The end of the holiday??

Disaster hit today, although I'll tell you upfront that we will both be able to move on tomorrow - for further details, read on. Today was a short day in mileage terms, but involved around 5,600 feet of ascent over three cols. We set off slightly behind 4 of the slower climbers, but ahead of the main group. There was about a 9 mile lead in to the foot of the first col, after which we were climbing for about 12 miles, with just a short descent between cols 2 and 3. We were surprised that it wasn't any steeper, the road was steadily up at around 11% - 12%, but nothing that steady pedaling couldn't deal with. Col 1 was barely noticeable as it was just a flat bit of ground, but by then we had already passed all the early starters and didn't get caught by any of the later group until we were at the top of the second col, at around 3,500 ft. 

The rest were stopping for coffee before the third climb, but we prefer not to let our legs stiffen up, so we carried straight through to the final col of the day at over 4,000ft. The weather was a bit misty, but not too hot and with the wind on the top we needed jackets for the descents. It was on the top of Col de Bagargui that trouble hit. We started down and immediately knew I had a problem with brakes. With a bit of experimentation I worked out it was the back brake and the bike felt as if it was bunny hopping every time I braked going into a bend. We managed to get to the bottom slowly and the rest of the ride was just undulating so not too much of a problem. We decided to get to the hotel and sort out what was the matter. In the meantime we had a few steep punches on the road, encountered a herd of cows, scooted down a lovely river valley and generally enjoyed ourselves, until on the last section to Arette (where we are staying tonight) a furry winged beastie (bee/wasp/hornet) tried to fly into my mouth. I managed to shut it in time, but was stung on the lip for my trouble - luckily there doesn't appear to have been a reaction.

We got to the hotel at 15.00 and were looking forward to a few hours of R&R, when we saw one of the leaders (a self taught mechanic) saw my bike and in 10 secs had diagnosed my problem as a knackered back wheel. The rim is split making it unsafe - withe tyre likely to pop off at any time, most probably on a steep downhill when using the brakes. It looked like the end of the holiday for me as the only solution is a new wheel and we are in a tiny village in the back of beyond. However, with the luck of the Irish very much with me, it turned out that there was a bike place in the village which rented mountain bikes to visitors and kept road bike spares etc for people on the Raid Pyrennean. I won't bore you with the problems we encountered, but I now have a shiny new back wheel, different size to the front one with a slick road tyre, compared to my well treaded 28 in front tyre. The back is only 23 in so I couldn't swap the tyres over and also had to buy new spare tubes. I guess that is what credit cards are for, so now I am back on the road, with a lighter wheel and lighter pockets!

To be honest I am too tired to tell you about the others on the tour, as it took a long time to sort the bike and was quite stressful, so I'll leave you with some photos of today and the information that tomorrow we head to the 'Circle of Death', the climbs including Col de Marie Blanc, the Aubisque and col de Soulors - over 8,500 ft of ascent for the day........