Can’t quite believe we’ve been on the road for 29 days. It’s weird – it’s sort of gone quickly but when we think about our first few days in France, that seems to of happened months ago.
Another sunny and warm day shone upon us as we slowly rose and did our morning ablutions and routine. After breakfast, we left our lovely little aire and set off – we were going to climb the Col du Tourmalet albeit in the Van.
https://climbfinder.com/en/climbs/col-du-tourmalet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Col_du_Tourmalet
We have been keen fans of the Tour de France since the 1990’s and try our best to follow it on television. We always watch in awe as these elite cyclists race up some of the highest peaks in the Pyrenees and Alps, which the Tourmalet features regularly, up slopes that we just can’t appreciate. We drove south down to the pretty town of Luz Saint Sauveur. The valleys here were narrow and deep, the mountains so tall that you could only view their peaks through the Van’s skylight. Then it would widen out into little meadows as different valleys converged. Just such amazing scenery.
We drove through Luz Saint Sauveur (briefly stopping at a Carrefour for that milk I couldn’t get last night) which was reasonably busy with people and onwards to Bareges, steadily climbing the foothills of Tourmalet. The houses started to look like their Alpine counterparts and we heard our first alpine bells.
The pull up to the Col du Tourmalet was steady, with hairpins and the most jaw dropping views. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, just a brilliant blue back drop behind craggy and jagged ridges, which made it even more stunning. We weren’t sure whether to take photos or just stare. There were intermittent roadworks all the way up, and near the summit, they were reinforcing the edges of the road with massive boulders. There wasn’t much room to pass and we gingerly edged past them, getting closer to the edge than we were comfortable with and where workmen nonchalantly watched their colleagues – just one step back and pooft, gone! Diggers filled huge dumper trucks with earth and stone, then the trucks drove a bit further up the road and turned around. We had already met one coming down and fortuitously the road widened enough for him to slide past – it was rock on one side and a precipitous drop on the other with no safety barrier……
We overtook a few cyclists, hard men (and women) dressed in Lycra and not a single electric bike to be seen – this was the easy side (Tour de France riders come screaming down this side). Ski lifts criss-crossed over this treeless landscape with far reaching views across to other peaks and mountain ranges. And still we climbed. We looked down to the ribbon of tarmac that we had just driven up, wending its way up the mountain. It was truly staggering.
We turned the final corner and suddenly we were summiting the Col du Tourmalet (there is higher point with some sort of radar station on top, but this was the famous Tour de France pass). There was a stone cladded building on one side and opposite a small restaurant bar and just beyond a dusty car park. We had the chance of getting a spot in the car park, looking down the next valley, but a sneaky Frenchman nipped in there first with his Renault and we cursed. We parked up anyway and waddled back up the slight incline towards where the Col briefly peaks and immediately drops away again, a thin strip of embedded metal denoting the actual summit (there’s no plateau or a few metres of flatness) – and peered over the edge to take some “I’ve been here” photos. Motorcyclists watched as pedal cyclists panted around the corner and who then took each other’s photographs under a signpost declaring they had reached the top.
The views were truly astounding, but the Col itself was nothing to write home about – dusty tracks and rocky scree surrounded the two buildings and I was pleased that the main building was sort of sympathetic to its surroundings (it is a natural environment after all). So after about 15 minutes and a paper cup coffee, we nosed the Van off the car park and began 17 kilometres of descent – a vast ski resort with hotels and chalets nestling below the Col. Cyclists were also heading up, following their cycling heroes footsteps (well, tyre tracks) of the race route, looking remarkably fresh and unperturbed by their effort as if this was just a quick scoot around to warm up. More alarming were the cyclists who overtook us on their screamingly mad descent of the Tourmalet down more bendy roads and tight hairpins -if you came off here, you would do a pretty good impression of Wile E Coyote in RoadRunner. We were constantly pumping the brakes on the Van as there was no let up on the decline apart from little lay-bys. Eventually we arrived in the little village of Sainte Marie de Campan and found a shady spot under the trees to park, have a spot of lunch and let the poor Van’s brakes cool down.
We decided to drive northwards to Bagneres de Bigorre to have a wander around and a possible afternoon glass of wine. We drove down a wide valley, the mountains turning more into upland fells and becoming less dramatic – it was still very beautiful, through little hamlets lining the road. We arrived in Bagneres and began a search for a suitable parking spot for the Van. We have come to the conclusion that the average town or at least their centres, struggle for spaces that are big enough to take campervans unlike tourist towns and other honeypot areas. Parking was at a premium anyway in Bagnores as there was hardly any spaces, so we ended up one kilometre out of town, looking at a deserted aire surrounded car workshops and other low industry. Nope. So we went back into town, tried a couple of on road spaces (Van didn’t quite fit even with its bum overhanging the kerb), but finally came across an area that kind of worked and we walked the seven minutes into town. Bagnores had some nice little streets we wandered around, picked up a baguette at a patisserie, discovered that we had missed the indoor market, but as consolation found a nice little bar and sat outside nursing a couple of drinks, people watching and admiring the tall, elegant townhouses opposite. It was very warm – again in the mid twenties and we soaked up the sun. After a while, we sauntered back to Van and decided to head to our next campsite – we lose all sense of time and always looked startled when we look at our watches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagn%C3%A8res-de-Bigorre
The campsite was on the way to the Col d’Aspin, in the middle of nowhere – it was a few kilometres beyond Sainte Marie where we had lunch. It was a self check in, involving codes punched into keypads. It was basically a field split up into pitches with a central building housing a toilet and shower block and laundry facilities. A sort of upmarket aire cum campsite. It was just right. We found our pitch under a shady tree and set up home – we sat in the next pitch to catch the late afternoon sun before it disappeared behind a mountain. We then made some tea and walked the Pup around the site which seemed to be full of Husky dogs – maybe there’s a nearby Husky convention or maybe Husky racing, this was their kind of natural habitat to be honest. The sun dropped behind the mountain and took the heat with it as the Pup and I took one last evening walk down to the main road (well, six cars an hour type main road), passing a field of cows with collars and dangling bells. They watched us intently, the bells swaying, sending a cacophony of clanging metal across the road and I was glad we had a pitch at the other end.
We shut the world out for the night and relaxed. Just before bed, we chucked the dog out for a final wee and ended up both outside, staring agog at the night sky, full of twinkling stars. We thought we had a good night sky where we lived, but this had far more clarity, brightness and sharpness – we could even see the Milky Way amongst the thousands/millions of stars we could gaze at. It was so beautiful and amazing that we didn’t realise the aching of our craned necks or the creeping cold. Reluctantly we went inside and went to bed, coming to the conclusion that you must have to be born to be a cyclist (or possibly just bonkers) to even want to think about cycling up the Tourmalet to emulate your icons, let alone to be a professional. Our retired friend had recently cycled up the Alp d’Huez in the Alps on his pedal bike, taking two hours to reach the top, while the pros do it in about half an hour – I would of thrown my bike in the hedge on the first bend and retreated to the nearest bar. So I salute all these crazy cyclists! Chapeau!
