The original plan was to get here and ride up the Col de Tormalet in the Pyrenees, South France, actually on the border of France and Spain. If nothing else, this trip has been a lesson in geography of Europe, I love it.
Driving in, the weather was sketchy, Monday, best day of the week with a mistake on our part leaving the bikes locked in a hotel storage locker. Bad for riding but did give us a chance to explore and drive to Lourdes for a side sight-seeing trip that was worthwhile.
Tuesday, awoke to cool and rain, looking like rain all day and in fact did turn to rain all day. Breakfast for me, spa day for Bushy. They have some kind of healing spa like showers and massage here we didn’t know much about prior to being here. Should have figured with a hotel name with “Thermes”. We drove into town, 5 minutes away to get to the post office to ship some luggage home and lighten our load at the airport. Busy post office in the morning sent us to find the tourist info and ask about a laundry place. The tourist info was a bit weak, only French spoken and the directions were not quite so understandable. Back again to get a city map and eventually found the place only about 3 blocks from the tourist info, very small town. Another couple of hours with the last laundry day and back to the hotel for a made in our room pasta lunch. Down again to the post office and with some language related ups and downs we both got boxes of stuff shipped out. Hope that helps with the airport check in.
We put our bikes together earlier in the morning so now it’s ride time, in the light misty rain along a route we found on our Monday drive around. West out-of-town but into the weather we rode for about 25 minutes and then decided to turn around, just kept getting wetter. Back through town and then east out-of-town on a new quite road we found along a ridge and through some more very small towns. Up the road goes, like most around here and eventually we decided to return again, the weather closing in on us. Now back to town into a heavier rain fall, not bad, relatively warm. The last couple of hundred meters probably the toughest up to our hotel at the top of the road. Shower and dinner plans at a local Vietnamese place we saw the first day we drove in.
Wednesday, cloudy but still dry in the morning, breakfast, massage for Bushy and a ride plan at 11:00 along the same ridge we did yesterday which eventually rides towards Le Mongie and the Tormalet, I think we are done with huge climbs, just a 2 hour ride planned to get up towards the Tormalet and then back.
We still have to clean up and pack the bikes and all our other luggage for the last time here in Europe, tomorrow is an 8 hour drive to Paris to find the first hotel we stayed at near Charles de Gaul airport and then Friday we board the planes for our trip back to the USA, the Euro adventure coming to an end, so sad.