, but there is more to life and I’ll get back to it when the mood takes me.
People keep trying to get me to slow down. Why would you do that? I like my life how it is. Why would I want to slow down? Life is too short, so make the best of it now. It’s not a dress rehearsal....

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Sea Kayaking, Cycling Christine Grosart Sea Kayaking, Cycling Christine Grosart

The beach

Paddling the south coast of Menorca. Image: Karetta Expeditions.

I love sea kayaking.

I really only got into paddle sport properly when I was persuaded to race the Devizes Westminster marathon in 2009. I trained solid for 2 years in a racing K2, burning up the canals and waterways of Dorset and Wiltshire. We were finishing mid division in the warmup races and doing really well. Then disaster struck. 4 weeks before the race I suffered a herniated disc in my back, which rendered me unable to walk, or even sit in a car. It was almost career ending. I sold all my kayaks (I had 5 in my garden at one point!) and vowed never to set foot in one ever again.

Racing K2 in 2008

Time passes and after almost a decade, my back started to heal. I was still nervous of it but missed being in a kayak.

I didn’t think I could ever cope with a tippy racing boat again, but during covid I needed a new passion to get into the outdoors. I watched a video on social media of a friend of mine and his wife, paddling in Scotland with crystal waters and surrounded by peace and serenity.

The beauty of sea kayaking is that it is not competitive, so you can take it at your own pace and as much or as little as you choose. I figured if my back wasn’t feeling it, I just wouldn’t need to go. I bought 2 second hand, barely used Dagger Stratos kayaks for little over £1000 and have had nothing but fun and adventures with them ever since.

I’ve paddled in Dorset, Cornwall and the Outer Hebrides – but never anywhere particularly warm

Circumnavigating Mull, Scotland, in my Dagger Stratos.

I kept seeing adverts popping up on social media for ‘Much Better Adventures’. I generally ignored them. I was quite capable of organising and running my own kayaking adventures and was loathe to use a guide.

The thing is, I very often end up going alone. I bought two sea kayaks so I could take my friends out, but they lacked the time to progress their skills and experience, so I couldn’t take them very far.

My mates just don’t have the spare time, cash or freedom to just drop everything, up sticks when the weather comes good and set off to any corner of the UK for an adventure.

With no ties and 6 months of the year off, I could do this. But inevitably it means it is a solo venture.

I missed company of like-minded people. So, I signed up for a 4-day camping and kayaking trip in Menorca. It promised a leisurely few days on the water, camping on sandy beaches, sunsets and excellent guides who make your food and take care of the housekeeping.

It sounded a bit easy compared to the sort of thing I’m used to, but I decided that, given the tough few years I’d had, I’d give myself a break and let someone else take the weight off for a change.

Going on holiday with strangers is not really my cup of tea, but I figured a good guide would keep everyone in check and if anyone annoyed me, I’d just go and get in the sea and swim or paddle away from them.

I need not have had any of these worries at all.

From the outset we created a WhatsApp group and on the first night, having checked into our own hotels, a gang of us met up in Mahon, Menorca, for supper and some wine. We mooched around the bustling market as dusk fell and the vibe was good.

It was a mix of people, some from as far away as America, some with kayaking experience and some with none. It didn’t matter, we’d be well looked after.

In the morning the minibus picked us up and took us to the depot, where we would be given dry bags and set about packing. Travel light and go minimal was the order of the day.

I was seizing the opportunity to try out stuff I hadn’t had the opportunity to until now, such as dry shampoo and seeing of my solar panelled power bank actually worked…

Packing seemed to take ages, and it was well past lunchtime when we finally made our way to the kayaks that were waiting for us at the eastern, southerly end of the island.

There we met our guides Lucas and Jan, who walked everyone through a lengthy explanation of how to paddle a sea kayak. We had decent boats and paddles and loads of storage space, mainly owing to the ginormous double kayak which acted as the ‘hospital’ boat. It also contained lots of food, water and camping equipment and weighed a tonne. It turned out to be a godsend for one lady who was terribly seasick. Once in the more stable boat and plied with a cocktail of drugs, she overcame it and enjoyed the rest of the trip, much to our relief.

We finally got out on the water and very soon we were forced to settle into Menorca time. Nothing was hurried and dinner time wasn’t until around 9:30pm.

We paddled gently for around an hour in glassy, calm conditions before stopping for a late lunch at a busy, sandy beach. We had ample opportunity to lay about, swim, and eat lunch. It was a lesson in slowing down and enjoying the vibe, but it took several of us a day or two to adjust to this new pace of life.

The plan each night was to put our tarpaulins up as dusk fell. The beaches were therefore cleared of people, and we would have them to ourselves.

We arrived at our first overnight stop of the trip, a secluded sandy cove, and set up our tarpaulin wigwams and groundsheets. Thermarests were provided but most of us brought our own sleeping bags.

Sand. It just gets everywhere. There is nothing more irritating than gritty sand in the bottom of your sleeping bag. The humidity overnight added to the issue, to ensure that the sand stuck to everything, and our bags never really dried out throughout the whole trip.

This aside, we were treated to some super starry nights from under our canvas, complete with shooting stars and arguments about whether or not it was Orion.

“That’s Orion, there…”

“No that’s Ursula major. Or is it minor…?”

“That’s the Scorpion isn’t it?”

“No, it’s the saucepan, look there’s the handle”

“I’ll get my app”

“What’s that noise?”

“It’s my app….it plays music when you use it…I can’t turn it off”

“Look, I told you that was Orion…”

“Oh look a shooting star!”

“Make a wish…”

It was like being on a school camp again. And we loved it! We woke early to a cool sunrise. It took some adjustment to realise we were not against any tides or the clock. We could have a leisurely wake up, without being hurried. I did some yoga on the beach at sunrise, which frankly is something you only ever see on Instagram and never do for real!

We were starting to live the dream.

Each day, we made our way along the south coast of Menorca, stopping for long, leisurely lunches with sea swimming, sunny snoozes and bobbing about, chatting in the water. We went snorkelling, I had a chance to practise my self-rescue skills and on the odd occasion we snuck off to a beach bar in the evening, feeling guilty, but not for long, for making the expedition less of an expedition by joining civilisation.

We worked out that we were all on a well-deserved break and opted to make it easy, rather than harder than it needed to be.

I managed to sneak some early morning drone shots of the camp one day and these really did the trip justice. We were treated to warm, clear waters, rocky cliffs, sea caves and pine forests as we made our way along the entire length of Menorca.

The sea state picked up over the last few days, but the gang coped with it really well and nobody took a dunking. We were starting to get the hang of things and eating simply, enjoying the local produce that Lucas fed us from the never-ending Tardis of the giant double kayak.

All too soon it was over. We pulled into a rocky beach with swanky beach bar and emptied the boats, piling kit into Ikea bags ready to be taken back to the depot.

We were all a bit sun burnt, desperate to shower in fresh water and we all took turns to stand under the beach hose pipe to get the salt off our skin.

We all sat and drank cold beers, half pleased to be back to some normality but half sulking that it was over.

We all decided to meet up that evening for one final supper at a pizza place. I grabbed my hire car ready for the rest of my trip, as I was staying on for a few more days on the island. Then we had supper and said our final goodbyes.

I cannot recommend Much Better Adventures and Karetta Expeditions highly enough. On my final day I booked a sea kayak rolling lesson with Lucas and progressed a lot. Karetta were friendly, professional and highly skilled. I’d been a caving instructor myself for 10 years, so was able to see the way things were run from a slightly different angle. I could not fault the guys and wouldn’t hesitate to use them again.

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Scuba Diving, Photography Christine Grosart Scuba Diving, Photography Christine Grosart

Lundy

Arrival on Lundy Island

I live only a few hours’ drive from the North Devon coast. It is shameful therefore that in my 20 or so years of diving, I had never visited the island of Lundy.

But perhaps not that shameful.

Lundy is a small island, only 3 miles long, that sits 10 nautical miles off the North Devon coast. Day trippers sail on the regular ferry MS Oldenburg from Ilfracombe to visit the protected and preserved island, which is home to puffins and seals, one campsite, a pub and 3 lighthouses.

Lundy is protected under a Marine Conservation Zone designation as well as a Marine protected area and the reefs surrounding the island are a strict ‘no take’ zone. This has allowed the underwater flora and fauna to flourish.

Dive boat for the weekend

Situated where the Atlantic meets the Bristol Channel, big seas meet a large tidal range and consequently, boat rides to Lundy can be ‘bracing’.

It is for this reason every trip I have ever attempted has been ‘blown out’. There just wasn’t a safe weather window for the dive boat to transit.

So, after a Facebook message from a diving friend, making an attempt at a trip in August – seal pup season – I thought I’d have another shot. As the date approached, the weather forecast deteriorated and I envisaged yet another failure at trying to get to Lundy Island.

It turned out that the Friday was a no-go. But Saturday and Sunday looked promising, if a little wild.

Whilst we would be too late for the puffins, it was optimal time for last year’s seal pups to come out to play.

On board with Kirsty Andrews, top drawer underwater photographer.

I drove down to Ilfracombe the evening before to stay with a friend, Caroline Bramwell, who has competed in Ironman distance races with a stoma. She also featured in Louise Minchin’s ‘Fearless’ and it was great to catch up with her and spend an evening overlooking the harbour, putting the world to rights.

The next morning the heavens opened. Sideways rain greeted us as we tried to get our cars as close to the boat as possible to unload diving cylinders, camping kit and tonnes of camera equipment.

Boat loaded and cars parked up for the weekend, among throngs of anorak clad tourists, we set off towards an island that we couldn’t even see.

Bone dry diving with my trusty Santi Elite drysuit

As soon as we left the harbour, we knew it would be a rough ride. The catamaran took off out of the water as we battled waves all the way out to the island and it only really settled after 90 minutes of not being able to stand up.

Divers hunkered down with looks of concentration on their faces as they tried not to throw up.

As we arrived, whilst still windy, the island looked wild, with blue skies and turquoise waters. We passed all the camping gear up onto the jetty and it was loaded into a landrover to be taken up the steep hill to the campsite, where we would be staying later.

Now it was time to dive.

Smiling for the camera. Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.

As the boat swung round and chugged into a sheltered bay, there they were. Waiting. You could almost see them tapping their watches; “Where have you been?”

The Lundy seals were in full chorus and at the sight of the dive boat, they flopped their way ungracefully off the sloping rocks and into the water to bob about, and wait.

We kitted up, cameras checked, buddy checks done and in our own leisurely time owing to no tides, we jumped off the boat and into the turquoise, clear, cool water.

Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.

 

“Don’t go looking for them….they will find you” was the instruction, along with general seal encounter etiquette.

“And if the come up and cuddle you….don’t cuddle them back!” Apparently, they can be covered in all sorts of bugs and nasties.

Seals are endangered and their behaviour suggests they know it. It wasn’t long before we caught glimpses of large, white and grey bodies flashing past as they sussed us out.

They are behind you - always behind you - as this is where they feel most on control. If you turn around to make eye contact, they vanish, quick as a flash.

Knowing this, I decided to experiment with my relatively new toy, an underwater housing for my Insta 360 camera.

My buddy Matt and I went through our pre dive checks and jumped into the inviting dark blue-green water.

My buddy, Matt

Dark round heads popped up and howling could be heard from the beach. You could almost see the seals tapping their watches and telling each other “The divers are here!”

We swam slowly towards the rocks, staying pretty shallow and fiddling with our cameras, getting the settings right, making sure the strobes were firing. I unravelled my selfie sick for the insta 360 and filmed a little bit of us swimming just to check it was all working. There was no sign of any seals just yet.

When I got back home and checked the footage, swinging the camera view around to look behind me, there were three seals quietly following us the whole time!

Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.

It wasn’t long before they started to get more inquisitive and flashes of large white and dark grey bodies shot past us. We milled about, not really sure what to do or where to go as we were now pretty much up against the rocks where the waves broke the shore below the tall cliffs towering above.

Then, it began.

Whilst I was looking the other way, a turned my head back and came face to face with a large, whiskery head. He was sniffing out my camera housing, able to see a reflection of his head in the port.

As soon as he’d been there, he was gone.

This game of cat and mouse continued for the next hour. I tend not to move much in the eater and can hang motionless without moving my fins at all. The seals seemed to love this as they could swim up behind me, grab my fins and hug them with theirs whilst having a good chew of the rubber, my ankles and my drysuit pocket!

Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.

While this was going on, my buddies would get the opportunity to get some great photos while the seal was falling in love with my fins.

The downside for me was that this was all going on behind me and I wasn’t getting much in the way of photos! I used my insta 360 on the stick to film the shenanigans going on but eventually I put it away and chanced my arm at some stills.

These depend entirely on the seals. It is a matter of patience, being in the right place at the right time, the seals mood and the settings on your camera being ready for the photo that presents itself.

Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.

 Seals love admiring themselves in the dome port of your camera. In reality, they probably think it is another seal that looks just like them!

This presents great photo opportunities but also puts the fragile and easily scratched dome ports at risk – teeth and claws come out as they try to investigate. I didn’t want to spend my next few months polishing scratches out of acrylic, so I flicked them away when they got too ‘chewy’.

After a wonderful morning of playing with seals, we had a leisurely lunch and went on a dive around a reef pinnacle. I had the wrong lens for macro shots so mooched about a bit, trying to remember the names of the various squidge I was looking at from my Seasearch lessons.

We pulled into the pier and had some fun hauling cylinders up onto land. I think next time I’ll take my perfectly good caving rope and hauling system!

We opted to walk up to the campsite and we were treated to a stunning view as well as a puffy PFO test!

It was really quite windy and as beer time approached, there was some fun to be had putting up tents and blowing up air beds. I don’t know how I do it, but I always seem to end up on trips with people equally as bonkers as me!

 

The pub on Lundy fortuitously feeds the locals and those who work on the island, so despite being the only one and therefore a captive audience, the food was very good, the booze reasonably priced and the staff and service was excellent.

We made the best of it, interspersed with a very windy walk to watch the sunset from one of the lighthouses, before returning to the pub.

The next morning we all managed to grab a coffee and breakfast roll from the pub which was most welcome, before eating it on the walk back down to the boat.

Luckily the tide was in, which made loading the cylinders a bit less necky.

Off we went for seal round 2.

They were there again, waiting for us to sort out gear out. They seemed a little keener this time, already in the water with lots of howling going on.

Their heads bobbed patiently while we tested our cameras, did our pre dive checks and stepped into the water.

As we approached the rocks, the familiar tugs on our fins began.

I assumed the position and got mauled while Matt and Daryl this time, who wanted to hang out with us, got their cameras in position.

 

It wasn’t long before the seals started to get the upper hand. They had worked out that if they got really close, the divers didn’t know what to do and fell over backwards, rendering them completely helpless like a turtle on its back.

The mauling began.

Mugged by seals. Images: Matt Emmerson

One rolled me over and I lost balance, my double 12s twinset pulling me onto my back. Now, fins up and fully exposed, the seal took the opportunity to just get a mouthful of whatever he could. Camera, drysuit pockets, bit of hood, glove…

My buddies were insanely helpful, getting right in with their cameras to film this loss of fabulousness, whilst I completely failed to right myself for laughing and flooding my mask.

