Of course we wanted to do the biggest climb in the area! I thought it would be best to tackle it the second day, after a little warm-up day, as I hadn't been on a bike in a month...
It was cloudy and cold when we woke up, but thought the sun was sure to break through soon and burn off the clouds.
We chose to take our video camera this day, so without going into too much more detail, I'll post the clips...
Well just at that very moment, a local rode by, he had descended Col d'Aspin, so I eloquently conversed with him in French, (impressing nobody except myself) and he said "Pas de problemes!" So we started to climb. Now Aspin is not a terribly crazy hard climb, but if you've ever been to Cypress on cold rainy day, you'll understand that it's not the going up that disconcerting... it's the going down.
At the top of Aspin, we bought some meat and cheese... of course! Isn't that what you would expect? A farmer selling his beautiful wares, from May until October everyday at the top of the mountain. Actually there were quite a number of tourists, who drive up and go for hikes, or just have a picnic with lots of cheese and meat and bread (since that's all they eat in France). But there were no picnics this day, too gross out. As we had sweated it out on the way up, it didn't take long to get really cold at the windy summit.
So again, I chatted and made jokes with the farmer, who loved that we were Canadian, at first he thought we were British. He wanted to know why I spoke French and not Colin, and that I should charge him for lessons, he made fun of Colin, for only knowing one French word - OUI. He also said it would be madness to ride up the Tourmalet today...
I was shivering before we even started our descent.
To make a long story short, we descended for 30k! It was a long windy, way to the base, into a town. I was crying and shivering so hard I was convulsing. I also had long lost any sensation in my arms and legs (notice I am not saying "hands and feet"!). I called out to Colin who was ahead of me, to stop. We found a little restaurant, and I pulled out the number to call Julie and Ian, I needed to know if there was a shortcut back home, because there was NO WAY I was climbing up another mountain!
Unfortunately there was no short way home, it would be another 70k home...
We didn't do the Tourmalet, we were bummed, but there was no way we could have, we had no proper jackets, no long tights, no gloves... unprepared for how unbelievably hot it could be one day then how cold it was the next! To think I had put on sunscreen in the morning!!
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