Why Borne Cycling? For those of you who don’t speak French, you might think I’m pretty awful at spelling.
But there’s a reason for that “e”. A borne is the French term for a distance marker. A milestone in English.
And these distance markers are everywhere in the alps. Especially when you’re climbing a mountain road.
These bornes help us tick off the kilometres to a summit or a col. They measure our (often slow) progress to the top. They allow us to break up a climb into smaller chunks – giving us the reassurance that we’re getting somewhere.
And they’re sometimes the bringers of bad news.
For example, when you see one like this …
Just an easy 11% for A WHOLE KILOMETRE
A borne like this tells you you’re in for a tough few minutes, and you really hope the percentage gradient on the following one is lesser.
Unfortunately, on our most local climb, Le Salève, this isn’t often the case. Especially if you climb it from Le Coin.
Here you can expect 4.6km at an average of 11%. Tough. And those bornes feel like they’re placed much further apart than a kilometre.
Unmute for bonus heavy breathing
Our good friend Alfie runs the Steel Wheelers cycling club – which probably has the shortest (distance wise) group ride in the world. Every Wednesday they meet at Le Coin and ride up this very climb for a beer (and maybe a burger) at the top.
Like anything worth doing, this climb is hard, but the views from the top are sensational. And from the top you can choose to descend one of 4 or 5 ways. If you’re feeling sprightly you can also then check out the bornes on some of the other routes up the mountain, all of which have their own character and special views.
Making it up the Salève was really a milestone in my cycling journey, I can still vividly remember both stating that I would “never climb that on a bike”, and then the first time I tried it, turning around about halfway up the climb from Etrembieres when I saw the brutal steepness of what lay ahead (and had it confirmed to me by the statistics on the borne).
I’m sure you all have your own relationships with climbs and the bornes that mark them out. Ultimately what they represent to me are progress, and they confirm to me that I’m getting somewhere (however slowly that might be!)
An arty borne from the Col de la Madeleine
The website will soon have a page dedicated to bornes, so if you’ve got any photos of ones you would like to see featured – and stories associated with them – don’t hesitate to send them through to paul@bornecycling.com