Daryl thought this was hysterical, until the seal turned its attention to him and, whilst on his back trying to get the classic Snell’s window seal silhouette, he instead got a good humping and was left abandoned in the weed!

The seals were definitely more boisterous and were having serious fun at our expense.

Image: Christine Grosart. Camera: Canon EOS 100D, Ikelite housing and strobes.

 Being only a few metres deep and with tonnes of gas, we had all the time in the world – and it seemed to stand still.

It is an amazing privilege to be approached by wildlife who just want to play and interact with you. The seals are not fed by humans, they simply seek out play with their curiosity.

 In the afternoon, we set off on another reef dive but in my hurry to swap lenses, I didn’t quite put the dome port on the housing properly and flooded my camera and lens.

This was pretty devastating and despite my insurance covering some of it, this worked out to be an expensive mistake.

 Fortunately, a brilliant outfit called Nemo Photo who now deal in Ikelite and underwater camera gear in the UK, have been very helpful and I have a new camera set up coming very soon, treating myself to an upgrade.

I can’t wait to get it into the water! 

The Lundy Gang

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

The Alpe

Orro bike part way up Alpe D’Huez, France.

The Alpe

I sat at the dinner table, staring at my small plate of white fish, a little rice and some lettuce. I was too tired to start eating it, pushing around my plate instead.

“That’s a proper fucking climb!” My mate and colleague said, slightly outraged and surprised at what I’d just done.

“I know…” I said, picking at the fish.

“How long did it take you?” he asked.

“Fucking ages!” I replied.

As luck would have it, I was down in Annecy competing in an Olympic distance triathlon and had some time to kill afterwards. Alpe D’huez was only a few hours drive away.

I booked a campsite at Bourg D’Oisans which was conveniently right at the start of the famous climb.

Lake Annecy from the air. Shot on Insta 360 camera.

But, not before I took to the air and went paragliding in Annecy – something I had always wanted to do ever since I started visiting France as an adult in my early twenties.

Wherever you go in the French mountains, you see colourful canopies, dots in the sky, circling the thermals and gently, like leaves falling from a tree, spiralling slowly down to earth to land in some field somewhere.

In my youth I simply couldn’t afford it. Other times, I just ran out of time or couldn’t motivate the people I was with to come with me.

Free of all ties, I booked myself onto a tandem flight. Just 20 minutes, in case I didn’t like it!

View from the best seat in the house. Lake Annecy. Flights by Takamaka.

I rocked up at the flight school and a few of us piled into a minibus, packed out with parachutes and harnesses and our pilots.

We drove up the Col de Forclaz, which is one of the highest points above Lake Annecy. It looked like a half decent cycling climb until the hair pins ramped up to a ridiculous gradient and I thought better if it. We climbed higher and higher.

As we walked to the take-off ramp, the views were spectacular, and the height made you feel a bit dizzy.

My pilot was Mitch and he spoke better English than I did French. He was good looking, smoot and impressed that I worked offshore. We chatted easily and he fitted me out on my harness and helmet. We didn’t faff at all. There was no time to even think, really. I felt a tug of the parachute behind me and we took a few awkward steps back.

Then very quickly, those words again: “Allez allez, go, go, go….”

We ran a few strides then whooomph! We were up in the air very quickly. I wasn’t really ‘in’ my seat, so he quickly showed me how to lift myself into the seat properly and get comfy. He’d kindly allowed me to bring my Insta 360 camera and I started filming the incredible views as we flew up and down the tree line chatting and laughing.

Eventually we crossed the lake and after he’d let me have a go at steering, he was keen to show off his aerobatic skills.

I’m up for pretty much anything and away we went. After three big swoops where my stomach almost fell out, I had to stop. I was the kid who clung to the top of a death slide, hating that ‘dropping’ feeling. I hate roller coasters and theme parks and it’s the reason I won’t do a bungee jump or jump from a plane.

It might have been easier if I’d known what to expect or was controlling the chute myself, but either way, I decided to park the aerobatics for another day.

We had a gentle landing. “Just stand up” he said. I did, and that was it.

Encroyable!

I had also recently bought a mini drone and had lots of fun learning to fly it. I was looking forward to getting some classic shots of the Alpes.

It was a wonderful way to round off my week in Annecy and to be honest, I didn’t really want to pack up and leave, but I had plans and set off to Bourg D’Oisans.

The mountains got bigger and I could see snow on top of some of them. Then I saw some road signs ‘Alpe D’Huez’. I couldn’t believe I was really here.

Chateau Duingt, Lake Annecy. Shot with DJI Mini 4k Drone.

The campsite wasn’t as posh as the one in Annecy, but it had everything you needed and a pool, which I wasted no time jumping into. As I relaxed on the sunlounger, I could see, rising above me, the first few bends of the Alpe D’Huez before the road disappeared out of sight into the mountains. The first few bends are the steepest, averaging about 10% and it looked intimidating from my seat by the pool.

I knew I could climb it, but I also knew that real climbs are also much, much harder in real life than on the Watt bike indoor trainer.

Still recovering from the Annecy Triathlon, I decided to give myself another rest day and go for the climb on the Friday.

View from my van

Instead, I took a gentle womble around a flat route by the river to find places to fly my drone and, as ever, it turned into a complete epic!

It started out fine, passing stunning glacial lakes with unreal turquoise colours and little picnic areas. It was beautiful but I didn’t feel confident flying my drone around people, so I moved on a bit.

A little further along I found an empty parking place which was quiet. I launched the drone and captured some amazing shots of glacial lakes, rivers and mountains.

I rode on along the river and the track became covered in several places with deep sand. I wobbled to a halt and ended up ‘hike a bike’ on and off for quite a few kilometers.

Bourg D’Oisans valley. Shot by DJI Mini 4k Drone

Bourg D’Oisans valley. Shot by DJI Mini 4k Drone

Then, to my horror, I really was stopped in my tracks as the road just ended! It had been swept away by the river which crashed past in front of me.

Nope!

This meant going a little off piste and following a track mostly covered in deep sand and then a grassy path with rocks in it.

Orro Venturi does not like grass, nor lumpy tracks and I completely agree.

I ended up carrying Orro most of the way back to tarmac, boulder hopping yet another dry riverbed, sans road that had collapsed.

Back on terra firma and bumped into some Americans who had been up Alpe D’Huez that morning and were looking for an easy route to do in the afternoon.

I diverted them away from my hike-a-bike trail and they were super grateful.

I chose a Friday to go up the Alpe. Weather looked sunny but not baking hot, so blue skies were promised and I guessed there would be far fewer cyclists midweek.

After breakfast and lots of nervous faffing, I set off on the very short lead-in to the start of the climb, which was pretty much round the corner from the campsite. Not much of a warmup then.

As I started plodding up the first few bends, the steepest of the route, it became apparent that a Friday was a bad idea.

Lorry after lorry came trundling past, belching out black stinking smoke and it was relentless. There seemed to be some sort of quarry works going on up in Huez and heavy plant and vehicles passed at regular intervals.

They were respectful and clearly used to cyclists and I never felt in any danger. It just spoiled the experience somewhat.

A few other cyclists plodded by in their own time not going crazily faster than me. One set off just behind me but never passed until I stopped briefly for a breather on bend 19.

I kept plodding and the heat of the day set in. Fuelled by jelly babies, Nutella biscuits and water with dioralyte, I enjoyed the views as the hairpin bends offered views of the snow-capped Alpes. It was quite humbling to see that some of the lower bends were adorned with very high mesh fencing. These were clearly designed to catch cyclists who descend too quickly and risk plummeting off the edge of the mountain, literally.

Each of the 21 famous bends on the climb has a plaque naming previous winners of the Tour De France stage involving the Alpe.

The Alpe D’Huez climb ends at 1860 metres altitude, climbing from Bourg D’Oisans cyclists ascend 1143 metres elevation, over 14.5km distance.

The average gradient is 7.9% and the maximum, 14%.

The first landmark was the pretty church, Saint-Ferréol, on a sweeping left-hand bend 7 with a stunning mountain backdrop. There are also some facilities opposite, with fresh water to refill bidons, toilettes and recycling bins.

Climbing ever higher, you pass through a small village which gives some respite as the gradient backs off for a short while. It then picks up again as you head into the upper bends, with a little more shade and luckily, during lunchtime the road was quieter as the lorry drivers took their siesta.

Saint-Ferréol church, bend 7. Image: DJI Mini 4K drone (Christine Grosart)

I passed beneath the ski lift station, as if I needed any reminding how high I was. Just 3km to go then….

This is where the cowbells start and the marmots begin chirping. I’m not fast enough to outride the flies that seem to go for slow moving cyclists, as a refreshing change to the cattle that graze the higher slopes.

There were a few stings in the tail on the last part of the climb and I finally finished conveniantly close to a bar that was something of an anticlimax after such a classic ride.

I had a pint of lager and messaged my friend who had got me into cycling 3 years ago. I spotted some guys standing on what looked to be a podium that had been set up for anyone to have their photos taken.

Some nice ladies from New Zealand obliged and we had a laugh as I enjoyed the moment. What I was really looking forward to was the descent. Mostly facing the right way on the way down to enjoy the mountain views and with a dry road, I went as fast as I dared without needing the cyclist-catcher nets.

On top of the world

I chilled out the next day in the pool and the bar, with a quick drive up to the Alpe to shoot some video with my drone and do some jersey shopping. I rounded the day with a fabulous steak frites and rosé wine in Bourg D’Oisans, watching the world go by.

I didn’t really have any plans after that, but didn’t want to waste a day. Despite an upset tummy, I decided to cycle in the evening up Col D’Ornan. Not steep but quite long, I ignored the thunderstorm warnings and set off. Thunderstorms were usually short lived. Except this one.

A few hundred metres from the Col I couldn’t take any more. It had been steadily raining and now it was a steady, torrential downpour. Thunder clapped, water cascaded down the road and I still had quite a long descent home. It had set in for the evening. I decided that as I was alone and out on a limb, with hypothermia a reality, I’d head home. I was trashed and didn’t feel an sense of achievement at all. Lesson learned. But probably not…

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

Allez Allez

If I ever hear those words again, I think I’ll scream!

Orro on Lovers Bridge, Annecy.

June in France is meant to be warm, glorious weather with balmy evenings in the bar.

Sure, up in the mountains you can get the odd rumble of thunder and dramatic flash of lightening with some refreshing downpours, but it’s normally all ok by the morning.

The early heat of the sun lifts the dampness into low hanging clouds until they disperse and reveal another blue sky and sun-drenched day in this beautiful country.

But oh no, not today. Not on the day of the Olympic distance triathlon I had been training for since last August!

My first visit to Lake Annecy was after a caving expedition to the Dent De Crolles cave system in the Chartreuse. I fell in love with the warm, turquoise, clear lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains and the chilled, cosmopolitan vibe.

I returned again in 2022 to start dipping my toe into the world of triathlon and it was the most stunning place to train. With an (almost) pan flat cycling and running circuit of the lake, mountains surrounding the lake to get the climbing legs going and the fresh, clear water to get used to open water swimming – it was perfect.

I cycled up my first Col, the Col de Leschaux and was hooked.

I wondered if there was a triathlon in the area and sure enough, an Olympic distance triathlon was held each June.

This comprised a 1500m swim, finishing just beyond the classic ‘Lovers Bridge’, followed by a 40km bike which included Col de Leschaux (11.8km long/ 3.7% average / 8% max) and then a pan flat 10km run.

I set off in my van which is really a car, to Dover and it felt unusually empty with just athletics gear, a driveaway tent and my bike. I planned to stop in the champagne region of Epernay where the Municipale campsite is friendly and a safe place to stop over for a night. I arrived in good time, enough time to go for a run along the river and canal that threads its way through the Marne.

I don’t know how, but I got completely lost and ended up doing a very hot and scenic 7km. Turns out you cannot cross locks on canals like you can in the UK as they were well barriered off with large gabions.

After my ordeal, I spent the evening in the golden hour drinking a pint by the river.

The next day I loaded the van with food, wine, and pretty much all the amazing things you find in French supermarkets and drove a further 5 or so hours to Annecy. I settled in, did a quick spin on the bike and a swim in the lake and I was ready for the triathlon.

I drove into Annecy to register the day before and despite a parking nightmare, this proved a good move as the heavens opened while I was there and getting soaked and risking the bike wouldn’t have been a clever move.

The children’s race was on the Saturday, and I felt sorry for the little mites as they swam, cycled and ran their hearts out only to be met with horrible weather. They finished their races, shivering and teeth chattering, not really knowing what they had just accomplished – some were very small! Their parents yelled encouragement from the sidelines like their lives depended on it.

I smiled and felt happy for them. My mother wouldn’t even turn up for school sports day, never mind take me to anything like this.

As it turned out, the bike distance in the grown-ups’ race was more like 47km and to complicate matters, the two transition areas for bike and run were in 2 different locations! It was logistically a bit fiddly.

Mountains obscured by clouds and rain. Could have been any field in England…

I had originally booked a large apartment overlooking the lake, very close to town, thinking that camping would be too hard if I was too broken following the race. But given that it was half the distance of the Ironman 70.3, and I was infinitely fitter, plus parking threatened to be a nightmare and expensive, I opted for a very nice campsite instead down in Sevrier, close to where I had stayed before. It was right on the cycle way and short waddle to the lake for swimming.

More importantly, the campsite barrier would open for me in the morning. You have to be careful with French campsites, as often they forbid vehicle movement before 7am and locked electric gates to enforce this.

That’s a big problem if you need to be up and away before 6am for race day.

Thankfully camping L’Aloua were accommodating, and the facilities were superb.

The morning of race day was grey and drizzly. This progressed to a proper downpour. As I pumped up my bike tyres the visibility reduced so much that the mountains surrounding the lake were completely obscured by low cloud and torrential rain.

The French didn’t give a monkeys.

It wasn’t particularly cold, but rain capes and brollies came out and competitors squelched barefooted through the mud into transition.

I started to set up transition in a state of disappointment. All that time, all that training and it had come to this. My forté is descending but now I’d had to go super slowly on the wet, greasy roads to avoid crashing.

The lake had never looked so uninviting.

I racked my bike, wrapped my cycling gear in a towel hoping it would stay mostly dry and put my running gear into a bag which would be taken by the race volunteers to Transition 2 about a kilometre away for the run later.

I sat on the back bumper of my van, trying to shelter under the boot lid as I put on my wetsuit. People dressed in plastic bags wandered past and nothing was dry anymore.

We all walked slowly to the water’s edge after what seemed an eternity, waiting for the briefing. The rain had started to subside, crowds began gathering on the promenade and muddied lawns that grace the beachfront of Annecy. We gingerly stepped into the water to flush our suits, get our faces wet and fiddle with our swimming goggles. A few of us dove into the shallow, crystal-clear water and all of a sudden, the weather didn’t matter. The mountains began to appear again, and steam rose off every bit of tarmac that was wet. There was no sun, but the downpour was giving us a reprieve.

The starter arrived on a large pedalo with his loud haler. This was a mass start, but they did separate the men from the women.

“Les hommes, à droite…. Les femmes, à gauche!!!”

