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  • Riding the Pyrenees

    21:03 on October 8, 2009 | 7 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , , , Pyrenees

    Well, we came here to do it and now it’s done, today we set off from Tarbes in the morning and headed towards the Pyrenees, we knew we wanted to duck down, find some nice roads for a bit and then head up again so we could make our way to Andorra, boy did we find some nice roads.

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    We’ve now ridden the Col du Tourmalet (one of the main routes in the Tour de France, you know the one with all the writing on it) and the Col d’Aspin. It’s hard to describe exactly what these roads are like to ride and I don’t know if pictures would ever do it justice but… wow, I’ve ridden some good roads and I can’t really say anything else but these are now among them, simply amazing.

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    I feel so much better about this trip now that we’ve ridden these roads, I feel like I’ve achieved a personal goal and as ever with riding these types of roads improved my riding. I also feel so proud of Gen; she has overcome her fears and ridden these roads with me, it’ll give her so much more confidence on the bike now which is fantastic!

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    It seems we found a hotel just in time tonight, we got here in with sun and blue sky, I just had a shower and now I’m out we’ve got thunder, lightning and heavy rain, perfect timing to end an absolutely perfect day.

    Cumulative Miles: 1,422.3

     
  • A taste of what's to come

    22:27 on October 7, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , , , Pyrenees

    We started off today in the middle of nowhere, we were in a campsite where, last night we had met a Swiss traveler who had done a spot of translating for us, he could only tell us that the shop was closed and we’d be going hungry that night, but it was a translation none-the-less!

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    We spent the first part of the day riding on some fantastic D roads (namely the D918 and D933) from my best roads motorcycle atlas and then decided that we had gone south too early and that if we were going to get anywhere today it would probably be best to go back up onto an Autoroute to travel east and then we could potentially come back down when we got closer to the Pryenees, so that’s exactly what we did. Riding was fantastic this morning and even the Autoroute wasn’t too bad, I don’t think anything could be when you have the Pyrenees as scenery.

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    We’re now in a… you can probably guess by now… Premiere Classe just outside of Tarbes which if you look at a map you’ll see is directly above the Pyrenees. Tomorrow the plan is to ride south into the mountains and then make our way east towards Andorra… if we find ourselves making slow progress we’ll jump back up to a faster road again. I’m annoyed that we went too far south yesterday as we could’ve got to Pau and gone to the Pyrenees from there but I’m also happy that we camped, met our Swiss translator and are where we are now, ready to ride south into the mountains I came here to see!

    Cumulative Miles: 1,226.3

     
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