Col des Bordères
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| A view of the valley from the shoulder of the first climb |
(An aside: if you notice that some images are very slow to load, please let me know: I forgot to resize and compress photos for the first section before I started assembling the post and decided to press on with those images in their original format. They will probably be clearer this way, but if it's a pain waiting for stuff to load tell me and I'll make sure I resize and compress all photos next post.)
It's early morning. Rain is falling heavily and it's going to last right through the day, so this is a good opportunity to get up to date with the blog.
Day 4 of our stay here in Argelès looked like another good opportunity to go up into the alpine but both Dianne and I thought we ought not bite off too much before our legs started getting used to being on the bikes again. To that effect, we chose a climb that, on paper, looked at about the same level of difficulty as the Col d'Aspin. Although the Bordères loop has about the same amount of climbing it proved to be a little harder than the Aspin, but more of that later.
I like maps, and I know at least some of you reading this must also like maps, so here IS a map and profile of our ride around the Bordères loop:
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| Col des Bordères clockwise |
For a more graphic representation of rides that have a bit of hilliness about them, I occasionally like to use a program called Veloviewer. Here is a nice representation of the climbing involved in Col des Bordères:
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| Col des Bordères as seen by Veloviewer |
The ride started off very gently, with just under 5 kms of spinning along the valley floor, allowing us to get nicely warmed up - which was just as well.
Early in the ascent we came through a village and past a couple of other cyclists who were also on their way up to the col:
The early climbing too was moderate, and brought us up towards a pretty little town perched above the valley floor:
I really love riding into and through small towns and villages in France, and managed to shoot a little video of the approach into this first town along the climb:
The town itself was very pretty:
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| Rolling into the town square |
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| Given there is a "Bistot de l'Abbaye, we thought here must be an abbey in this town |
For a kilometre or two the road gradually rose in front of us which was very nice, with some attractive houses, barns and landscape in general ...
but then the serious climbing started. There were sustained sections of 8 - 10 %, then some of 10 - 12 % and towards the end a couple of ramps of 15%. No stops for photos here, thank you very much! But eventually we did get to the top and Di took this photo for the record:
For a few hundred metres the start of the descent was quite moderate but then the fun started:
A very short bit of flat ground followed and took us past a beautiful old Roman bridge, where a couple were tucking into an early lunch:
Shortly after we rode through another town which was at the beginning of a flat section before the long descent back to Argelès-Gazost:
The descent into Argelès was a nice open fast one ...
.. and when we arrived we were delighted to find that there was an eatery open where we were able to get a really good lunch. Here's a photo of the first thing we wanted to ingest upon our arrival:
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| This local beer was very, very good and hit the spot perfectly! |
I'll let you judge for yourself how Di felt about our ride. I think she was delighted but when our good friend Michael saw this photo he wasn't sure she was grimacing at the memory of those ramps of 15% or whether she was delighted tell me that if I was going to do a bit more riding to make the most of the day I would be doing it on my lonesome.
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| What do you think? |
Le Chemin des Cascades
One of the things high on Di's list of things to do while we're here in the Pyrenees was to walk down from Pont d'Espagne to Cauterets along the Gave du Marcadeau:
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| Chemin des Cascades |
The back story is that we walked down to Pont d'Espagne then caught the bus down to Cauterets in 2010 when we were doing our traverse of the Pyrenean Haute Route. We had need of much better footwear if we were going to be able to finish our traverse. On the way down to Cauterets on the bus we were gobsmacked at the magnificence of the river alongside us. Di noticed people walking alongside the far shore of the river and made it clear that was something she'd like to experience if we ever had the chance again. Our friend Matthias from Freiburg in Germany had arrived the night before and was happy to join us for the hike.
Here is our first impression of the bridge and the river flowing beneath it ...
... and here's another early look ...
Despite being rather rough in places the hike alongside the river was magnificent:
At one point another stream joined the main river course:
Di took a terrific photo of this stand of trees:
and another of a small clump of herbs growing beside the water's edge:
And also a nice photo of Matthias me as we strolled along a smoother section of track closer to Cauteret:
While the power of the river was most awesome up by the Pont d'Espagne, the section that delighted me the most was this one:
There were some interesting old structures toward the end of the route, which alluded to a bygone era:
Another visit to Luz Saint Sauveur
After having done our hike we returned to Agelès and found that the weather had improved significantly: it was warming up and the sun was almost breaking through the clouds. With a very ordinary forecast for the next day (which is now today) we decided to ride up to Luz Saint Sauveur as Di had also earmarked this as one of the destinations she'd like to visit by bike and Matthias was game for anything.
Even in the photo below you can see two cyclists off in the distance:
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| I loved this old stone building so much. I wonder how old it is and how long it has had electricity |
Matthias has gone to the front to help out but unfortunately he has been a bit too enthusiastic. I'll tow Di back up to him if I can.
There was one tunnel we rode through and this gallerie - which we would call a snowshed in Canada.
I stopped to let Matthias and Di go past so that I could shoot a little video of them riding through:
We discovered this giant bike sculpture while tooling around in Luz upon arrival. More evidence - along with displays of historic and heroic exploits - that cycling is a deeply embedded in the local culture.
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| You must be able to see how delighted Matthias is to be here in this hotbed of cycling culture |
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| A view of the entrance of the Eglise des Templiers: quite austere, isn't it? |
One of the sights of Luz Saint Sauveur that Dianne and I wanted to revisit was the Hotel des Templiers, where we stayed for two nights as a break before starting the third section of our hiking traverse of the Pyrenees in 2010. It was a lovely, friendly place to spend a couple of nights, especially in this gorgeous town. The hotel was owned by an Australian woman and her French husband. I dropped in to see if they were still there but no-one was at the desk or hovering around the ground floor.
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| L'Hotel des Templiers in Luz Saint Sauveur |
There was something that Di wanted for her bike, so when we arrived at the top of the entrance to Argelès we dropped in at Cycl'In, where they had this penny farthing in mint condition. They didn't have what Di wanted but we got something else we needed, which made our visit worthwhile - and gave us the unexpected pleasure of seeing this beautiful machine:
