Tuesday, June 21st –Bielle to Bielle
Today would be the only day on the trip where we didn’t have to move to a different hotel, which was nice. Sometimes trips work out where you have to move around a lot, and sometimes you can work in multiple days from a single base hotel.
We needed gas before heading out to the mountains, and the first station turned out to be a bust. Peter could not make the pump start, even with help from other bikers and drivers. We moved aside, and the folks behind us couldn’t get it working either. We rode a few KMs into town and pulled over to find an alternate gas station. We were there just a couple minutes when the bikers from the first gas station pulled up and waved us to follow them. A few minutes later we were led to another gas station, with a lovely attendant who filled us all up in one transaction.
We had tasked Peter today to see if we can go a whole day without a U-turn. That lasted approximately 10 minutes when we left the station heading the wrong way.
Our hotel for 2 nights, although we actually stayed in the carriage house
My room
How many bikers does it take to pump gas?
I don’t have a great set of notes from the early part of this day - D294 west, then D918 to Arrete then south on D132 towards La Pierre Saint Martin. A fair amount of riding through a crappily paved road through a valley, lots of forest, more cows in the road, some horses as well. At one point Peter was being frustrated by a VERY slow Opel Speedster up a pass, which became known as the Slowpel.
Col de La Pierre Saint Martin
Coming down the pass we started to see signs in Basque as well as Fench and Spanish
Before we stopped for lunch we checked out a small lake by a dam
Dave enjoyed being out on the swingy bridge on the other side of the dam. I enjoyed taking a picture of him.
At our lunch stop in Larrau we saw the Elises go by again
After lunch it was down D26 and into Spain on NA-2011. I was hoping to get a group pic of the bikes by a “Welcome to Spain” sign, or the flip-side “Welcome to France”, but these were nowhere to be found. Really had no idea when we crossed from one to the other, other than the roads started to improve. In general they were wider, with better more consistent pavement, felt almost like the Swiss passes. I found that I could relax more and just get on with enjoying the ride rather than being so concerned with crappy road quality and ‘gravillons’.
“Are we in Spain?”
Damn, there they are again!
Dave (or maybe Peter, I can’t even tell!) is a speck in the distance going up NA140
Gorgeous scenery here
Peter
Looking back on NA140
Near the summit looking down
NA140 was a very fun road
“Did I pick a good route today guys?”
Finally got to speak to the Elise owners – a mother and her son (or, perhaps, a couple…) drove them over from the UK because “UK roads are terrible, too crowded!”. One has a supercharged Toyota motor, the other a heavily modified Rover engine and suspension work. They highly recommended the Goodwood Revival the next time we were in the UK.
Like us, they were using radios to keep in touch. For the most part, the Sena 20s’s were doing a great job keeping the 3 of us connected. Occasionally we would have someone drop out and not be able to auto-reconnect, usually when they were far out of range for quite a while. Once we were all together again Dave would tap his iPhone a few times (there’s an app for that!) and we’d all connect. Battery life is insanely good on these – even with all day riding and being “live” the whole time the units would indicate 3/5 or 4/5 charge remaining at the end of the day.
Crossing back into France (someplace apparently, because there were no signs) NA137 turned into D132 (Col de Labays). We agreed to do our usual “see you at the bottom of the pass” thing so we could all do our own pace and stop for pictures and such. I took off and had a great time heading downhill, lots of variety of turns, not all switchbacks. Got to the a good spot once the curves ended and waited for Dave and Peter. When they did show up I was surprised when Peter said we missed the turnoff for our route - I hadn’t noticed any branches off the pass and felt guilty for going so far off route. We backtracked, with GPS-focused Peter in the lead, and 10 or 15 minutes later up the mountain Peter pulled over and noted we missed the turnoff again. Hmmm. To be honest, I think Dave and I were pretty doubtful this other road actually existed, so we sent Peter back to find it himself. He returned 10 minutes later – “follow me!”.
I wish I would have gotten a picture of the place where the road branches off the main pass – it looked more like someone’s driveway than a road you would take country-to-country. It did indeed turn out to be the road he had plotted (D441 for those keeping score). At times more goat-path than mountain pass, it was quite narrow and deep in the forest. While I hated the pavement (a common issue for me, I really like a nice clean road) I was actually enjoying the change of pace from the typical pass we’d been doing. Deeper and deeper into the forest we went, not seeing any other vehicles, we were very surprised when Peter said our ETA to the hotel was only 30 minutes. It just didn’t seem possible.
This sure doesn’t look like a major road back to France
“Are you SURE this is the right way?”
Of course, more cows
Sure enough the forest road emptied into a town and a highway, and we made some time for a few minutes. We found ourselves back on D294, the first road we took today, and had no recollection of it whatsoever. I think this makes it the “least memorable pass of the trip”.
We got back to the hotel about an hour after the “30 minutes to go” proclamation, and made an executive decision to worry about gas tomorrow rather than spending more time on the bikes today. Temps had been close to 90 today and Dave and I were pretty wiped out.
Peter looking very vindicated that he was always right about what road to take. Dave looking very tired. As was I.
I forget what kind of mousse this was, but it was fantastic
Done for the day
Part 1 of the route. I can’t get Google maps to connect D26 and NA140
Part 2
