As near as damn it to Carcassonne
2011 Part 4: Arreau to Trebes We were leaving Arreau today for Trebes, a commune close to the walled city of Carcassonne. To get there we essentially had two options. We could either ride up to La Barthe-de-Neste and then head due east past Saint-Girons – about a 4 hour ride. Or we could drop […]
Port de Bales and lunch in Saint-Lary
2011 Part 3: Port de Bales, Saint-Lary & Bagneres-de-Luchon There were no big miles planned today, just a pleasant 130 mile loop that was going to include a lunch stop in Saint-Lary at Auberge de l’Isard – where we stayed for a couple of enjoyable nights during our 2007 tour. Besides that our only other […]
Dipping into Spain and some classic Tour de France cols
2011 Part 2: Col d’Aubisque, Col du Soulor, Col du Tourmalet & Col d’Aspin Still a little weather obsessed after last year it was a relief to see that the Meteo France forecast we’d seen last night was spot on when we awoke this morning. We hadn’t really doubted that it would be sunny today […]
It’s good to be back in the Pyrenees
2011 Part 1: Bewdley to Plymouth Unlike last year’s wash out this year’s tour got off to a much more auspicious start. It was the usual starting point, Kyle’s house in the centre of Bewdley, and by the time everyone finally turned up a little after 10.30am it was already t-shirt weather without a cloud […]
Return to Santander and the ferry back home
2007 Part 4: Saint-Lary to Esterencuby Today saw us heading west across the Pyrenees to Esterencuby, about 5 miles from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. However we were split on how to get there. While Gaz and Pete preferred the most direct route, the rest of us decided to go the scenic way. Before we left Saint-Lary this morning […]
Urdos to Saint-Lary and a ride out to Andorra
2007 Part 3: Urdos to Saint-Lary We had quite a big ride planned today with our proposed route taking us over 6 passes. After our second pass of the day, the Pourtalet, we would be leaving France and spending pretty much the rest of the day in Spain. Once on the Spanish side we were […]
A plan comes together in Urdos
2007 Part 2: Collioure Today was the day that Phil, Chris, Gaz, Taj and Mark kicked off their tour and saw them riding down to Plymouth to catch the overnight ferry to Santander. It was also Cat’s birthday – the big one. Aside from a short 14 mile round trip to the supermarket so Pete […]