This didn’t help at all, as all it meant was, thousands of athletes of various speeds and abilities were destined to converge at the first, right-handed buoy before setting off across the lake into the funnel under ‘Lovers Bridge’.

This was my first mass start for the swim. I figured if I started near the front, I would be among the faster and therefore better, swimmers.

Oh, how wrong can you be!!

“Trois, deux, un…….Alleeeeeezzzzz”

Everyone threw themselves into the water and a mud churning, washing machine which resembled charge of the light brigade, ensued.

It was little more than aquatic self-defence!

First off, starting to swim was a mistake. We were being kicked in the face by people running through the silt, as the water was still really only waist deep.

I felt that I was wasting energy fighting a losing battle trying to swim beautifully amongst this chaos of all the running, staggering, falling and flapping. I stood up, defogged my goggles and got jogging until the water got deeper and people started to actually swim.

The damage was done.

I’m a reasonable swimmer, with no fear of water but my heart rate had spiked in the maelstrom, and I struggled to get it back under control.

I had also committed the cardinal sin of triathlon – I had done something new on race day. I’d switched sports bras and gone for my training bra which I use for running, to keep my assets under control!

However, I’d never swum in this sports bra, and it immediately felt tight, and I felt short of breath and tight chested. I’d never felt like that in the water before and I had to work hard to ignore everyone around me – quite difficult when you are being kicked and punched from all sides – and slow down.

I moved to the outside of the pack to get some clearer water, but it didn’t work. Some bloke, who had clearly never considered sighting, was zig zagging wildly across the pack of swimmers. He crossed diagonally in front of me no less than 3 times, both ways, and even worse, he was still going about the same speed so there was no escaping him.

I couldn’t go any faster and to slow down and lose him would spoil my own race.

The next time he crossed me he stopped me dead, and I had to bob upright to avoid another mowing down. I instinctively gave him a good hard kick to push him back in a straight line. He was completely oblivious and continued zig zagging and flapping his way wildly to the entrance of the canal, where I finally lost him.

As we entered the canal the water became shallower. I swam as much as I could, worried about cutting myself on any glass or other nasties that might be at the bottom in the thick, gloopy mud. The water turned an opaque grey, and I tried hard not to swallow any of it. We were soon at the carpeted steps and whisked onto the muddy grass by the volunteers to go and find our bikes. I pulled my wetsuit off, tucked my hat, ear plugs and goggles into a sleeve and tried to dry my feet. For distances longer than sprint I prefer to wear socks for the bike and the run. Getting wet socks on in a hurry is always stressful so I decided not to hurry. Once on, I put my cycling shoes on, then gloves, then helmet, then number belt and finally my shades – not that I needed them today!

I trotted in the slippery mud with my bike to the mount line. We set off on a fairly flat run through Annecy, lined with cheering crowds as well as holiday makers who were oblivious to a race happening, and stepped out in front of cyclists at fairly regular intervals.

Orro on Lovers Bridge, Annecy on a gentle lap of the lake after the triathlon.

It wasn’t a closed road event and whilst I got some speed up on my tri bars setting off towards Sevrier, the start of the climbing, several white vans belching black smoke decided they were going to hopscotch the riders and then brake. I decided to keep my momentum and passed both them, and the other riders in the middle of the road where I had both visibility and a clear path. It worked out to be the safest thing to do.

Leaving the carnage behind, I picked off a few more riders and felt good.

I had to make hay while the sun shone (or not) because I knew these riders would all, one by one, pass me again as we started the ascent of Col De Leschaux. And sure enough, they did.

I was heavier than most of them and putting out significantly more power than they had to in order to achieve the same thing.

There is a reason why the pro peloton looks almost emaciated. It doesn’t matter how fit or strong you are – if you are heavy, you will suck on climbs.

Despite a personal record time climbing the Col, I was left with only a few stragglers behind me. All I could do now was descend like a demon and whilst I probably wouldn’t make up the time I’d lost, I definitely couldn’t afford to dawdle. There were cut off times at various parts of the race although I’m not sure how much they were enforced. I seemed to be clear of them.

The rain had stopped, and the roads were not awash as badly as I had expected. I didn’t hang about. I took it steady on the bends but otherwise, went full gas downhill on the aero bars and punched through the irritating further climbs that spattered the remainder of the route.

We rolled back into a strange industrial estate and found a different transition area set up in a school yard. I racked my bike and swapped my cycling shoes for running shoes. I left my helmet and replaced it with my running visor and shades. As I set off at an extremely uncomfortable trot for the 10km run, I was horrified to find that the first kilometre was straight up a sharp hill, alongside traffic belching out fumes and spraying us with puddles. It was horrid and not the idyllic and flat run I’d expected along the shores of Lake Annecy. This was shortly followed by an extremely steep, cobbled descent and some very fiddly turns through the pavements of Annecy, including an underpass stinking of urine.

I didn’t feel like I was going well, despite all my training and I walked a little to try and sort my legs out and get my heart rate down. I had worked very hard on the bike and used a lot of energy which I needed for the run. I had been trying to buy myself time for the run and now I needed every minute of it. It turned out that the bike was several kilometres longer than advertised and much longer than an ‘Olympic Distance triathlon should be.

The run finally found it’s route out along the promenade, and I suddenly realised it was going to be 3 laps. This didn’t match the course that was in the athlete’s guide, which was out and back.

I hate multi-lap runs. Psychologically it is wretched, as you pass the finish line twice, or three times in this case, but cannot go down that finishing chute until the end. You also pass the same spectators who witness your struggle several times over.

At 4km I bonked. And not in a good way!

Like a car running out of petrol, I had run out of fuel, and it was instant. With all the breathless climbing and super-fast descending, I hadn’t taken on anywhere near as many calories as I needed. My little aerodynamic food pouch on the bike still had plenty of items in it that I should have eaten. I had nothing with me on the run.

I stopped at the aid station and grabbed a banana and a piece of cake. I don’t like either, but I was in trouble. I drank some water and set off again, the fire stoked, and was able to keep jogging.

By the time I got to 7km the same thing happened again and I stopped at the same aid station, again. This was definitely not how to do it.

I limped home the final 3km and felt nothing but exhaustion and disappointment at the end.

The atmosphere had been fantastic, with my French being good enough to understand what people were shouting and I was able to converse back. I enjoyed the idea of the event but didn’t particularly enjoy the event itself.

I’m still learning about long course triathlon, nutrition and of course, having to train on a ship 6 months of the year, unable to swim, has its challenges too.

But it’s easy to look at the negatives, especially if you are a fierce self critic like me. There were so many positives about this event, as it was the one I had wanted for so long.

In 2020 I learned to ride a bike and only 2 years ago couldn’t use clip in peddles. I hadn’t swum in open water in a wetsuit and couldn’t bilateral breathe until 18 months ago. My running always halted at 5km with back spasms and calf injuries, all of which had now subsided, thanks to learning new running techniques from my friends. I hadn’t used tri bars on a bike until January this year. I had achieved a lot and built the base for a lot of success in the future. I was strong for sure, but as ever, let down by my weight on the bike and run which I had struggled with ever since I was a child, wanting to be a jockey.

With everything I needed to be competitive in place, I just needed to shift those dead kilograms – easier said than done, but it will happen. Never again do I want to see people flying past me up the Col de Leschaux.

It goes without saying that I would never had got there without the daily support and hard work of my coach, fellow cave diver and 10 x Ironman, Russell Carter. I have an awful lot to thank him for. And importantly, our 100% finish record remains intact.

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

A perfect day

Last year I took part in my first open water swim triathlon - in Minehead, of all places.

The day before, Channel Events, a nonprofit outfit headed up by an enthusiastic team who just love sport and the outdoors and encouraging newcomers to get involved, laid on a practise day.

I was introduced to the brown, rather chilly Bristol Channel and with kind guidance and advice I was coaxed into the water and was swimming front crawl in my brand-new wetsuit, as if I’d been doing it all my life.

Dan Brice, who runs Channel Events, found out I was a sea kayaker and gave me the heads up on an event he runs every year.

‘Springboard into Summer’ is a chilled event, organised for reasonably experienced paddlers with guides to keep the show together. There were BBQs, guest speakers, camping and sea kayaking along the Dorset Coast. As soon as registration opened, I signed up, delighted that it did not clash with my work rota.

The date came around and I loaded my sea kayak onto the roof, packed the car full of camping kit and set off down to Burnbake campsite in Poole.

I was super excited and motivated by the promise of a circumnavigation of the Isle of Portland. I knew it was possible in a sea kayak, but having dived there for over 20 years, I was acutely aware of strong currents, short slack times and rough seas that Portland Bill was notorious for.

I decided to get back into the swing of sea kayaking on the Saturday by signing up for the Old Harry Rocks to Swanage trip. We were treated to calm, warm, balmy weather and the sea state was like glass. I had never seen Old Harry Rocks in such calm waters and as we lined our boats up on the sandy beach just along from the chain ferry to Poole, I knew we were in for a good day.

I was delighted to find I was paddling with Nienka. She was a triathlete and part of a small group of volunteers who gave me my confidence in my first wetsuited open water sea swim in Minehead the day before the triathlon there.

The sea was so calm we could play around in little rock hopping tunnels, go through arches and sea caves and enjoy a close up view that you definitely don’t get when you’re diving the area. We paddled across the bay to Swanage and stopped for an ice cream and lunch with a super friendly group of like-minded people, who loved the ocean, paddling and being outdoors.

We weaved our way back through the chalk stacks and archways, enjoying idyllic conditions. Once back at the beach, Nienka and I needed no persuading to get into our cozzies and go for a swim off the beach.

The water was chilly but it was wonderful to be swimming in clear, calm water in the UK and a rare treat for me. I spend half my year at sea but I’m not allowed to swim in it.

The evening was spent sitting around a campfire, enjoying a BBQ and some beers and a guest speaker talking about his long distance adventures.

The next morning I had signed up to the lap of Portland, as had pretty much everybody else!

We set off on the hour drive to Chesil beach and dragged our boats up onto the pebbles. A few of us had some fun seal launching onto the water and we set off on a slightly overcast morning towards the Bill.

It was a real privilege to get so close to the coastline, when normally I’m far out on a dive boat zooming past. The nooks and crannies, caverns, archways, crystal clear water with a green hue, were so pretty and inviting and I relished every moment of it.

The sun all the while was trying to appear and once round the bill, where a seal joined us at Pulpit Rock, it came out and gave us a glorious afternoon of warm sunshine and sparkly water.

We pulled into Church Ope Cove for lunch and basked in the sunshine. I couldn’t resist another swim in the glassy, clear sea. This really was the perfect day.

We continued the journey in glorious sunshine back through Portland harbour and were treated to the local dolphin putting on a display.

Time stood still and all our plans of getting away home at this time and that time were just forgotten. Days like this are becoming rarer and rarer and we all wanted to absorb every minute of it.

Sea kayaking is the most wonderful sport and allows people of all levels, ages and abilities to access beautiful parts of our coastline where larger craft cannot. It is a silent sport which causes no pollution to the environment and paddlers tend to be very environmentally aware.

Whether you are joining friends for the day, going on a solo adventure or a multi day camping trip, or even a daring long distance expedition, it really is the most wonderful way to see our winderful coast. As we passed Portland Bill a dive boat I knew passed us and not for one moment did I wish I was on it. My love of the ocean goes way beyond just diving in it and the purchase of my two Dagger Stratos boats are some of the best impulse buys I ever made!

I cannot thank Dan and his Channel Events volunteers enough for laying on such a great event. I’ve made new paddling friends and hope to be able to head out on the sea with them again in the near future.

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

Ironwoman Part 3

I felt fit, but my lungs had other ideas.

The lady marshall held her arms out to create a barrier for my group of 6. Every time an athlete ran into the water her shoulders got hit as they barged past her. She just smiled and propped herself back up for the next 6.

I mouthed ‘Thank you’ – these volunteers do an amazing job and have a very long day. She smiled and gave me a fist bump before the count down.

3…2…1…

She lowered her arms and I trotted off down the sandy beach into the sea. As soon as it got to hip height, I started to swim.

The water thankfully wasn’t cold enough to take your breath away and I settled in steadily towards the first buoy.

Well, I was off.

I tried to find a reliable strong swimmer to draft but honestly, it was carnage. Most people in my pen couldn’t actually swim very well. One guy was doing backstroke which apparently is legal – but because he couldn’t see where he was going, he zigzagged all over the place, going just fast enough that I couldn’t get past him.

Another woman kept stopping every couple of minutes to ‘meerkat’ and doggy paddle then set off again, carving everyone else behind her up. As the swimmers got more strung out, I found some feet to follow but they didn’t stay straight, and it was more of a hindrance than a help.

I decided to stay wide at the final few buoys as the ones who couldn’t swim decided to use the buoys as a safety float and there was some significant congestion to go around.

Despite this, I found some free water and concentrated on having a clean exit.

The guys at Channel Events who had got me started in sea swimming, advised that as soon as your fingers touch the sand, it’s time to stand up.

I waited for that first touch of the sand then got up to waddle out of the sea. 44 minutes. Considering I was trying not to get out of breath and start coughing, I was happy with that. I was well inside the swim cut off too.

Swim exit. One job done.

Deciding that playing it safe was the order of the day, I walked to transition as did many others. I took off my goggles, swim hat, ear plugs and unzipped my wetsuit as I went.

So far so good.

I went straight to my blue bag and kicked off my wetsuit. Grabbing a towel I tried to dab my feet dry and pulled on my cycling socks, pre-loaded with talcum powder to make them easier to get on.

Cycling gear on, I stuffed my swimming gear back into the blue bag and shovelled down half a sandwich and stuffed some goodies in my jersey pocket. I trotted off to find my bike.

“Lane C, just past the parking sign on the right”. I found Orro and popped my bike computer on before wheeling her to the mount line. I was delighted to see others taking their time and not running. I’d learned my lesson about getting out of breath in T1 at the start of the bike. I wouldn’t let that happen again.

I hopped onto Orro and set off, starting the eating and drinking early. My plan was a 3-hour bike. This would leave me lots of time in the bank for the run, which I already knew would be a disaster.

I tried to reach 30kmph without getting out of breath and trying to keep my heart rate down. I rested on my tri bars and tried to settle down. The first 3rd went well and was quite quick. I soon found that any time I tried to put any power down my lungs protested.

As the bike went on, I just felt weaker and weaker as whatever I had started to really get hold of me.

Despite this, I didn’t stop until my planned wee stop at the final aid station which had porta loos likely to be less busy than transition.

I pulled in and the marshalls held my bike while I sorted myself out. My legs felt like jelly and I still had 20km of cycling and a half marathon to go!

I had timed my fluids so that I had just one small water bottle remaining. This was to save some weight in the last 20km. When I came out of the porta loo, a young volunteer with a big grin informed me he’d filled all my water bottles.

Bless him.

I thanked him, got back on the bike and when I was out of sight, poured 3 of them away. He meant well.

The last 20km was on rough tarmac and into a headwind. Drafting isn’t allowed on the bike part of a triathlon and getting too close to another competitor can lead to a disqualification. So, we sat and suffered, taking the full brunt of the wind. I started to flag but kept the peddles turning and concentrated on saving my legs as much as I could for the run.

