Le Pilgrimage Gravel

Le Pilgrimage Gravel grew out of something its founder, Simon Rosmolen, noticed at every event he rode: the best moments came after the finish, when riders sat down together and traded stories. A Dutch former tour guide who settled in Puy-Saint-Vincent, he built the event with his longtime friend Cyril Chermin, a rider who has crossed continents by bike, and named it after Saint Roch, the patron saint of pilgrims.

Each stage leaves from the Hôtel Saint Roch, at the edge of the Écrins National Park, into country of long climbs, rough tracks, high lakes, glacier views, and old military roads and abandoned forts strung along the French-Italian border. Past editions have climbed to Fort Janus, a ruined fort at around 2,500 metres, ridden the Strada dell'Assietta and reached the Colle del Sommeiller, a dead-end gravel track rising to nearly 3,000 metres in Piedmont. The organisers refuse to water the routes down.

It is deliberately not a race: no timing, no rankings, no prizes. Riders fend for themselves on the mountain, but the checkpoints are built to slow everyone down, with fondue and local cheese or an Italian buffet at a mountain refuge, and each evening the group of around fifty riders, from about ten countries, comes back to the same long table, where Anne Pekelharing runs the kitchen. The last riders home tend to get the loudest applause.