Steve's Cycling Blog

There was rather a lot of rain in the night, but by the time we were getting up this morning it had thankfully stopped and the wind had done a reasonable job of getting our tents dry.

Today was very much a day of two distinct parts. The first 80km was down the river valley on a reasonable paved road, the second was over a 2800m pass on gravel.

Stage 51 rider notes

It felt pretty cold when I was packing everything up so I had multiple layers on when I left, but I soon warmed up – particularly with the 100m climb just after we’d left. The next 65km were pretty dull on the whole – I find long straight stretches of road with little by way of up, down, left or right kind of drive me a little crazy so at about 65km I stopped, ate the sandwich I brought from breakfast and waited for Grant and Jackie to catch up with me (I’d passed them earlier on when they’d taken a break) just to have someone to ride with for the remaining 15km to lunch.

The gravel from the bridge, past lunch and on to a small town was pretty rough which made progress slow. An unexpected short sharp hill improved things somewhat and I caught up with Jackie at the top of that (her and Grant had left lunch before me). We then met up with Grant in a village which had a small shop so a litre of lemonade was added to the fluid intake – by now it was getting pretty warm so keeping drinking was important.

From the edge of town we could see up to where we were going to end up

Looks like a bit of a climb in our future

From near the top looking back you could see the town

Where we’ve been

Though gravel the road surface wasn’t too bad as I began climbing. At times the grade got as high as 13%, but was mostly around 5 to 9% – manageable but hot work made harder by a pretty blustery wind which at least half the time was right in our faces. I lost count of how many switchbacks there were in the climb but it was somewhere around 15 before crossing out of the valley we’d been in and into the next. The climbing wasn’t quite done at that point and the next 2km to the top were tough going into the wind.

On the map this pass didn’t have a name so Richard (the first) has named it Oisin Pass after his grandson – he collected stones and spelt out the name at the top for all to know!

I also had a chat with two German cycle tourists who are on a self-supported trip from Dushanbe to Bishkek (so they’re nearing the end of their adventure) – they’ve been having an enjoyable time. One interesting thing they mentioned was that much of the Pamir Highway is now paved – not great pavement, but pavement none-the-less. This is different to what I understood which was that it was all unpaved. I guess in a couple of weeks I’ll know for sure 🙂

Down the other side was harder than it should have been – for one it seemed much rougher which may just have been a factor of going faster, but the wind was also significantly stronger and a much more consistent head wind. At one point I was having to pedal despite a 4% downward gradient just to maintain a decent speed.

Into camp and it’s a pretty fine spot. We’re in a narrow valley which is helping keep the worst of the wind out, plus there are loads of trees for shade and a small river to wash off in.

A number of people have just come in by van having decided that today was too much for them including Pär who seems to be constantly in the wars (of one sort or another) who has taken a fall and injured himself.

I’ve got my tent up in the shade, have had a wash in the river, and am now well and truly ready for dinner though this has been pushed back to 1800 to allow those still out on the road a little more time to get in. The good news is that breakfast tomorrow has also been pushed back to 0600 – it was pretty dark this morning as we were getting up, and in this valley it’s going to be even later before the sun gets to us.

Riding data

View from my tent

Dusk from my tent