I got off Orro at the dismount line and thanks to my recent loo stop, my legs weren’t too bad. My 3-hour bike was 3 hours 38. It was a 90km personal best for me, but I was fuming. On any other day I’d have smashed 3 hours.

I racked Orro in disgust and set off to my red bag. Helmet off, jersey off, cycling shoes off. I changed into running socks which was a good plan as I didn’t have a single blister afterwards. Trainers on, sun visor on, shades back on. I always leave my cycling gloves on to make wiping my nose easier!

Cycling gear got stuffed back into the blue bag and I put on my camelback which had some nutrition and was part filled with water.

This turned out to be a godsend. The sun was out and it was getting quite hot. The aid stations only offered small cups of water and cola. The ability to swig off my camelback whenever I wanted was a huge comfort.

My plan of running 07:30 minutes, walk 03:30 minutes went out of the window pretty early on. My lungs and throat were audibly wheezing and if I even began to get out of breath, the coughing started.

This was damage limitation now. My 7 hours was gone. I just had to finish and even that was looking necky at one stage.

I jogged when I could and walked when I couldn’t.

The run was three laps and psychologically this was awful. As time went on, more and more people finished and just assumed I was on my final lap. One guy shouted “Come on, only 2km to go”. Bless him. He was completely unaware that I actually had another 9km to go!!

The assumption must have been that I was just fat and slow. Nobody knew I was sick as well!

It was the worst feeling in the world.

As I passed the car park for the final time with 7km remaining ahead of me, I did consider just walking to the car and driving home in disgust.

It took all the strength I had to keep going in just an attempt to finish. I jogged when I could and walked when I couldn’t – and repeat.

I kept an eye on the clock and made sure I was always in a position to finish within the cut off time of 8 hours 30 minutes. Beyond that, I would be listed as ‘DNF’ or ‘Did Not Finish’.

Over my dead body was I going to do all that, only to be listed as not finishing!

I jogged when I could, walked when I couldn’t….

 

I was really starting to feel quite ill.

Pain is only temporary.

You only have to do this once.

I started to worry about getting back to the car and the hotel. I didn’t think I’d be able to collect my bike. Would they sell it if I didn’t go and get it? Could I afford another Orro if I just left it there? It would save packing it for the flight home…

If only my ‘friend’ who said she’d come and support me had actually turned up. If only my family cared. If only my Uncle was still here…

Thoughts whirred around in my head and I tried to block out the comments from people as I passed them. They had no clue.

The finish was in sight. I was going to make it, albeit my aim to have a 7 in front of my finish time had gone. But only just.

As I turned into the red carpet, I managed a jog. The finish line marshalls were amazing and I ran through a Mexican wave of arms and lots of cheering.

The tears came immediately, and they kindly waited for me to gather myself before presenting me with my medal.

People I didn’t even know came up to say well done and all the way back, during my VERY slow walk back to transition to collect Orro, people high fived and clapped.

Now I was barely able to speak. My voice was hoarse and my cough worsened.

I loaded the car which was trashed and drove the 10 minutes back to the hotel.

On arrival they had already reserved me a table and I feasted on all my favourite things hurriedly, before I could no longer taste them.

Scallops, steak and champagne later, I was ready to turn in.

The next morning was like the black death in my room. I wouldn’t let the cleaner in in case she caught whatever I had, so she just posted boxes of tissues through the door and said to call if I needed anything.

Hotel Atlantico, Jesolo are just the best.

I desperately wanted to look round Venice so after some rest and when my cough had cleared up, I headed to the water taxi stop.

Venice was even more incredible than I imagined, and I couldn’t have picked a better venue for my first Ironman.

Almost 3 weeks on, I’m back into training but my lungs are still struggling and I feel weak. With Annecy Olympic distance triathlon (half a half Ironman) looming, I’m desperate to maintain and even increase my fitness, but it will be one day at a time.

 

I cannot thank those people – they know who they are – for taking time out of their personal lives to support me, coach me teach me, advise me and inspire me.

 

I apologise now to anyone I have forgotten.

In alphabetical order…

 

Adam Raines Sports Massage

Andy Sparrow

Caroline Bramwell

Caroline Lance Sports Massage

Cath Pendleton

Dan Brice & the Channel Events volunteers

Ed Collins

Hotel Atlantico

Jason PDQ cycling

Jayme Fraioli Harper

Joan Woodward

Kelli Coxhead

Lisa Page

Louise Minchin

Mark Julier

Maxine Bateman

Mendip Cycling Club

Michele Reed

Mint Cycle Works, Priddy

Nienke Hensbroek

Paul Duckworth

Redd Rises

Russel Carter

Sheena Warman

Steph Dwyer

West Country Triathletes

 

Click here for a flavour of the day.

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

Ironwoman Part 2

Training at work is unique. Running on a treadmill on a moving boat is an art form. Seven Kestrel is 125 metres long and 24 metres wide. There are not many places you can go. You can’t pop back to land when you fancy and the amount of mileage you can clock up in a day, mostly spent at the computer, is very limited.

The boat is always moving, even in the calmest of weather. The diving bells are up and down, the 120 tonne crane is always busily leaning over the side, lifting and lowering things and the ship’s heading changes regularly.

In rough weather, despite being quite stable, the vessel lifts, rolls and heaves and sometimes the bang of a wave against your porthole makes you jump out of your skin.

Seven Kestrel working at a windfarm. Image: Subsea 7

Russel and I use Training Peaks combined with Strava to track my progress. We converse mainly over WhatsApp which is the offshore communication channel of choice. Our schedule has to work around weather, port calls when the medic (me) is super busy, and crew change days which move multiple times over one week.

The great thing about having a coach is they do all the number crunching for you. It wasn’t long before Russel got the measure of what I could and could not do and he was soon dialled in to giving me training sessions that were spot on. Hard enough to get me fit and faster and stronger, but not so hard that I couldn’t finish them.

Jesolo 70:3 came around and I’d planned the whole thing meticulously to perfection. The hotel was superb and had a nice spa to relax in. I rented a car so I could get about easily and run up and down to the Ironman village for registration and shopping.

Oh my word – shopping!

There were so many lovely things in the Ironman village I had to restrain myself from buying all of it!

Registration was painless and I took the time to write a little note for my uncle Phil who I’d lost only a few weeks before. He was basically the Dad I never had.

I was going to miss his funeral. But I’m certain he wouldn’t have wanted me to throw away all that hard work on his account. I knew he’d be watching and behind me all the way.

I popped my wetsuit on and walked down the pristine sandy beach to the water’s edge. It wasn’t as cold as expected and the waves had gone away as the weather started to settle. I didn’t really feel like I had much energy, so I just did a slow 400m swim and got out.

Russel said I was likely to feel sluggish during tapering week, so I put it down to that. Then I went and changed by the car and jumped on my bike.

My Orro venturi went beautifully with her new tyres and tune up at the Ironman village. The Italian traffic though was a little scary, so I bailed early and ran for safety back to the car.

The evening was spent packing the Ironman specific bags for transition.

Transition is considered the fourth discipline of triathlon. It is where the athlete switches from one discipline to the next, dumping swimming gear for the bike and then the bike for running gear. There are two transitions; T1 is from swim to bike and T2 is from bike to run.

For the professionals, races can be won or lost in transition. In regular triathlons, your bike, trainers, helmet, shades, cycling shoes, towel, race belt which holds your race number, all reside in a neat pile under your bike which is ‘racked’ on your numbered station, usually hanging on a scaffold railing among hundreds of other bikes.

At Ironman events, things are done slightly differently, otherwise the transition area would look like a burglary at a jumble sale.

Athletes are given coloured and numbered bags: Blue for Bike, Red for Run. They hold all your equipment you need for the next phase of the race.

Transition opens the day before the race and athletes started to congregate at the entrance to the two huge transition areas.

Blue bags are hung on pegs with your corresponding race number and the same for the blue bag rack. They started to fill up, with 2800 athletes taking part. I racked Orro on number 721.

I planned to walk the triathlon routes the next morning as it would look very different once all the bikes had been racked. It is imperative that athletes remember how to find their bikes or you could be in transition a lot longer than planned!

My next job was to go and find some food. I don’t have a sweet tooth and anything sugary or sticky will go untouched, so planning my nutrition for something useful to me that I would actually eat, always proves difficult. A mouthful of sandwich and focaccia seemed the way to go, along with some dried papaya, mini pizza crisp breads and tasteless carb powder for one of my water bottles.

I cut everything up into bite size pieces and put them in ziplock bags ready to stuff into my cycling jersey and transition bags on race morning.

As I walked round transition, I felt lethargic and had developed a dry cough. It seemed to come out of nowhere and initially I just put it down to the hotter climate. As the day went on, my voice changed and the coughing became more regular. I started to feel wheezy in my upper chest. I prayed it was an allergy of some sort but deep down I knew I was getting sick.

I forced a pizza down the night before the race but didn’t really want it and couldn’t really taste it. I drank full fat coke in an attempt to stifle my cough, but it didn’t work. I headed to bed early, struggling to get to sleep as I kept on coughing.

I woke the day of the race before my 5am alarm. The hotel Atlantico Jesolo amazingly had laid on breakfast super early for the athletes and the volunteers staying there.

I was still coughing. I just didn’t know what to do. I had to get on that start line in the hope that this was all a fuss about nothing. Better to start and not finish than to not start and find out it was just an allergy.

I stashed my food in transition, checked my bike tyres and changed into my wetsuit. Any bubbly excitement was killed by the incessant cough and generally feeling rubbish.

The party atmosphere was electric, and I desperately wanted to enjoy it, but I stood in the heat of the swim pen knowing full well I was getting sicker by the minute.

I figured I could only really die on the swim, so planned to get that part over and done with and the rest would be just academic.

For various reasons, the traditional spectacle of a mass start had been curbed to staggered starts. Swimmers were initially divided into ‘pens’ according to their swim speeds and then let go 6 at a time, 10 seconds apart.

Marshalls held the swimmers back and we were standing around in the heat for a long time as 2800 athletes started the swim, 6 at a time.

I should have started in a faster pen, but knowing I was sick I decided to play it safe and go in the slowest group.

That was a mistake.

As I got closer to the start line, we filtered into lanes on the sand. I felt quite emotional at this point. I was on the start line of an Ironman 70.3. This was real.

In a few seconds I would start swimming and would not let up racing for another 7 or so hours.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6mDHmIitMx/?igsh=c2hhN2k5eXJ0aDd5

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

Ironwoman - Part 1

“Everybody put your hands in the aaiiiiiirrrrrrr!!”

The tannoy boomed across Jesolo Lido beach, Venice, Italy as 2800 athletes dressed in wetsuits and wearing yellow swim caps, raised their arms in unison.

Stomp stomp clap - stomp stomp clap…it went on.

I wanted to join the party, I so badly wanted to join.

Instead, I stared into the abyss, knowing I was doomed to failure. I had started coughing the day before the Ironman 70:3 triathlon race – a dry, hacking cough and I’d started to feel ‘achy’ and just not right.

I’m in that lot somewhere….

My voice had gone hoarse, and I was getting breathless doing nothing, with my heart rate refusing to budge from 106. It was normally 56 at rest, owing to the 8 months of intensive training I’d done for this very moment.

Now, I was staring out to sea, looking for the distance between jet skis in case I needed to hail one for help. This was not how it was meant to be and the situation I had dreaded.

Ironman is probably the best-known brand of triathlon. Triathlon is a multisport competition, beginning with a swim, followed up by a bike course then finishing up with a run. In between each discipline is the process of ‘transition’ where the athletes must switch between sports, and this is all done against the clock as well and is included in the total time. Practising putting your socks on, with wet feet quickly, is a thing!

Triathlons have varying distances. From super sprints which are very short with only a few hundred metres of swimming, 20 or so km or cycling and a 3-5km run at the end. Then there is the extreme end such as the holy grail of the ‘full’ Ironman, which is:

Swim: 2.4 miles (3.9 km)

Bike: 112 miles (180.2 km)

Run: 26.2 miles (42.2 km) or, a full marathon.

In total, a full Ironman Triathlon covers 140.6 miles (226.3 km).

Given I work on a ship at sea 6 months of the year, a full Ironman wasn’t realistically achievable. Despite being surrounded by the ocean, it is not permitted to swim. It’s probably not the best idea to hop off a North Sea dive vessel into 160m of water with 6 thrusters going, saturation divers and ROVs in the water and currents running…besides, it would be considered a suicide attempt, and definitely career-ending.

Despite this, you can’t explain this to folk at home who just say, “Can’t you just swim off the boat?”

No, I cannot. And that is why.

My office, Dive Support Vessel - Seven Kestrel, working at a previous office, the Claymore platform, North Sea. Taken from another previous office, Boka Atlantis.

So, swim training is limited for me. I only get so much time I can reasonably spend in the gym and the gym on board is also limited. Some days, you cannot go in due to bad weather and some days other people will be using the equipment you need, and your time window has passed.

When I get home, I have to run my house and do adulting things, plus try to make time to see friends that I miss when I’m away so much. It can be a lonely existence just training all the time without having any social time with people I know. Most of them are at work midweek when I’m off on shore leave.

So, it is not as idyllic as it sounds.

I figured a half Ironman, or an Ironman 70:3 was achievable and still quite a challenge.

I was aiming at an Olympic (standard) distance triathlon (Swim 1500m, Ride 35.5km, Run 10km) in my favourite spot Lake Annecy, France, but was worried about getting registered and getting a slot. I got itchy feet and wanted an interim challenge.

It was as if Facebook read my mind. A Venice-Jesolo Ironman 70:3 advert popped up. A pan flat course for both the bike and run seemed idyllic. Without blinking, I signed up.

Then I told my coach.

Russel Carter is a legend in cave diving circles. Understated, but hard core, his mantra is well known within the Cave Diving Group of Great Britain: “If you weren’t hard enough, you shouldn’t have come!”

A significant support diver in the expeditions in the 1990s in the Doux de Coly, France, Russel moved on to Ironman triathlon and didn’t do that by half either, finishing no less than 10 full distance Ironman races. Some of these were on particularly tough courses, such as Lanzarote and Mallorca.

Russel Carter racing Ironman Barcelona. He’s in there somewhere!

He had been following my progress as I dabbled in sprint triathlon over the last few years and was always on hand to offer advice or check in on how I was doing. It was no surprise then that when I asked, as a level 3 triathlon coach, if he’d like to coach me to Annecy. Of course, he agreed on the proviso that I kept his 100% finisher record intact.

A half Ironman wasn’t on the table. Now we were going to have to get down to work.

An Ironman 70:3 is basically half the full Ironman distance. I guess it suited me, being little miss average. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Good enough, but never the best.

Given I’d limped round sprint distance triathlons finishing in the bottom 20 with no real clue about how to train for multi-sport, this would be a proper challenge.

I’d held an amateur jockey’s license in my 20s, riding in 3-mile steeplechases and raced kayak marathon, finishing mid-divison – and I won the high jump on school sports day and 2nd in the 400 metres! I was on the school netball team – always goal attack, never goal shooter even though I scored the most goals…and I was in the hockey team and went to ‘away’ school competitions. So, I wasn’t a complete slacker at sport. I considered this an achievement, given I was not blessed with athletic genes, or the sort of parents who come to watch me compete. Neither of them turned up to my first horse race.

