Aly s
Aly Spalding Joined: October 11th 2008
Logged in: August 8th 2010
Logged in: August 8th 2010
Travel Blog Posts
The end I’m writing this sitting on the train back to Edinburgh. It’s been a few days since I’ve been able to write anything but I’ll do my best to remember all the stories and events that have happened over the last few days...There are quite allot so I’m sorry if this turns out to be a huge post. So, after my last post we woke up and rode out of our camp spot to a town and bought fresh hot baguettes, which we promptly ate in the middle of the village. From there we made our way down the coast to get our 50kms out of the way before finding a beach to sit on for the afternoon. As we were loading our bikes after the beach I noticed that my rack had a serious ... read more
Day 8 Today feels like it has been very very long indeed. The day started off well, and we both knew that we had a solid hours ride to Mimizan then we could spend the rest of the day on the beach enjoying the sun. We rolled into town at around mid day and the thermometers were already reading over 30. With a completly clear blue sky we got down to the beach as fast as we could and into a prime sunbathing spot on the beach where we chilled untill around 6pm this evening. We then decided we should find a campsite and then find food and internet before eating. This proved the wrong combination of events. As we were sitting in Mc Donalds and soring out the internet we realised that the supermarket was ... read more
Day 13 As we awoke this morning we knew that it was the day we had been waiting for. The 1000km warm up was over! As we finished breakfast and started to work up to the col d’Abisque our legs were feeling and we were feeling good. As we reached the bottom of the climb there was a sign telling us that we had 1200m to climb up to a height of 1710m and that we had 16km of winding road that would get us there. We decided that the bikes wouldn’t get themselves up the hill so we better get peddling...That’s where the real work started. Climbing up a 10% incline on a fully carbon unweighted bike is one thing but climbing up on a fully loaded bike is another compleatly and the looks we ... read more
Day 14 Cycling away from camp this morning our legs felt as if they would fall off. We had decided to camp around 18km from the start of the climb, or so we thought. Within a few kms the road was climbing steadily and by the official start we had already climbed 210m, from 500 to 760. Now it was time for the real work to start. Today we went up and over the col du Tourmalet which is the heighst pass around at 2114m with 18km of ascent on our side. Standing at the bottom we had some 1200m still to climb and our legs felt as if they might not carry us all the way to the top. During the first half of the climb Stoph’s rack decided to break on one side but ... read more
Day 15 Today has been great! With only 3 hours between taking down the tent and putting it back up again. Must be some kind of record. Our legs are definatley appreciating it too. The day started pretty easily up a valley at a nice and relaxed angle, then the road decided to climb up onto the top of the col d’Aspen where we were greated with over friendly cows trying to lick the salt off of our faces, arms and hands. While i left my bike to take some pics one cow even licked the inside of my helmet so i had to wash it with the precious water i carried up the pass. After we had taken the traditional pics it was time to get down to Arreu where we found a small campsite ... read more
Day 16 From the map today should of been a bigger day than yesterday. However we reached the top of our col, the Col De Peryesourde, feeling like we had just done a warm up. Consequently we arived in Bagneres-De-Luchon feeling like we hadnt really ridden anywhere. Since we had time to kill we thought it would be a good idea to find a bike shop and get a new rack for stoph. We stopped at the first one we found and a really nice old french man found us a second hand rack and fitted it for us. It turns out that he knows the Scottish guy on the tour and knows lots of people in the French cycling scene. In the 20 mins we were there he boasted about knowing about 25 people involved ... read more
Day 17 Today has been a day that has been playing on our minds for a few days now and its great to have it ticked off. The day started with the usual baguette and chocolate spread combination outside a supermarket. From here we climbed over two small colls in brilliant sunshine before starting to do battle with our third and final col of the day. Although not the biggest col that we have been over it is the moast visious and it must of been around 30 degrease. Looking at the map its only about 9km of climbing but they 9km of intense pain and effort and we reached the top with a layer of sweat running off of us! Stoph said that he thought we re-defined sweatting today. The next stage took us into ... read more
Day 18 As we have come through the mountains it definatley feels like we have got fitter and stronger. Again today’s journey seems to have gone great, feeling quite like a warm up. By the time we were eating lunch today we had already done the bulk of the day’s work. Having climbed over the Col de Port and ridden up to a town called Ax les Thermes where we had lunch (at 4pm). After this we shopped for dinner then tried to find a campsite. It turned out that the only one that was close and that we could afford to stay in was ½ way up our last big mountain coll and so up we came to a really nice wee campsite, at our highest night time altitude of around 1000m. We had hoped ... read more
Day 21 Today has been great. We have decided that we have enough time that we only need to ride 50km a day to get us into barcelona by Thursday morning. So today’s 50km done before lunch we found a spot on a beach and spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach and swimming in the Med. Wow, this is the life. Its so hot and so sunny here it makes you just want to chill out. We went to try and find a campsite in a town called l’escotia but were told that to pitch our tiny tent would cost 41 euros. Thinking that we could spend the money much better on just about anything we stocked up on water and went in search of some wilderness to pitch our tent in. Around ... read more
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Day 7 We awoke today to a beautiful and clear sky. The sun came over the horizon at around 8am and started to dry the heavy dew that had fallen over night. Sunday in France means that all the shops are shut, so with this in mind, we had stocked up with bread for lunch and breakfast and enough nutella to make a chocolate paddling pool! After breakfast was down and we had packed up all our stuff we were on our way. Today was supposed to be a monster, all the way to a coastal town called Mimizan. However, after a few hours of fast riding in 30 degree heat we decided that this was not a good option and that we would settle for a town about 30 km to the north that is ... read more
