Hills, more hills and then a climb!

Today is billed as the hardest day of the tour (just). 60 miles and over 8,600 ft of ascent with two real 'biggies'. We started with a 10 mile ride out to the Col de Marie Blanc, which at around 1,330 metres didn't look too scary - which just goes to show how wrong you can be. It started off at a gentle gradient but the last few miles were steep and unremitting. It was also the first day of climbing on legs that had been doing a significant amount of climb the day before. It turned out to be the hardest of the day, although the Aubisque is a lot higher and nearly twice as long ( 9.5 km cf 16km). The top of the MB had a lot of cattle wandering aimlessly around, which made for some interesting situations as motorists, cyclists and motor bikers came over the brow of the hill to find 3 or 4 cows just hanging out in the middle of the road.

Jackets on and a great descent followed, not too twisty so a good speed could be worked up. Then some fast roads along a valley to reach the extremely busy town of Laruns where we needed to top up with food and drink before tackling the Col d'Aubisque. The latter was 10 miles of climbing with an overall height gain of around 4,000ft. It was actually not too bad, just a long grind, but the clouds started to roll in so that by the time we got to the top there wasn't much in the way of views and it was really cold with wind blowing strongly.  We grabbed something to eat from our packs and headed down pretty quickly ( in more than one sense!). We had only brought wind proof jackets which really weren't enough and I was so cold on the way down I was shaking violently and the bike was therefore also shaking. I hadn't really considered the fact that we would be climbing to nearly 6,000 ft, so tomorrow I will have a lot more stuff with me!

The descent was spectacular even with the views being rather less than hoped for. Once we had dropped over 1,000ft we started up the next col - the Col de Soulor - but after what had gone before it was just a minor pimple!  The roads were fairly quiet probably because the French holiday season ends about now and the weather wasn't clear. We finished the day with an exhilarating 20 mile downhill plunge to the valley and the town of Argele-Gazost. The hotel here is run by a cyclist and caters mainly for cyclists. They have a massive underground storage area for bikes, with tool, pumps etc available and in the evening they serve pasta at 7.30pm followed by a 3 course meal. Hungry as we are I'm not sure we will manage all that.

Glad to report that the new wheel was fine, shame about the legs! We are trying to go for a walk every evening to use some different muscles, but when we had to walk down a hill to get back to the hotel our quads nearly went on strike.

Some differences we have noticed between American tours and a UK led one (with mainly UK participants)

The bike shirts are much more subdued and uninteresting - we stick out like sore thumbs

There are more eccentrics

About half of the participants carried their luggage and rode at least part of the way here - we never met anyone in the US who had independently toured

Nobody minds if you go off on your own, provided you let the leaders know what you are doing

Everyone has been riding for at least 10 years and is a regular - some of the Americans just rocked up to ride across the country with a few weeks training and a bike that didn't fit properly. 

Photos today include your heroes on the big cols, the bike store and some views