My second race on board Clashbridane.

But athletics was another game altogether.

I mean, why be crap at one sport when you can be crap at three?

I grew up knowing how to ride a racehorse but couldn’t ride a bike. Everything I did was in the shadow of an absent father and an uninterested, unsupportive mother who said no to anything that cost money or involved any effort on her part, such as getting out of bed early or driving anywhere.

Triathlon is not a cheap sport. I could only embark on it once I had learned to ride a bike in 2020. Plus, I had to get myself a decent job to be able to be able afford it.

I spent the deep winter and early spring taking myself away on solo training camps in between my work rotation, first to Lanzarote then to Mallorca. The sea was calm and warm enough to swim in and the cycling is world class. The running through the volcanic landscape in Lanzarote was preferable to the streets of Alcudia in Mallorca, but I kept on increasing the mileage under the daily watchful eye of Russel.

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

The French Connection

Christine on her way out of Cregols. Image: Jo Croimins

The Lot region of France, adjoining the possibly better known department Dordogne, is a mecca for cave divers.

I first visited in 2006 as a trainee cave diver and in my sidemounted 12 litre cylinders, had a blast visiting all the ‘classic’ sites such as the Emergence de Ressel, St Georges, Cabouy, Fontaine de Truffe, Source Landenouse as well as the lesser visited sites such as Emergence de Cregols.

The following year I supported Rick Stanton and John Volanthen in dragging all their gear to sump 5 in the Truffe while they pushed the end at sump 12. Subsequent trips were in a similar vein, a mixture of tourist diving, training and exploration. And of course, enjoying the wine, food and scenery the region had to offer, in addition to excellent canoeing on the rivers Celé, Lot and Dordogne.

Going on holiday to the Lot with the Cave Diving Group always leads to adventures and we always took our ropes ladders and dry caving gear to have a ‘day off’ from diving to visit the other caving systems in the region.

Despite visiting the region regularly on and off for almost 20 years, it had never once occurred to me to ride a bike there.

Now, with my newfound passion of cycling and triathlon, I was very excited about visiting such a stunning region and being able to combine my two sports on the same trip.

I was super keen to kick off with a loop of the two rivers that run through the region, the Lot and the Dordogne. Peppered with classic cave diving sites I loosely named the route ‘cave divers loop’ and the 100km mostly flat ride, took in some stunning scenery.

The first thing I noticed was that, by being on a bike, I was obviously going much slower than a car and could notice the classic French buildings nestled in the rock faces, the wildlife and the beautiful summer river ambience that you just don’t notice when you are driving to the dive site, your mind on the job ahead.

I started in Marcilhac-sur-Celé which boasts probably the most famous cave diving site in Southern France, Emergence de Ressel. That would come at the end though, as I set of in the opposite direction to do the route anti-clockwise. I passed through beautiful gorges, passed old water mills and stunning villages. I stopped halfway in Cajarc, hoping that being a Sunday lunchtime something would be open for some proper food. There were a couple of restaurants that claimed to be fully booked and I finally managed to get some nice pastries and a cold cola from the patisserie. I was never really sure if the restaurants were booked or if they just didn’t like English cyclists. I had noted a rather less than friendly tone in France since the Brexit debacle. I’m still not sure what that whole thing was meant to achieve. All it has done is made it harder to take French wine back home.

Not far from Cregols I was somewhat surprised to see the Canyon-Sram ladies pro team bus parked up. I got a bit bedevilled on directions at the roundabout and was very relieved to set off without having any clip-in fails in front of the pro peloton!

La Piscalerie. A nice (but out of bounds) dive worth doing just once.

I set off again in the glorious sunshine and it was getting rather hot as I tackled the only climb in the route. I started to flag a bit over the last 10km and was glad to see the familiar roadside cliffs which indicated the Ressel on my left. It was the first time I had seen the new car park which had been built to accommodate the ever-growing cave diving community.

Back in 2006 you would be lucky to see another car perched on the side of the road near the cave. And if you did, there was a good chance you knew the diver or had heard of them. You would undoubtably end up in a bar with them later.

Now, the car park had been built to get cave divers off the road as the line-up of multiple cars and vans was getting more and more dangerous and unfair to locals. I stopped to take a look. It was absolutely rammed.

I arrived back in Marcilhac-sur-Celé disappointed that the ice cream shop was closed, being a Sunday afternoon.

Feeling the effects of a 100km ride in the heat, I went for a lay down by the river and ate a banana. It was tranquil, apart from the toad chorus that echoed around the Celé and the sound of water rushing down the wier.

La belle France.

I took a day off and fettled my diving gear, thinking about where I’d like to go.

Diving solo isn’t very sociable but I’ve never really had an issue with it. I had got used to diving with others as it was kind of drummed into me over the last 12 years. But I was always capable of diving alone, having been brought up in UK caves where diving as a team wasn’t always possible. I found it much safer than diving with a poorly trained buddy. Poorly trained being the key words. A well trained buddy is a huge asset.

I needed some gas so drove to Gramat to get some fills from Olivair. Olivier set up the gas station just along the road from where we always used to get gas from Frenchman, Andre Grimal. I missed the spontaneous parties and BBQs we would get tangled up in waiting for gas, and the excitement of meeting and befriending other occasional cave divers you might come across at the same time. Andre would test out his homebrew Eau-de-vie on us and it was quite deadly.

I arrived but the gates were locked. He was unlikely to be gone long, so I waited. Then another car pulled up. A Belgian cave diver called Jo was also waiting for gas and we got chatting. He was here with his girlfriend but she didn’t dive, so he was also facing diving alone. It didn’t take long before we were planning dives together and I was grateful of the company.

Over the next week we had some very cool adventures, though mainly in places I had been before. I added some interest by trying to take photos and showing Jo around places he had never been, such as the Cregols. I was amazed to see other divers in there. In years gone by it was the place where you were guaranteed to be alone.

We did some touristing and photo dives in Ressel and Truffe and a disastrous fail at trying to find Combe Negre. But I was itching to get back onto my bike and try my hand at an ascent of Rocamadour. It was steep at the bottom but such an iconic climb which still had the Tour de France scrawlings all over it and inside the tunnel. I was utterly delighted to manage a clean ascent with no stopping, in the warm evening sunshine.

It had always been my plan to visit friends who lived in the south of France and I chose the middle weekend to make a foray, some four hours south, to the Herault region. My first stop of course was to Jean Tarrit in Larzac. Jean has been a friend for many years and he offered me his annexe in his chic and rustic stone house up on top of the Larzac plateau. Of course, I was invited to visit one of his local caves with his friend Philippe who I had done some surveying with several years ago. It was another surveying trip and it was nice to back on rope again. At least, it was until we met the 3rd pitch which was slathered in thick, gloopy mud which took several episodes of pressure washing to remove.

All I could hear from the 3rd pitch was lots of squelching and protests in English that it was ‘absolutely ‘orrible!!”

I decided of course, once caving was done, to go for a bike ride. I had the whole of the Herault gorge at my disposal, including the hairpin climb with stunning views that always offered the gateway to the region. The day began in glorious sunshine as I parked up at St Maurice de Navacelles. I told Jean not to worry about me and I would be fine. So he didn’t. As I climbed the really quite steep ascent above the Herault gorge the clouds started to gather and as I entered the commune de Rogues, I could hear big rolls of thunder in the hills. I got a move on but before long, I was faced with a steep, never ending descent on wet roads covered in slippery leaves and branches.

Do. Not. Crash.

The wind picked up and the heavens opened, accompanied by the intimidating claps of thunder and terrifying lightening, with a deafening crash only a nano second later which went right through me. Despite being quite warm, hypothermia was still a possibility if I stopped, now that I was totally drenched. My gilet was as much use as a chocolate fire guard. I sheltered under a tree which only threatened to fall on me, so I made haste to the next village, hiding under a shop canopy. The place was deserted. Sheets of rain and lightening carried on relentlessly and water poured in rivers down my face, my front, my back and I the visibility was reduced to a number of metres.

I made it to Gournies. I knew there was a cafe there as the rain started to ease off and steam rose from the roads and the river Herault.

I pulled up and asked if they were serving food. Perhaps a sandwich?

Non.

Coffee?

The grumpy guy nodded and in some kind of sympathy, offered me a paper napkin to dry my face. He then delivered the smallest expresso coffee I have ever seen in my life. Cheers dude.

I made it back up the climb to Saint Maurice, which was a lot easier than I imagined and drove back to jean’s place, insisting on taking him out for pizza which turned into yet another epic.

I had to get fuel for my van first, but by the time we found a parking spot and the pizza place, Jean pointed out that we might have to fill up my car again!

I almost crashed the thing laughing!

Next stop was Nimes, a couple of hours further south, to catch up with my old boss Craig Frederick. I hadn’t been to Nimes for about 20 years since my first caving trip to the Herault. It is a fabulous city and I’d really love to dive the Fontaine de Nimes resurgence one day, which currently is only accessible by the French Pompiers for training.

My final ride was a big circuit, taking in Rocamadour and out to Souillac. I was quite out on a limb but it was a cracking day and I think I found the best cycling cafe on the planet! On my way home, thanks to Komoot, I found a cracking flat ride, mostly traffic free, along the river Loire.

The beauty of travelling alone is being able to what you want, when you want and not being beholden to someone else’s plans or commitments. I ate nice food, had great bike rides, did some cave diving, made new friends and reconnected with old ones.

Life is good and I wouldn’t swap it for anything right now.

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

Fearless do Kendal

Louise Minchin, Caroline Bramwell, Christine Grosart, Cath Pendleton, Imogen Sykes

“Reveille Reveille Reveille!”

Cath Pendleton’s strong Welsh accent reverberated through the Fearless house.

Christ on a bike. Was it that time already?

We were all getting up to go swimming in Lake Windermere. In November. In the rain. As you do….

 The Fearless gang, some of us anyway, had headed up to the Kendal Mountain Festival for a weekend of cycling, swimming, running, kayaking, watching inspirational talks and films, catching up with friends and getting Louise Minchin tipsy, so she had to run a 10km off road race with a hangover!

The weather was its usual November offering in the Lake District – grey and drizzly. Not put off, a gang of us headed North with bikes, kayaks and our tow floats and moved into an Air BNB for a long weekend.

The Ice Queen ‘Merthyr Mermaid’ Cath Pendleton swims in Windermere

I was super keen to go for a bike ride with Caroline Bramwell, who wrote ‘Loo Rolls to Lycra’ – her ironman journey with a stoma. I was also keen to go swimming with Cath Pendleton, known as the Merthyr Mermaid. If you haven’t seen the documentary about her Antarctic swimming, it’s an absolute must. No wetsuits here. She did it in her cozzie.

I’m not into this ice swimming lark so I took my wetsuit, which I was still getting used to. This didn’t stop the snatched intake of breath when I put my face in the water. It was cold. Very cold.

I put Caroline, who had done her swim, into my sea kayak so she could shoot some video. With her hands tied up with cameras, she started to drift down Windermere as she handed me different sets of swimming goggles to try on. My open water ones leaked, so I was after another pair.

While Cath was off networking at the festival, Caroline and I set off for a cold and really rather hilly bike ride. Our plans to cross Windermere with our bikes and ride down the opposite side of the lake were thwarted when a big sign said the ferry was closed. Arse.

Ladies that do cycling

Caroline Bramwell and Christine Grosart

This meant a bit of a different route, taking in a main road with quite aggressive traffic but we managed and finished our 39-mile ride in the nick of time to get back for a shower, change, quick slap of makeup and a taxi into Kendal for Louise Minchin’s gig on stage.

Safely in the VIP lounge at the festival, we prepared to go on stage. I was feeling much less nervous as there is nothing like having done something before, to quash the fear. Something I reiterated when Louise asked her ‘panel’ how to manage fear. Fear isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it keeps you alert and aware as to what can go wrong. Fear can be healthy. But when fear turns to terror, that is the time to call it a day.

I’d spoken at Kendal in 2018 and knew the audience would be kind. I’d also spoken on Fearless in Chester at the book launch, so with these under my belt and with a great presenter, we were in safe hands.

Cath Pendleton, Christine Grosart, Caroline Bramwell, Louise Minchin

Our view from on stage

Flanked by Caroline Bramwell and Cath Pendleton, we were more like Fearsome than Fearless, and the session was fun and heart-warming. What I hadn’t banked on was a book signing afterwards. Fully expecting to leave that to Louise and sneak away to catch my caving friends over at the Petzl Underground Session, I got roped into also signing the books as the queue spilled out of the door. Cath and Caroline were well ahead of the game and had wonderful little straplines to write alongside their signature.

Armed with a sharpie, feeling a total fraud, I just signed my name. This was not at all what I was used to, and I could see Caroline was struggling with the same imposter syndrome.

Cath got around her nerves by talking to everyone at length and making the queue go even slower. It was exhausting and humbling.

Finally, book signing done, we headed to the local Pizza express for a well-earned meal and drink, catching up with the ladies from Her Spirit too.

The group thinned out a bit as we went on a bit of a mission to find a nice pub afterwards.

It was of no consequence to us that Louise had a 10km trail running race to do the next morning, as we continued to top up her wine glass.

Trying to hide Louise Minchin in a pub takes quite some doing and it wasn’t long before folk started staring and whispering and one slightly worse for wear held her captive in a one-way conversation for a while.

I can’t imagine being so famous that you are recognised wherever you go. Thank goodness for online shopping I’ll bet!

We spent the last day of the festival actually watching some films and talks we had planned to see. I particularly enjoyed finally meeting Jenny Graham and hearing about her round the world cycling endeavours. As the weekend drew to a close we all headed home in the grizzly weather exhausted, motivated and with plans afoot for more fearless adventures together.

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

Fearless

In the summer of 2022, I received a message out of the blue from Louise Minchin.

A quick Google to jog my memory, as I’m not a big viewer of morning telly, and I recognised her straight away.

Take a moment to watch this:

Louise Minchin's Goodbye

Louise had delivered the daily news from the BBC Breakfast red sofa for many years, getting up before the sparrows to provide that familiar, friendly face that everyone takes for granted while they get ready for work.

Louise was writing a book about amazing women doing amazing things. My immediate reaction was to cringe and pull a face. I don’t consider myself amazing nor what I do as amazing, especially among my peer group which comprises cavers and cave divers significantly better than me.

Louise and her team had been doing their homework and wanted me to take her caving, something she had never done before, and she was super excited about it.

Louise Minchin tries caving. Image: Christine Grosart

Trying to line up two very busy women’s schedules was a battle, but we got there. Louise did brilliantly in her first trip underground, not least because she had kept a lid on her very real fear of claustrophobia throughout.

Almost a year on, following several more adventures with some amazing women, Louise was ready to launch her book, ‘Fearless’.

I was invited to a book launch in Chester, which wasn’t really on my route home from my trip offshore on the diving vessel, Seven Kestrel. Even worse, the ship was due to crew change in Great Yarmouth. This was going to be a hire car job, going round the houses to get to Chester before heading south back home to Somerset.

My office. DSV Seven Kestrel.

