Day 4 - the "circle of death" + First Everest!

Tracey continues her mission to extract news from Jeremy when he'd rather be eating his dinner...


Today was "bloody hard" - but not as hard as yesterday. Hopefully that's positive?!

The guys did another 100km today - it could have been a little shorter, but it included a 1.5km detour to look at the Cirque de Lescun - the peak above the town. Sounds like it was spectacular and well worth the extra trip.

Frist the group had to go North so they could go over the Col de Marie Blanque. This climb is notorious because of that lovely increase in slope as you get near the top, but was actually not as bad as yesterday's long and unrelenting climb. I wasn't sure if Jeremy sounded just a touch disappointed that the monster didn't have quite the teeth they expected!

The next section featured 16km of continuous climbing up to the Col d'Aubisque, though at "gentler" slopes than the previous killer climbs. When the first 2 members of the party reached the top of that one, they realised there was a big storm coming at them. The road there is on a narrow ledge set into the side of the cliff, with the odd tunnel, spectacular to cycle, but not a good place to get caught doing a descent in bad weather. That meant that by the time John H arrived, he only had time for the absolute minimum break before they had to head off to try to beat the worst of it, but he soldiered on gamely. To add insult to injury, as John C took pic of support-driver Roy at top of the Aubisque. on of the horses in the field behind him pinched his emergency banana from his back pocket!

The last col of the day, Col de Solour, was actually still on the cliff-top ride, so the guys didn't have to go through the entire pain that reaching the top of a 1474m can provide. However they discovered that it would have been possible to give themselves a bit more of a workout as when they got there, they met up with 2 women and a man who had just cycled up to the peak by all 3 of the approach roads it had to offer, all on the same day! That meant that the trio had made 3000m of climb and done over 100km of cycling, just for a bit of a jolly. The guys were also somewhat chastened when they saw that the other group were clearly in their late forties or early fifties. Clearly living near mountains keeps you young!

Sounds like this evening was quite cushy, as the group are in a posh hotel that does "amuse bouches" between courses, and the chef provided a special pasta dish because they were cyclists! Even more luxury as Jeremy and Paul had massage sessions with 2 sports physios (both male, I was assured!), one of whom works with Tour de France cyclists. The other two decided rest would do them more good.

Tomorrow is a bit easier - only 60km on the road and less strenuous ups. This is actuallly billed on the itinerary as a "sightseeing day" and will give them a "rest" before the infamous Col de Tormalet on Saturday.

The 2400m of climbing the guys did today takes them past 10,000m total climbing so far - so that's the first Everest already in the bag! Congratulations guys - and all without the aid of oxygen!