Mountains of the Mind

Saddle Baggage - Reflections from the Road

To mark my recent milestone birthday, I gifted myself an adventure. I pedalled 2000 kilometres from my birthplace in Scotland to our home in France, via Bilbao, the Basque Country and the Pyrenees. Twenty-two days on a bike is plenty of time to wrestle some thoughts and ideas into shape; to gather and to let go. This is the first of a series, ‘Saddle Baggage’, reflections from an epic road trip.

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There’s something about mountains.

There is the physical thing, of course. They are immense. Huge. Immovable. A barrier. They are representative of something so much bigger than us. Defined by time. And mass. Significant in a way that makes us humans seem particularly insignificant. Mountains seem timeless, but unimaginably old. They whisper quietly of deep time. When we stand next to or upon them, we are nothing. We are a crumb, a speck, a mote. Paltry. Mountains are so massive we can never see the totality of them. Our view is never comprehensive, always incomplete. How can we know what they mean when we observe but the tip of the iceberg?

Humans give mountains names, as if to seek dominion over them, to assert ownership over something so much bigger than us. We try to make them of our world and yet we have nothing to offer them, no parity. Why, indeed, would a mountain bother with one of us, a here today/gone tomorrow human who scratches needily at the door of their existence. Mountains are unmoved by us. We are irrelevant in their grand scheme of things.

We are drawn to them but they remain indifferent.

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Take the Pyrenees. They are between 100 and 150 million years old. At the most conservative estimate, that represents 1,250,000 human lives stacked end to end. We are but a grain a salt.

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“Contemplating the immensities of deep time, you face, in a way that is both exquisite and horrifying, the total collapse of your present, compacted to nothingness by the pressures of pasts and futures too extensive to envisage. And it is a physical as well as a cerebral horror, for to acknowledge that the hard rock of a mountain is vulnerable to the attrition of time is of necessity to reflect on the appalling transcience of the human body.


Yet there is also something curiously exhilarating about the contemplation of deep time. True, you learn yourself to be a blip in the larger projects of the universe. But you are also rewarded with the realization that you exist, as unlikely as it may seem.”

― Robert Macfarlane Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination

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Perhaps that is why the mountains lure us. We somehow need to measure ourselves against the might of the high hills. Climbers climb to ‘conquer’ mountains. But do we beat them; even match them?

I pedal towards a mountain with a name and a reputation. It is a navigational accident; a quirk of route finding that has found me in a place I had no idea I was heading for. I programmed a ‘there’ to ‘there’ cycle ride and here I am, inching upwards, waiting for a moment when the proper cyclists turn left or right, when they will pedal harder, surging to the steeper gradients that define man’s measurement of this particular leviathan. A roadside board bears the mountain’s given name and announces its mythical status.

Col d-Aubisque the board reads.

This sign tells you how much further there is to go and what you can expect in the next kilometre. Eleven kilometres to go. Don’t worry, it is only 4%. Press on, Barrie, the real cyclists - the ones looking at you sympathetically as they shout “Bon courage” over their shoulder - will head for the proper climb any moment now leaving you to potter on in the foothills.

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Playing with your mind

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They didn’t turn off though, did they? Like me, they pressed on. Like me they laboured as temperatures soared, heat caught in the oppressive bowl created by the peaks, searing warmth reflected back from bare cliffs polished by millennia.

Mountains. Don’t look up. They sneak inside your head. Mess with your thoughts, frame your internal dialogue. Mountains are pesky like that. I was just out for a ride. From ‘there’ to ‘there’. But now I am here. Was it only yesterday that a friend asked if I was taking on any legendary Tour de France climbs. “No I am not,” I spluttered back, “it’s a long game, these multi-day adventures, and I need my legs for tomorrow, the next day, and another 10 days after that”. No iconic climbs, no way. And yet … here I am, Col d’Aubisque. Pretty much as legendary as they come.

The clues were all there. I have a photo of the climb profile, a screen grab from my GPS device. I have already been cycling for 3 hrs 16 mins and 53 secs. It is 11.51 on 10 June and the rainbow hues of the symbology suggests ‘there will be trouble ahead’ … yellow is pretty steep, red is potential bike-pushing territory. The device tells me there is 15.41 kilometres of yellow-shaded gradients (all above 9% gradient) ‘flattening’ off to 7%. I try not to look, but your gaze is drawn up inexorably. It is hot too. Too hot. Laruns … to Eaux-Bonnes … 34 minutes for a mere 4.8 kilometres. I stop in the square for lunch, connect with JoJo on a video call. I am pretty upbeat, I recall, giddy even. An hour and a half later, 7.8 kilometres further up the road (up the ridiculous hill I find myself pedalling), the ski resort of Gourette offers sanctuary in the shape of a mountainous bowl of frîtes, Coca Cola and water bottle refills. A little further on, after nearly 5 hours of cycling, I have only covered 68 kilometres and with the temperature showing as 32 degrees I reckon there’s about a third of the climb to go. There are fewer other cyclists. It is just me, and the indifferent mountain. It is humbling to be so insignificant. I was sending messages to JoJo, to feel a connection. I tell her I am having one last stop, 1.5 kilometres from the summit, another cold coke (charmingly, I announce that I am “sweating like a yak in Bermuda” … cute). A while later, I announce that I am at the top, there’s a grinning (grimacing?) picture to prove it … 25 kilometres downhill I announce, cheerfully, little realising that Col du Soulor awaits a little further down the road, through two tunnels engineered into the mountain’s thick skin. Climb, climb, the mountain murmurs. When you’re ready, I have all the time in the world.

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Col d’Aubisque (June 2025)

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Seen initially from a distance, mountain ranges appear eminently conquerable. Move closer and it becomes apparent that this first impression is completely skewed. Foothills emerge, peaks begin to tower, the landscape starts to rise and surround you. Eventually, in the highest ranges, the peaks seem inaccessible. ‘You see them and admire them,’ said Sir Edmund Hilary. ‘In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.’

Peter Cossins Alpe d’Huez - Cycling’s Greatest Climb