Luckily our crew change was on time, and I started driving. I didn’t really have any nice clothes and no time to go shopping. I wasn’t too worried as it was only a book signing, probably in the front window of the local WH Smith or something.

As I got closer to Chester, the WhatsApp messages started to ping about.

“Is there anywhere to change?” I asked, fully expecting to change in the car park.

“Oh yes you can use my dressing room” Louise said. How posh I thought. They have a dressing room in WH Smith? Perhaps it was a Waterstones.

Who knew?

As I got within a few hours of arrival I re-routed my sat nav to the address Louise had given us all. The Playhouse, Chester.

Hm. That’s not a bookshop.

I parked the car and walked into quite a large building. It soon became apparent that Louise had booked the whole thing. It also became apparent that the throngs of people gathering at the bar had all come to see her – and us!

Louise Minchin - ready to launch her book.

We were going to be on stage to talk about our respective chapters in her book.

Oh crikey.

I ran up to her dressing room – which had lamps all around the mirror and everything – and had a quick shower and tried to look presentable. Not easy when you have been at sea for a month and up since 6am.

Note to self – don’t complain to a BBC Breakfast presenter about early mornings!!

I managed to find some of the other women in her book.

Caroline Bramwell sent her description over WhatsApp, and I found her and a few others at the restaurant table.

Caroline had taken up Ironman distance triathlons in later life, having been a self-described couch potato. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Caroline had suffered for many years with ulcerative colitis. After years of suffering, she ended up with a stoma bag.

This is something that many people would feel was life limiting, even life ending – there were people in my family and family friends who had stomas, some with devastating outcomes.

They certainly hadn’t taken up triathlon soon after.

Caroline was a true inspiration and kindly sent me a copy of her book ‘Loo Rolls to Lycra”. Between her and Louise Minchin, I was hooked on the idea of triathlon. Now that I had learned to ride a bike, there was no excuse anymore.

Also sitting at the table were women who had yet to reach my radar. Shamefully (but not my fault) ‘Fearless’ had been sent to my house – but I had not seen my house for a month!

I had not had the chance to read it. I had absolutely no clue who these women were or what part they had played in Louise’s mission to celebrate women doing incredible things.

The whole thing had come about because someone had pointed out to Louise that, whenever BBC Breakfast came on, her male co-host would always introduce the programme, followed up by the female co-presenter Louise, playing second fiddle. When Louise challenged the BBC about this, they said it was because ‘that’s the way it has always been’.

Not really good enough.

Furthermore, Louise was getting tired of hosting men who had done world record this or adventurous that.

Where were all the women?

Weren’t they doing these amazing things or were we just not hearing about them?

The calm before the storm. Signing as many books as she physically can.

Louise went on a mission to find out who these women were, doing the business and to celebrate their achievements; from swimming the channel to the most southerly ice mile; swimming Alcatraz to free diving under ice – in the dark – to cycling across Argentina and of course, caving with me!

It took a while to sink in that there were quite a lot of women out there doing hard core things, amazing things, fearlessly all over the country and the globe in fact – but Louise had whittled them all down to just 18 women. And I was one of them. In fact, until I sat here writing this, that had not really registered at all with me.

Louise Minchin, Caroline Bramwell, Lucy Gossage, Rhian Mannings

I Googled the book and read the reviews from Waterstones book shop.

It had been read by Sir Chris Hoy and Dame Kelly Holmes! They had read about my cave diving adventures. That was just bizarre. I do rather like Dame Kelly Holmes…

Wow - I loved this book. What a wonderful celebration of women's courage, resilience and endeavour. ― Dame Kelly Holmes.

I made my way up to Louise’s dressing room, where she was surrounded by her close entourage and half buried in a landslide of copies of her book, as she tried to sign as many as she could.

After a time, we all started to make our way to our seats in the rather large theatre.

It was packed.

Louise found it hilariously funny that I still thought the whole affair was going to be in a high street book shop!

Whilst the Fearless ladies got deep into conversation, an older gentleman, dressed in tweed and with pink trousers, very well spoken, approached us and asked what our roles were in the book.

“Who’s he?” we mouthed.

“I dunno. Just play along…”

We entertained him for a bit, still wondering who he was and why he was asking so many questions.

A while later Louise appeared out of nowhere and swooshed in to give him a kiss and said “Oh you’ve met my Dad!!”

Let the ground please swallow us up, whole…

It turns out Louise’s Dad is the epitome of the word gentleman and I felt a pang of slight jealousy that her father was so interested in everything she did and was so proud of her. I guess not all fathers are made the same.

Louise was introduced and soon came on stage looking amazing and relaxed as she always does, well-polished after 20 years on live TV.

I looked like something the cat had dragged in.

We were going to be called on stage in groups of four and with no briefing at all, invited into discussion about our respective chapters in the book.

There was method to this madness. Louise wanted an unbriefed, honest discussion with the women in her book and we trusted her entirely to lead us through it and she would never trick us or trip us up.

Louise Minchin, Kadeena Cox, Cath Pendleton, Vivienne Rickman

The evening was incredibly enjoyable and as it went on, all the women in the book, as well as the audience, were being incredibly inspired.

My mind started whirring about what things were possible and how I’d limited myself to being a cave diver by identity and a jockey in a previous life.

My second ride over fences, age 21.

I realised that nobody needed to be pigeonholed as only one thing, that nobody is identifiable by just one thing they’ve done. I suppose it is a bit like being typecast; everyone knows Louise Minchin for being on that BBC red sofa but to me, she was identifiable by being an GB triathlete age grouper who had pretty much started from scratch.

Like me, she had been heavily involved in sport as a youth and we had both abandoned it for different reasons.

My previous life.

It opened up my mind in the most incredible way. I knew I’d gained a lot of weight over the years, with no real goal or target to aim at and the only sport I did was really diving.

Once I’d started cycling it created so may new opportunities for me and the weight started to come off.

But I was still held back by my personal life, where I was deeply unhappy. I couldn’t really be myself unless I was by myself.

I was fed up with conforming to what other people wanted when they gave so little back. My remaining family were much the same – only bringing problems and no positivity at all. So, I created distance there as well.

With my newfound freedom, having removed the ‘mood hoovers’ as I call them, my whole world opened up in front of me and I could breathe again.

Lucy Gossage, an oncologist and ultra-runner and triathlete, winning Ironmans and all sorts, put it very well when she said that she was so lucky to have a body that functioned and allowed her to do these things. She saw being able to do things that other people find too hard, was a privilege and she almost felt it was a crime not to take advantage of that.

Don’t mess with this lot! I don’t know how many GB medals, ironmans or channel crossings are in that lot, but quite a few!!

I came away from that incredible evening slightly hungover and incredibly motivated.

It gave me permission to be me again.

And for that, I cannot thank Louise and the other 17 Fearless women enough.

In chapter order:

1. Anaya and Mitali Khanzode – Escape from Alcatraz
2. Christine Grosart – Wild Caving
3. Cath Pendleton – Freediving Under Ice in the Dark
4. Belinda Kirk – Overnight Dartmoor Crossing
5. Zainab (Zee) Alema – Rugby
6. Sophie Storm Roberts – Cycling
7. Mollie Hughes – Mountaineering
8. Caroline Bramwell – Long Course Triathlon
9. Lucy Gossage – Team Hike Bike and Paddle Board
10. Vivienne Rickman – Mountain Swimming
11. Kadeena Cox – Indoor Track Cycling
12. Rhian Mannings – Hiking
13. Mimi Anderson – 1200km Cycle Across Argentina
14. Lizzie Carr – Stand Up Paddleboarding
15. Anoushé Husain – Indoor Climbing
16. Rhiane Fatinikun – Hiking
17. Susie Chan – Ultrarunning

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

Mallorca Part 2 - The Pig.

With Sa Calobra under my belt, it was time to enjoy the other ‘classic’ cycling routes the island had to offer. On my bucket list was Cap Formentor. This lighthouse was a picturesque beacon at the end of a stunning ride with climbing, pine forest, fast descents, scenic cliff tops and a tunnel!

Because of all of this, it was extremely popular, and I was soon tangled up in a long stream of cyclists of all nationalities, winding our way up the first hair pinned climb above Porto Pollensa.

It was a proper day out, covering 61 kilometres and 933 metres of climbing and I spent just over 4 hours on the move.

The lighthouse route had been closed for some time, and newly opened it not only attracted cyclists but tourist vehicles. These were a concern, as hundreds and hundreds of rental cars shoved their way towards the lighthouse, weaving in and out of cyclists and as the lighthouse got ever nearer, the traffic jam grew.

I rode past the stationary cars which couldn’t get into the lighthouse car park which was rammed and decided that I didn’t want to be here. It was too busy, too many people, too many bad manners. The café looked like it was going to be a miserable affair, so I ate my flapjack, didn’t particularly enjoy the view, and left. It was even busier on the return ride, and I was grateful to get back down to Pollensa and pull in to the famous Tollos bar for a well-earned beer and lunch.

After a rest and a bit of swimming, my last ride was out to the ancient town of Petra on a very flat and fast cycle route. A 65km round trip, interrupted by lunch in the town centre in a café full of cyclists, and that was my cycling trip to Mallorca over.

I absolutely vowed to come back as I had fallen in love with the island. There was just so much more to do.

I returned in September and of course, headed straight back to Sa Calobra, this time for an evening ride in an attempt to catch the sunset. I timed it perfectly, although I paid for it a bit as the darkness fell quite quickly as I descended back to the car.

Sa Calobra at sunset. Photo: Christine Grosart

The ascent was super slow as I had made the mistake of thinking I could do it the day after riding up the highest and hardest climb in Mallorca – Puig Major.

Nicknamed ‘The Pig’ this climb went on a bit but wasn’t particularly steep. I rode all of it, no walking, only stopping a few times for a snack and a drink as I’m still a bit wobbly feeding on the bike, especially when pushing up a hill.

Puig Major is a category 1 climb, 13.9km in distance with an average gradient of 6.2%, gaining 830 metres of climbing.

Ascending Puig Major

I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to do this earlier in the year and avoided it for that reason. My cycling fitness had been improving with the help of Jason at PDQ cycle coaching. Although I hadn’t lost much weight, climbs were getting easier.

I was delighted to reach the mountain lake at the top and pass through the tunnel which marks the official end of the climb.

I had a fast and fantastic descent among several other cyclists and treated myself to lunch at the popular Kingfisher restaurant overlooking the marina in Soller.

Completely addicted to triathlons now, I had been talked into an end of season open water tri in Minehead. There was a small issue – I hadn’t really swum any distance in the sea. Whilst I was a strong and fairly quick pool swimmer, I hadn’t done much more than bob about in the ocean. I mean, that’s what it’s for – and diving and snorkelling, of course.

I thought I had better get a move on, so I tentatively stepped off the sandy beach by the hotel, complete with my new swim float, and procrastinated a bit. I picked a mooring buoy not too far away and decided I’d swim to that and back. Baby steps.

As I put my face in the water, I tried to slow my breathing and kept telling myself to stop being so silly. It wasn’t the same as diving, nor snorkelling, which I do without a single thought.

This was different. I felt vulnerable, totally dependent on my own buoyancy and breathing technique and reaching the mooring buoy felt like a huge milestone. I like to know what’s beneath me, and I like to see what is anchoring that buoy to the seabed. Crazy.

As a diver I don’t give a monkeys. But swimming on the surface, I was paranoid about absolutely everything.

I got back to the beach and gave myself a silent pat on the back.

“Now go out and do it again. But further this time.”

As I increased in confidence I concentrated on my stroke, distance, and time rather than being paranoid about what was beneath me and actually began to enjoy it.

I stopped worrying about whether I could see the sea floor or not and put my efforts into ‘sighting’ the buoy ahead and keeping to a straight line.

The beach next to the hotel was Ok but the water was a bit shallow as it passed over reefs. I needed a much longer swim.

I set off on my bike to the long beach in front of Porto Pollensa and out in much deeper water, was the perfect line of mooring buoys to swim along. I began to relax and enjoy it and before I knew it, had swum 1400m, the distance of the Annecy triathlon swim which I was aiming for in 2024. And I’d done it in well inside the cut off time.

Running of course was my nemesis. Running in Mallorca is a horribly sweaty affair, and I didn’t enjoy it at all. More work needed there, unfortunately.

I had another short ride out to Cala Vincenc, but this time stopped to have a swim in the sea on the sandy beach that always looked so stunning as I rode by. I also managed to grab a table for lunch at the bar which was heaving with cyclists.

Returning to the UK was a shame, but I had a very determined goal. It was the Minehead triathlon that very weekend.

Brilliantly organised by Channel Events, the Minehead tri was a bit of a step up from the beginners’ triathlons I’d been entering. There were lots of expensive, specialist tri bikes on the racks and a lot of very fit looking people wearing aero helmets.

It was a sea swim in the Bristol Channel, which was a far cry from the warm swimming pools I’d been used to.

I’d had a quick foray to Yeovil to try on and buy a wetsuit and Channel Events had thankfully laid on a trial swim the day before the race, for people like me. Swimming in the muddy, cold waters of the Bristol Channel was far from appealing to someone like me, who had actively avoided the open water swimming scene.

I arrived early on race day, registered, racked my bike, and was overwhelmed with support and good vibes from the people I’d met at Channel events the day before and Kelli Coxhead who had organised the Cheddar Triathlon.

It was a family atmosphere which was ironic. Nobody in my family was remotely interested in supporting me or coming to cheer me on. Luckily, I was used to it and actually pleased not to have these distractions. I was afforded the headspace to concentrate on my race.

The swim was an aussie style mass start off the beach, and it was super exciting. My swim was good, and I even passed a few people, playing it safe and starting at the back. The first transition up the beach to the bike was hard running uphill on sand and my running fitness, or lack of, was already starting to show.

I had a good bike section, but being hilly and me being heavy, I couldn’t pass anyone. Then the run, which was disastrous. It was entirely my fault as I hadn’t really trained for it. Running hurts my back and sets off back spasm, so I’d just avoided it. The 25% hill in the middle of the run course wasn’t helping either!!

It didn’t matter though. I was hooked.

If I could find a way of sorting my back and improving my running, I’d be heading to Annecy in June 2024.

Interested in giving tri, a try?

Grab yourself this inspirational book ‘Dare to Tri’ by Louise Minchin.

While you’re there, pick up a copy of ‘Fearless’ - you might recognise someone!

Louise Minchin

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

Marvellous Mallorca Part 1

The ship roared and wallowed as the dynamic positioning system fought to keep it in one place over the seabed, as the wind started to pick up. Sweat poured onto the deck of what used to be the cinema room, now converted into a cardio gym on the Dive Support Vessel Boka Atlantis.

I gritted my teeth as the movement of the ship made my predicament even harder. I was halfway up Sa Calobra in Mallorca, an iconic climb for cyclists apparently. The new Watt Bike Atom indoor training bike on board the Atlantis was reacting to every % of incline that this hill threw at me, and my heart felt like it was going to burst as my lungs screamed for air.

Desperate to pass an HSE diving medical, with the help of a friend, I had taken reluctantly to the exercise bike to shift some weight and deal with my fitness, both of which had downward spiralled out of control in the final years of a miserable relationship.

