COVER N.165 - FRANCE
Postmark: 58 - Corsigny - Nievre 14.09.2022
Posted on the 14th September; received on the 20th September 2022
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Mr. Postman, my friend, rides a motorcycle these days, but I still remember seeing the CTT (Portuguese Post) or the Portuguese Marconi boletineiros cycling across Lisbon traffic to deliver telegrams and other urgent mail...
They were good, hey had to be.. Lisbon is known as the city of the 7 hills and although none of them is higher that the Col du Tourmalet, it wasn't an easy task, especially considering that they did so in uniform... Marconi even had its own cycling team that I think also competed in the Volta a Portugal (The Portuguese Tour).
Thank you so much Jean-Pierre for this letter embellished with two great stamps (and also thanks for the felines inside they were truly appreciated!)
Le Portet d'Aspin, L'Alpe d'Huez, le Col du Galibier....le Col du Tourmalet....names that are synonymous with overcoming our own human nature just by relentlessly turning round and round two pedals connected to a sprocket wheel that in turn drives a chain that drives another sprocket wheel and makes the body dangling on the two wheeled contraption go forward, little by little, faces tinted with a mascara of pain and resolve...
That's cycling at its best... that's the classic of the classics, the Tour the France, that's the climb of the Tourmalet, the high mountain peak that has featured the most times on the yearly menu of the Tour, 83 times, to be precise, ever since the first time it was included in the famous race, in 1910.
Located in the Central French Pyrenees, in the Hautes-Pyrénées department the ascent to the top implies17,2 km with a medium 7,4% slope on the West bank or 18.8 km on the East side, its slope also averaging 7.4%... not for little children...
I took a look at the list of winners at the top of the Col and lo and behold, amidst the familiar names that one will always associate with the epic times of cycling, (long before carbon fibre frames and wheel rims and complex gear mechanisms that make the high competition bicycle today a rocket science issue), such as Raymond Poulidor, Loucien Van Impe, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Thévenet (strangely could not find Jaques Anquetil ) I found the name of a fellow countrymen that I confess I had never heard of, the hero of my childhood days having been Joaquim Agostinho: José Manuel Ribeiro da Silva (1935 – 1958... damn!... did he depart early.. a motorbike accident being the culprit).
Ribeiro da Silva won at the Col in 1957, a good year for him since he also won the Volta a Portugal (the Portuguese Tour) a feat he had already accomplished in 1955.
Celebrating the mythical Col du Tourmalet, on 11JUL 2022, La Poste issued the beautiful 1,16€ stamp that was used on my cover, featuring a view of the road to the mountain, which can be seen on the background, with a reckless cyclist in the foreground, starting the difficult ascent.
La dune du Pilat is the highest moving dune in Europe, and it is located at the entrance of the Arcachon bay, in the Biscay gulf.
With a total area of 87 hectares and extending over a total length of, 2,7 Km, being made of some 60,000,000 m³ of wind blown sand, its height above sea level was 106,6 m, in 2018. Since it is always growing, it must be a bit higher by now.
The dune is a famous tourist attraction of the region, especially at sunset when flocks of sun worshipers climb the slope to watch the famed and well promoted Dune du Pilat sunset....
Guess who one of those tourists was in 2014 (man how time flies....) and I have proof of it...
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