Another chance to tackle some difficult French countryside in the Pyranees. We were staying in a small "convenience" hotel mentioned in my previous blog about 10-15 miles south of Pamiers. Driving to Pamiers to start the route didn't make much sense, with morning traffic being difficult to navigate. We decided to join the stage further on, driving cross country to a point where the stage began some serious mountain climbing. This was the day we were going to tackle a truly difficult "HC" climb, and see how the big boys did it.
What a day. First, at our drop off point, the Garmin would not cooperate, refusing to load the Stage 15 track. It would "calculate" for about five minutes, then shut down. After about 1/2 hour fooling with it, we called Gwen for map directions, and headed down the highway to our first turn off into the mountains. At times the Garmin would show us the map, but it was having trouble getting started this day. We arrived about noonish at a small hotel at a road intersection, and found about 20 bicyclists sitting around the hotel's outdoor restaurant tables eating food and drinking beer. Apparently a tour group. First mistake was not joining in and have a little food before starting our climb. Second mistake was taking the wrong road out of the hotel junction. After climbing steadily for about two miles, the Garmin suddenly decided to start working, possibly just to indicate how stupid we were. The magenta line appeared suspiciously close to the hotel we had recently left. The good news was that returning to the hotel and then re-routing was all downhill, so we headed back to begin our climb anew. Reaching the hotel, I found it was now 2:05 and food service had ended at 2:00pm (That seems to be a very French thing, your stomach needs to follow a very specific schedule not set by yourself). After a few minutes I began to worry that Roy had not arrived, got on my bike and began peddling back up the wrong hill. (Any hill worth doing wrong once is, I guess, worth doing wrong twice.) About 1/4 mile up the road I ran into Roy walking down. He had blown a tire (not a tube.). The tire had signs of fatigue and failure. We found the only other restaurant to be open for beer, and, after much persuasion, they produced a loaf of bread and pate for us to eat while we swilled beer and went about fixing the tire. Because we carried tubes, but not tires, and the ladies were far away, we did what we could to form a tape patch inside the tire, install a new tube, and get running. The tire, with a minimum amount of air, was a little lumpy, but we hoped it would perform well. We were at the base of a 23 mile climb that was a going to be very difficult. We knew we wouldn't be riding fast, expecting to be in the 6mph to 8mph maximum up these 7%-10% inclines, so I was hoping the tire would hold out. It did.
That was some ride. About three hours up the hill, more like 24 miles, with a sign every 1km indicating how much further to the top, the average slope to the top, the altitude at the top, and the altitude at the sign. And, of course, the symbol for a bicyclist riding up a very steep slope. (Thanks for the reminder.) The ride up was pretty, one thing nice about travelling slow is you get a real feel for our surroundings. We followed a rather large creek up the hill with occasional waterfalls. A few fields, lots of forests, a few cottages the first half, but as we got farther up, signs of civilization disappeared. But, we were constantly made aware we were on the right route. This road was so seldom travelled by cars that the Tour signs still remained. Splashed across the roadway were crudely painted signs saying "Go, Andy", or "Live Strong. Go Lance Armstrong", or Contadora or any number of other team leaders in the Tour. We would run into these paintings constantly and marveled at the distinction between our journey, devoid of any human contact, with that of the Tour where these remote roads were lined with people, both sides, from bottom to top, reaching out to touch the riders moving at a much slower pace than in the flat lands, and cheering them on up a hill that no one in their right mind would try to climb to reach the top first. We stopped on a few occasions to rest, unlike these riders. I was amazed that more than a very small number didn't run out of gas tackling this monster. 4000' of climb in 23 miles. And, of course, we were in the middle of nowhere, and if that tire blew out, we would be forced to find some alternate way to the top and back down to Luchon where Gwen and Fran were waiting, or askthem to come all the way up that steep climb to pick us up.
We reached the top, Roy ahead of me by a few minutes, climbing like the animal that he is. (I prefer a more slow "relaxed" approach to climbing.) Now, things got tricky, because the downward leg was also about 20 miles, very steep, and we could build up very high speeds. That is not what we wanted for Roy's tire. And, any braking would cause tire friction against the road, further increasing the chances of a blow out. So...we took it slowly, going down, about 15-20mph. That meant constantly applying the brakes, and I found my hands getting tired from squeezing the brake levers. They wanted to be set free to swoop through the curves and navigate those "s" turns, but...we had no choice. About half way down, Roy's tire blew. By another one of our "miracles", it happened exactly 200' from the only signs of civilization we had yet seen - a very nice Chalet Hotel tucked away at an "S" turn in the road at a very small mountain village. Making the most of the situation, we decided to go into the hotel, get a beer, call Gwen and Fran to come and get us, and warm ourselves in the hotel lounge, where we were the only occupants. This place did most of its business during ski season, it was pretty vacant with only the occasional tourist wanting to do some mountain hiking.
What we didn't know at the time, was that we had stopped at the "hotel from hell". It was like, for us, one of those tv scare movies where your car breaks down and you end up spending time in some little town where everyone, eventually, wants to kill you...or whatever. Well...it probably wasn't all that bad, we met a very nice German lady touring French churches (or so she claimed...) Gwen and Fran arrived to pick us up, we loaded the bikes and headed for our lodging of the night. About 10 miles down the road Roy said "I think I left my sunglasses at the hotel." We decided we had gone too far to return, the glasses were not expensive, and we would forget them. When we got to our lodging 40 miles away and unloaded, we discovered that my bicycle Garmin was missing. We searched everywhere. Our host spoke excellent English, so we explained the situation to him the next morning, and he called the hotel. "No", they had not found the Garmin or sunglasses. We found this hard to believe since we could only have left them sitting in a small lounge, so Fran and I drove back the 40 miles to the hotel to inquire personally. "No, we did not find your things". And, when we suggested that maybe the afternoon or evening people would know something and we would like to leave a telephone number to reach us, they seemed totally uninterested. We finally forced my name and telephone number on them (they probably routed it directly to the waste paper basket). So...we felt we were dealing with at least one thief. And, of course, I found it almost impossible to believe I hadn't put the Garmin away in my pack, when removing it from the bicycle. Oh, well...our first reall bad experience in France and we were just going to have to live without the Garmin. I had grown fond of this little tool, it had served Roy and I well, and I knew I would miss it.
Our lodging was excellent, a bed and breakfast with Vincent. We would move on, glad that we had conquered an HC climb, but saddened by our loss.
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