I needed something better, something more – and I needed to feel like me again. Not someone’s ‘other half’. I’m not half of anybody, never have been. I needed Christine the gritty, determined jockey back.

I punched my way up the hill and collapsed in a heap of sweat and whining.

Roll on two years later and N+1 was really taking hold (that’s the formula for how many bikes a cyclist should own…. however many you have – N – just add one….).

I had Orro gravel bike (with slick tyres, not doing any of that off road nonsense) and now Orro Venturi road bike with Di2 (posh electronic gear shifters) and the now redundant £400 Trek ladies road bike which had been relegated to my indoor Wahoo trainer. No regrets with that one, my first ever road bike, I rode that up Mont Semnoz blissfully unaware it was a category HC climb (really hard!)

Orro Venturi on holiday

I actually love climbing. But I’m so heavy that I’m painfully slow. Luckily Orro Venturi has better gears for climbing than my gravel bike, so I started to get brave and decided to take myself to Mallorca. It is, apparently, a mecca for cyclists.

Sun, turquoise blue seas, Spanish tapas, cold beers, and scenery to die for. And Sa Calobra. The real thing.

Booking with Jet2, who seem less likely to trash my bike than other airlines, I packed up Orro in pieces and set off to the island I had not visited since a family holiday when I was just 9 years old. I had spent most of it snorkelling and doing handstands in the pool with a new Spanish friend, while my mother and grandmother loafed by the pool doing absolutely nothing.

I was bored. I was happy to come back and at least see some of the island and get some proper miles in.

Hotel Astoria, Alcudia

I settled into the hotel which was in the ‘German’ region, Alcudia, and the hotel was spotless, with fantastic food, wine, and ice-cold pool with bali beds to lounge on. I rented a car as I thought I’d need it to get me to the start of some of the mountain climbs, not quite being up for big hills in the middle of +100km rides just yet.

I built my bike in the on-site bike ‘garage’ where it would live all week and sorted out a route for the next day. I love Komoot and use it in conjunction with Strava to plan my routes.

Hotel Astoria Alcudia

Not wanting to stray too far on the first day, I lined up a nice little loop to Porto Pollensa, then down to Cala Sanc Vicenc and back round Pollensa to Alcudia where I had the most amazing lunch by the marina.

Cala Sanc Vicenc

Truffles, goats cheese and olives - all my favourite things!

48km shakedown done, I was ready to have a go at Sa Calobra.

There had been a lot of rumblings about closed roads and access as one of the hairpin bends had collapsed in the winter storms. The road to Sa Calobra was indeed closed, but only between 8am and 4pm….

It was accessible via Puig Major, the hardest climb on the island…Not overly keen on that just yet, I went to bed ruminating and annoyed at having a potentially wasteful day ahead doing nothing until 4pm when the road finally opened. I’m not really an evening rider – I prefer to be in the restaurant and bar by 6pm!

For no reason at all, I woke at 4am. Irritated, and knowing there was no way I would get back to sleep, I got up.

Clouds starting to clear at the start of the Sa Calobra route.

Maybe it comes from riding racehorses, where you are not allowed to be scared or overthink, or maybe cave diving which is much the same – or maybe I just have this ability that allows me to do crazy things and remain totally focussed. I didn’t even think about anything – I just put my cycling gear on, check listed my bike and bag, filled my water, and walked out of the hotel to my car, much to the dismay of the night shift hotel staff on the desk.

It was dark and drizzling.

I put Orro in the back of the car and drove through the dark and rain for a solid hour, half of which was hair pin bends, to the viaduct where many cyclists meet and greet either at the start, end, or part way through their day.

I stopped at a garage that thankfully let me in at this ungodly hour and bought two packs of ham and cheese sandwiches, some juice, and a strong coffee to go. I ate one pack for breakfast – obviously the hotel had no intention of serving me breakfast in the middle of the night – and I kept one pack for after the ride.

I pulled into the parking spot. Not surprisingly, it was completely empty. The road works had not started.

I tried to sleep in the car until it started to get light but to no real avail. It kept raining but gradually started to ease off as daylight tried to break. Dark, heavy clouds ever so slowly began to break and lift but I wasn’t going to be treated to a glorious, sunny ride. The descent was going to be lethal on wet tarmac, but I didn’t care. I had my determined head on, and I was going to do this, no matter what.

Just as well really, as I had no idea about what manner of hell I was about to endure.

The beeps of large road maintenance vehicles and orange flashing lights approaching the viaduct was my cue to leave.

I hopped onto Orro and felt a little bit emotional as I rolled out of the car park, thinking about my friend who had helped me lose so much weight, get fit again and be myself again. I hoped he’d be proud of me, which was promptly followed by being glad he couldn’t see me as I struggled to clip into my pedals. I hadn’t been riding clipped in for very long and it was all still a bit hit and miss.

The unique Sa Calobra archway

Sa Calobra is unique as you start by descending it first to a dead end by the sea, before climbing back up it.

As I swung away from the car park, I suddenly remembered my cycling mates telling me that it was the climb ‘up’ to the start of the descent that got most people. I wasn’t sure if they were talking about approaching it via Puig Major (not my problem today) or the sharp little switch back climb that I was soon confronted with on the way up to Coll dels Reis, where the descent starts proper.

I plodded on the wet road, storm clouds slightly lifted but not really giving in and was grateful at least that the Mallorcan sun wasn’t beating down on me.

Delighted to have reached Coll dels Reis, I knew this pinch point in the rocks would be the finish official point for the Sa Calobra climb.

I set off gently, taking in the stunning vistas and immediately had to stop to photograph the bizarre road which curves around in a complete loop and passes under itself beneath a beautiful archway.

Once past the famous landmarks, I began the descent.

Oh my word. Ok, I was going slowly as I knew the road was wet and with the road closed behind me, there was no traffic. No cyclists. Which meant no help if I was to crash.

I possibly have the record for the slowest descent of Sa Calobra and, even though I was slow, it didn’t half go in a bit.

I descended through the cliffs on the constantly winding and hair pinned road, first through mountain scrub, then becoming greener and finally through other worldly pine forest with huge boulders strewn among the trees. The distance played on my mind. If it was taking me this long to get down, how long would it take me to get back up?

I don’t remember taking much more than an hour on the watt bike on my ship at work. In fact, my personal best up Sa Calobra was 80 minutes. I started to doubt if I’d manage that today.

As I reached the small port at the sea front, I passed through the slightly ugly coach car park with barriers and speed bumps before rolling up to the sea front. It was quiet and the sun hadn’t quite made it.

Port of Sa Calobra

Looking desperately for coffee and a loo, I spotted a hotelier half-heartedly dragging plastic chairs out onto the terrace. I asked if I could get a coffee and he pointed inside.

One strong coffee and loo visit later, I was ready to go. My sandwiches had worn off and I was left with a couple of Giant bars to get me up the hill.

The official segment starts just beyond the coach park, which is just as well as the first ramp out of the port was very steep.

The first part of the climb gains height quite quickly but fortunately mostly in the shade. It’s not long before you reach a clearing at the side of the road and can look down on the port and see how high you’ve climbed already. But there was still an awful long way to go.

Once through the famous pinch point in the rocks, fortunately no coaches here today, the route passes through pine forest strewn with huge boulders. The light started to stream through in rays split by the trees and it looked like something from a fantasy film.

I kept the pedals turning but began enjoying the scenery and relaxed into the ride. Bend after bend, ramp after ramp the climb continued winding up the valley in no real direction. I stared at the highest point I could see, wondering if that was the top, or not. It looked an awfully long way up and so, so far away. I kept moving.

Eventually, I caught sight of the collapsed part of the road and the brightly coloured cones and workmen starting their day. The end was in sight.

At just this moment, the sky went dark, and a cold wind howled up the valley. A deep, loud rumble of thunder echoed across the valley. “What on Earth….?”

I didn’t even have time to finish the sentence in my head when the heavens opened. It was as if someone had just turned on a fire hydrant and was pointing it right at me.

Water ran down my face, down my neck, into my eyes and saturated everything I was wearing in seconds. Luckily, I’d packed my gilet – which was as much use as a chocolate teapot, but at least it was another layer as I knew getting cold was going to be an issue now. I stopped to put it on, ate another soggy piece of flapjack and knew I had to keep moving to stay warm. In Mallorca.

As I turned the pedals, I started giggling.

What would Mark Julier say if he could see me now? He was the guy I was cycling with in Lanzarote when it snowed, and we had to bail out back to the hotel by taxi – bikes and all.

Then I saw another cyclist. A small French guy had begun his descent and got caught in the monsoon. He was off his bike and sheltering under the sagging leaf of a fern.

I asked if he was Ok in French, and he replied that his mate was coming to get him. Sure enough, as I crawled up the ever-steepening hair pins, a Berlingo van pulled up beside him and bundled the sodden rider and his bike inside.

No way on Earth was I going to try to blag a lift now – but they didn’t offer anyway! I was so close to the top.

I met another lady starting her descent, looking bewildered and she had stopped on a bend clearly wondering whether to continue. I hoped she wasn’t using me as a barometer of whether continuing was a good idea or not. I started giggling as I passed her and she started giggling as well at the ridiculousness of it all. I didn’t look back to see what decision she had made.

On the last little straight, I could see the archway where the road bizarrely passes under itself. I was absolutely drenched. Thinking I was almost at the top, I was slapped in the face yet again by a really quite steep ramp which is the final section of road before the narrowing in the rocks, which marks the top of the Coll des Reis.

I didn’t stop for another photo. The last bit of downhill was going to be greasy and cold. I descended carefully, shivering, back down to the car.

The clouds had broken and cyclists had started to arrive from having ascending Puig Major, taking in the two mountains in the same day. Good luck to them.

I stripped off all my wet gear and huddled into a towel, trying to eat a sandwich at the same time. Once my dry gear was on, I chucked the bike in the back of the car and grabbed a coffee from the little café just under the viaduct.

This was not how I wanted my first ascent of Sa Calobra to be. But in typical Christine style, I did it the hard way.

In love with Mallorca

Evenings with great food, wine and GCN+

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

Tri Cheddar

One thing I love about cycling – and being so terrible at it – is that there are things you look at and say you can never do.

And then you go and do them.

You train, get better, learn more and engage your friends to help – and then things happen.

Never in a million years did I think I would be able to cycle up Cheddar gorge, the iconic geological landmark that I’m fortunate to live only 40 minutes away from.

It is steep, full of tourist traffic and I regularly see seasoned, skinny cyclists suffering as they grind away round the inclined bends formed by the historical and now underground, river.

Then I saw an advert for a triathlon being held in Cheddar. And I was on shore leave, so really I had no excuse.

There was a super sprint distance and a sprint distance, the latter including an ascent of Cheddar Gorge.

Me being me, I absolutely refused to wimp out and bypass the gorge. I figured the super sprint was barely worth me getting out of bed for. The fact that I can’t even run 5km at the moment was pushed firmly to the back of my mind…..

I became obsessed with the gorge.

I had only attempted it once, during the Mendip lakes and Lumps sportive and, on my gravel bike on a boiling hot day, didn’t get very far up the gorge before I resorted to walking like many others.

I knew I would have to train for this. I set about the watt bike at work on the Seven Atlantic, that fortunately has just had two watt bike atomx bikes installed. I set up Rouvy and downloaded the gorge route and almost immediately stalled on the first steep bend and could barely turn the pedals on the second.

Surely it couldn’t be THAT hard?! I mean, it said 20% in places but only for a few metres.

Somewhere in the back of my head, somebody told me that it wasn’t so bad in real life. Righto.

So I put a shout out on social media to see if anyone wanted to come and help me get up the gorge.

Almost immediately Andy Sparrow, a good friend and fellow caving instructor and keen cyclist, piped up and said he’d be delighted to come with me.

Christine and Andy

Now, Andy is no spring chicken but he also extremely deceptive and very capable. I was a bit worried he’d leave me for dust. Luckily Andy hadn’t been cycling in a while and he also lives at the bottom of the gorge. Admittedly this didn’t give us much of a warmup or lead in to the climb, but we met up and set off anyway, Andy continually picking up my bike with one hand in awe of its lightness.

On a damp, grey day we swung out into the bottom of the gorge, luckily with not so many tourists to navigate and the climb starts in earnest as you pass the entrance to Goughs cave.

On any other day or any other year in fact, I would only be here to go diving in Goughs. Access to the cave for cavers and divers has now sadly been rescinded but hope is on the horizon that we may be able to go back one day. Goughs is a beautiful dive, but the carry is a pest, so it’s always worth bringing along caving friends to help which is always a fun, social affair.

We passed Goughs and you get a small amount of relief on a gentle incline before it really starts to ramp up.

I was delighted to pass the rock gabions, as this was where I had dismounted and shamefully walked the rest of the way the previous year.

I locked onto Andy’s back wheel and ignored everything around me as I concentrated on keeping that rear wheel in the same place the whole way up. So long as I did that, I would make it. So long as Andy didn’t stop of course!!

We made it through the first ‘steep bit’ which is a very narrow and steep pinch point in the road. Always worried about meeting a car head on here, I kept out in the middle of the road so I could see further and also flatten out the ramp which was upwards of 15% incline.

A little reprieve after this, and the next one came soon. On the approach it looks steep but not too bad – then, once on the bend it just keeps going as you fight to keep the wheels turning. Desperate and with no cars coming, I stayed as far out to the right and the middle as I could to shave the steepness off the bend. Andy was growling and clearly having his own battle just in front.

Then, the ramp dropped away quickly. Phew. Just one small sting in the tail left as we passed Reservoir hole (you’ll note that my Mendip cycling routes are identifiable by cave entrances…) and we had made it up the steep part. I was ecstatic although I could barely speak.

The rest of the way was a gentle incline all the way up to the top of the Mendip Hills where we cut across Charterhouse and followed the triathlon route back to Cheddar on a 20 or so kilometre loop.

My French G.O.A.T mascot wearing his Cheddar Tri jersey, from Stolen Goat.

He wasn’t stolen, I bought him fair and square in Annecy.

The Cheddar triathlon loomed. It’s a long time since I got up early on a Sunday to do any kind of race or exercise or anything. Diving doesn’t count. It’s stressful on the body for sure but it’s not exercise as such.

I decided to camp in my van overnight down in Cheddar to save an early start. This was a bit of a mistake as, after a fairly uncomfortable night, I woke with my age-old back pain. There was nothing much I could do to fix it at this stage and whilst I can get away with swimming and cycling with back pain, running is unforgiving.

I checked my bike tyres, gave it a final wipe down and set up my kit in transition. I always like clean, tidy equipment when I go to the races; must be a hangover from my horse racing days – always be well turned out!

Transition is where you change from one sport to the next and there are lots of rules around it such as making sure you put your helmet on before touching your bike.

Transition area

I laid all my stuff out in the small space provided and racked my bike with its sticky numbers and made sure it was in the correct gear for setting off.

Waiting around for the swim is always annoying. We watched the first waves set off. I am always surprised at how many people attempt triathlons who can barely swim. Some are doing a very slow breastroke and some doggy paddle. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a lack of confidence and ability in the water. But I needn’t have worried too much, as almost all of these people can run and they all finished way ahead of me.

My transition area

I filled my time with lying on the floor in the cubicle, trying to stretch my back out as it was threatening to spasm.

I have to try not to set off too fast in the pool as I learned a stark lesson in my first triathlon when I struggled to regain my composure on the bike and overshot a tight bend in the road. You can’t save much time in the pool in a sprint anyway so I kept it smooth and well under 10 minutes.

It was a cold day, so I grabbed a long sleeved jersey when I got to my bike and was glad I did. I set off trying to keep my heart rate down for the gorge ascent. Even though I had done it twice before now, I still doubted myself and plodded up through the steep hairpins. I felt slightly better as I saw one guy walking the narrows but also sorry for him – that could so easily have been me. Once you stop on a steep climb it’s extremely difficult to get started again.

Gorge accomplished, I set off across the chilly Mendips and made the most of the fast descents, taking a little care as they were still very wet from the weeks of rainfall we’d had.

Back at transition and trainers on, I knew it would be catastrophic. My back was stiff as a board and the right QL muscle was in full on spasm. Apart from being painful, it severely restricts my movement and gets worse when running. The spasm is so strong it pulls my pelvis out of alignment and the chiropractic sector has made a small fortune out of me since 2009, when my spine threw a herniated disc in the middle of kayak marathon training.

Grateful for support from my closest friends, Jo and Jayme who came along to offer encouragement.

Nothing I could do about it now. I half jogged, half waddled to the halfway point of the run, desperately looking for the right shaped rock to lie on. I found one and to the bemusement of the marshalls, rolled around on a pointy fist-sized stone, hoping to get the spasm to release and let me at least run a bit. It sort of worked, but by the time I got back to the finish line I was crippled. There is nothing more annoying than knowing you can run, but an injury is stopping you and the crowd are all cheering you on thinking you are just fat and slow. They have no idea how much pain I’m in or that my back is twisting me up so badly that I can’t actually stride out even though I wanted to.

I wasn’t even breathless, I could just hardly move.

So, I finished but yet again insanely disappointed in myself that my old back injury was plaguing me yet again. Would I ever be able to run pain free?

Instead of celebrating my achievements in that I had cycled up cheddar gorge in a triathlon – something I wouldn’t have believed if you’d told me a year ago – I just beat myself up for being so terrible at running. Maybe my body just isn’t designed for it. Short stocky people just don’t win triathlons, do they.

Not happy with just finishing, I wanted to be competitive. It wasn’t enough to be just happy not to finish last. But I drank some champagne anyway.

Something had to change.

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

Lovely Lanzarote

Farmara, Lanzarote

Now I really do have imposter syndrome.

Lanzarote is where it's at when it comes to triathletes. Anyone who is anyone in cycling or triathlon goes to Lanzarote. So what's all the fuss?

I wasn't particularly interested in diving there...nor caving there (nice lava tubes apparently but you're not allowed to dive them - so I immediately lost interest in taking caving diving kit).

Cueva de Los Verdes, Lanzarote


But I'd just taken delivery of a new road bike. It was barely out of the box when I stuffed it into a rental bike bag and put it on the plane (the fully integrated cockpit meant I could forget dismantling it to shoehorn it into a hard box - just wasn't happening).

Never in my life have I taken a bike on a plane...but luckily Jet2 were quite accustomed to it and I was met with very good customer service from them at the airport and my bike arrived intact.

The hotel check in queue left a lot to be desired, but once settled I was able to build my bike and get some sleep.

The next day I decided to out for a shakedown spin from the hotel. One thing that Lanzarote is famous for is wind. And it’s proper wind!

The volcanoes offer very little shelter and it’s not uncommon to battle 30mph winds on the bike. Descending fast might be fun, but it is super dangerous in Lanza. The road surfaces however are super smooth and the traffic is very patient and tolerant of cyclists.

Moonscapes, architecture, volcanoes, cactus, lava fields and coffee. All in a day’s cycling on Lanzarote.

Over the next fortnight I rode 220 miles, climbing 16,149 feet and sea kayaked 23 miles. On the advice of a colleague Andy ‘Wish’ McColl I joined him on some day trips with Sea Kayaking Lanzarote and also some coaching sessions which really showed up my capability – or lack of – in a sea kayak.

The first trip we took the ferry over to La Graciosa, a small island off the northern tip of Lanzarote. The ferry seemed quite used to sea kayaks and happily loaded them on board whilst we grabbed coffee and a snack.

I ended up making friends with two British guys; one was an ironman athlete and coach; the other had done triathlons, iron mans etc and they were great company and happy to have me along on bike rides. Mark Julier insisted in giving up a day of his programme (ok, it was his rest day) to come out for a ride with me to th every highest point of the island. A bit nervous as my climbing speed is sloooooow, I grudgingly agreed. He kept feeding me bananas until we finally got to his favourite cafe at the observatory and he ordered us both his favourite sandwich.

The views were stunning but I couldn’t help pointing out that the sky looked a bit ‘dark’. At that very moment, the heavens opened and were accompanied by a clap of thunder and flash of lightening. We decided to have another coffee and sandwich and wait for it to blow through.

Almost an hour later the sky had got darker, more lightening happened and we realised we were in for a cold, wet, miserable downhill ride for 2 hours. Nervously we started to get our bikes ready. My Di2 (electric gear shifters) started playing up and we couldn’t get the bike into a lower gear at all. After some fiddling we got it moving but the heavens opened even harder and we ran for cover. It became clearer over time, as a dozens of different nationalities of cyclists turned into the cafe utterly frozen and drenched, that we weren’t going to be riding home.

Keen to get ahead of the game, we made the decision early to get a taxi. Unbeknown to us, this was the smartest thing we could have done.

A large taxi turned up, happy to take both us and the bikes. As the driver stepped out of the vehicle he insisted on showing us his phone, pointing at it frantically saying ‘Look! Look! I never see this before!"

On the way up to us he had taken photos and video of what looked like snow. Confused and not convinced, we put our bikes in the car quickly. Still feeling like complete wimps, we set off back towards Costa Teguise.

Snow in Lanzarote! Mark with his favourite sandwich up at the highest point on the island.


We couldn’t quite believe what we were seeing. Rivers of brown mud ran down the roads and mountain run-off surged across the road. The fields to either side were smattered in snow as the sleet continued to hammer down. The temperature was sub zero. We started to realise just how dangerous attempting a descent would have been. Apart form hypothermia, a crash would have been inevitable as the roads just weren’t rideable. Now feeling rather more smug than stupid, we arrived back at the hotel for a well earned drink.

Barcelo hotel complete with 50m swimming pool - and a cat.


While I was out there I received a random message from my old school friend Debra Bond. She was staying at La Santa – famous for triathlon training camps – so I met up with her for a classic ride around the Taminfaya national park. It was so amazing to catch up with an old school friend I’d not seen for decades and it was as if we’d never been away.

We had a nice lunch and then set off with a howling head wind that seemed to follow us all round the park. It was brutal heading back to La Santa but a good leg stretch.

Sea Kayaking Lanzarote gave us a lovely tour of the north western coastline of Lanzarote, to a place called Famara. It got a bit choppy and the soaring cliffs treated us to a dramatic landscape. We were surprised to see what looked like little fishermans huts embedded in the cliffs and realised they were actually houses!

I spent another day with them learning some self rescue skills -which are much harder than they look - and watching other paddlers trying to drown Wish as he did some capsize recovery drills.

Lanzarote is a serious playground. It has all the things I like, even though I didn’t bother with any diving or caving - but it’s there if you want it.

For me, it was a wonderful way to be spoilt for sports and to be able to cycle, swim and kayak until my heart’s content was a total joy.

I made some great friends and it really inspired me to continue my triathlon journey.

Chris kayaking Famara

Returning to La Santa

Amazing geology at La Graciosa

Early morning rides in Lanzarote

Taminfaya

El Moggo

Paradise

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

After the showcave, we will go cave diving...

The campsite is beginning to wind down after the holiday season, but that didn't stop them having their traditional party games in the pool, which are always a great spectator sport!

The idea was to balance on a giant inflatable ring and get pulled towards your opponent, who will try to bash you off your perch with a long pink sausage!

Rich was quite keen to revisit this short, but beautiful cave and we fancied doing our own film this time, with the objective to have shots of the diver swimming towards the camera and a good shot of the entrance rift.

So, I sent an email to Mehdi, the local diver who has access to the source and he duly arranged a dive for us.

Mehdi is a really nice guy and amused us with tales of his adventures the night before his wedding, which involved diving the Esperelle and then rock climbing in the Dourbie gorge, finishing up at about 2am!

We weren’t meeting him until 4pm though, so we looked for something else to do during the day and came across Dargilan show caves. Mum had been rattling on about this for years, so I figured it would be worth a visit, especially as it was only half an hour from the Esperelle.

Dargilan didn’t disappoint and we had ample opportunity to take photos.

After a spot of lunch overlooking the very impressive valley, we set off to the Esperelle to meet Mehdi.

The Esperelle is stunning and although only just over 300m long, drops off to the terminus at -60m. We took trimix and set off, leap frogging to get some lovely video shots and then floated down the beautiful, sculptured shaft at the end of the cave.

We returned with a little decompression and Mehdi kept his customary bottle of white wine in the sump, cooling for us.

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

Just a little afternoon trip...

River Herault

What utter Bo****ks!!

There was a lot of lounging about on the campsite going on...people under the illusion that they were on holiday and so forth...so I suggested a 'little afternoon trip' - only 2 hours underground, only half an hours drive away.

So we packed our wetsuits and headed off to a lovely little cave called the 'Foux de Lauret'.

Three hours later we managed to find the correct parking spot as my memory from my last and only trip in the cave in 2007 had faded completely!

Once found, we walked up the path, only to take the wrong left turning which started to feel 'wrong' somehow and after a lot of sweating and bush bashing - in wetsuits - we returned to go a bit further and find the correct path and the chain which led to the small cave entrance, perched precariously on the edge of a cliff with a fairly terminal drop below. The only protection was a small tree which had seen better days....

Elaine in the lakes - by Chris Grosart

The entrance crawl goes on far too long and is almost unbearable in wetsuits - but we soon met with the first of the lakes and cooled off and I took the opportunity to take a photo I had wanted for some time.

A while later and we finally found the correct turning to the large main passage and river with large gours - but failed to find the beautiful crystal gours I had seen last time. Obviously turning 30 has some effect on my otherwise good memory :-(

It was a fun trip and we took just an hour to the exit where we were met with a humid, thundery evening.

Desperate for food, we hunted down beer and pizza and turned in for the night.

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Christine Grosart Christine Grosart

"...a nice easy flop in a resurgence..." by Richard Walker

Yesterday we went on a nice easy resurgence flop. The cave entrance is no more than 100m from the road. How hard could it be?

Trouble is, that 100m is about 20m horizontal, and 97m vertical. The cave was Gourneyras, in the Viz gorge. 20 minutes down a dirt track next to some breathtaking drop-offs where your front wheels are spitting stones off the side into oblivion, you come to a tree. Actually hundreds of trees. One of them marks the path down to the cave.

You just have to know which tree. And we sort of did, and sort of didn't. The giveaway was the steel cable-run that had been set up to transport gear down to the pool. But we were too clever to look for that. An hour later we gave up the hunting and went down the right path for a quick look. The cave was right there where we left it in 2012.

Christine decompresses in the Gourneyras

There was only 2 of us, so we had travelled light. One twinset, one rebreather, 4 stages, drysuits, undersuits and some other bags of stuff. Christine went down the track and started setting up the hand-lines that we use to stop ourselves plummeting into the oblivion. This track has just about every type of terrain you can imagine.

It starts with a steep gravel path, with some 2ft high rock steps to negotiate. Then it changes direction and traverses across the hill on a scree slope, which slips and slides under your feet. Then it goes into a gentle forest path, and you think that it isn't so bad. It's of course lulling you into a false sense of security. Next is a combination of steep mud path, brambles, eye level branches, ankle level knotweed, and some unstable pebbles. Then you break out into the sunshine again at the level of the river, and feel happy that your 100m decent is over and it must now get easier.

Now the fear starts. There is a field of unstable, slippery, weed covered boulders, just right to break an ankle. You slither and slide over these and finally arrive at the pool. Which is truly delightful. It's sparkly blue, the sunshine lights it up and the entrance to the cave beckons they eye from a depth of 6m.

Chris at 50 metres

We chained the gear down the hill, 10m steps at a time, which was significantly easier we thought, than running up and down the hill 8 times. We got all the gear down to the pool in about 90 minutes, and were pleased with ourselves.

Gear assembled, camera checked and we were off. The 32C air temperature was oppressive, and it was great to get into the 13C water. We hung about on the surface for a few minutes just to relax and get that hot-and-bothered feeling gone, and then began our dive. The entrance is obvious at a depth of about 6m, and we dropped our decompression cylinders at 6m, and swam into the cave. It starts with a 45 degree, stepped drop into the cave. Lots of boulders and rocks are all around, and you soon come to the 21m dropoff, convenient for leaving the second decompression cylinders.

Now the cave gets interesting. There's a large circular room as you descend, almost impossible to see from one side to the other. The walls are white, but the place sucks up light. If you look back now, from a depth of about 40m, you see the blue entrance above you. More about that later. Now, you arrive on a pebble floor, and the passage turns sharply to the left, under a huge overhang.

You're now at about 50m depth, and in a passage like a railway tunnel. Bigger actually. It's probably 30m wide and 20m high. There are beautiful scalloped formations of the floor, sharp knives of rock 10m across on the floor, and air-clear visibility. Again, it's hard to see across the tunnel, and I had travel all over the cave tunnel to see it, and still didn't see it all! After about 10-15 minutes, it was time to turn, and I turned on the camera, lit the lights and started to shoot some stills. Light was getting sucked up and to get any sort of perspective was difficult. The thought of some new 4000 Lumen lights has started to hit my radar. Hope the bank manager isn't reading this...

I shot some half decent pictures of Christine, and by 30 minutes we were back at the corner to start heading back up the slope. Here is where you get your first real view of the entrance. 50m deep, looking uphill to a turquoise blue window into the fresh air. You can see the green trees around the pool, it's an amazing sight.

We worked our way up the slope, taking pictures, swapping cameras, managing the decompression for the next hour - way more time than we need, but it's a beautiful place, we had the gas, a camera and no pressing engagements that evening. After a 90 minute dive, we surfaced to some French ramblers, who informed us that they also dived there, and had we seen the view from 30m of the surface pool. They didn't offer to help us carry our gear back though, for some reason.

We got out of our gear, relaxed for half an hour and started the long haul back to the road. Only 100m away, most of it vertical, back through the ankle breakers, up the forest mud path, across the scree slope and up the stone steps. PFO test formally passed.

As the light faded, we realised we needed to make tracks if we wanted to eat that night. We headed to Laroque as they have a row of tourist trap restaurants. Takeaway pizza. But it was past 9pm when we got there. "Fini" came the reply from the chef.

No discussion. We had spied a caravan that had "pizza" written on the side, a mile back down the road, so we headed back there, and to our delight, he cooked us 3, Yes 3, pizzas in about 20 minutes flat. Joy of Joy, he also sold us 2 Pelforth Blondes.

Life is good on a day like that!

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