Fair Weather Bikers

I woke up at sometime between 7 and 7:30am. It was cloudy with a gently breeze and a bit of moisture in the air, but it wasn't cold - quite refreshing actually. I saw the Dutch lad preparing to set off on his bicycle and went over to say goodbye.

I was very impressed with him touring on a bicycle and especially with the amount of kit he managed to get on it. He was was jokingly complaining about the Germans as they always seem to manage to get up after him and get organised and packed while he's still trying to get his gear together! I wished him well and he cycled off.

Daz got up a little later, we packed the bikes, and it was actually very nice that it wasn't as hot as it had been the previous days. We said goodbye to the Welsh guy then checked out and had a nice breakfast at the on-site cafe, consisting of fresh bread, jam, coffee and orange juice.

The ride away from Carcassonne was a little tedious at first as we negotiated through a couple of towns, but the roads soon opened up and became very pleasant.

At one point I was riding along a nice stretch of road when a car pulled out of a junction on the right. I had to brake hard to avoid him, so I wasn't very happy. He sped up and overtook the car in front on a solid white line; I followed, and while I didn't cross the white line, I do not know if there is that distinction in France. As I passed the car I saw ahead a Gendarme checkpoint. My heart sank and I slowed right down, they waved the car in that had pulled out on me and let me pass, but for the next mile or so I kept my eye on my mirrors in-case they decided to come after me - luckily they didn't!

In no time at all we were back in the Pyrenees and onto some fantastic mountain roads. The weather had also improved, becoming another lovely sunny day. These roads were brilliant and we were really enjoying ourselves when at the top of one of the Cols the crappy gravel re-surfacing suddenly reappeared. The gravel started just over a slight crest on a slight left hand bend with no warning at all. I hit the gravel and instantly lost the front, the bike slid for what seemed a long way, but probably wasn't much more than a foot or so, then gripped, I had sat the bike up the instant it started sliding and shut off so luckily when it gripped again I regained control, then managed to tip it in again before I ran off the road. My heart was pounding as I knew I was very lucky indeed not to have dropped it.

From there on all the way down the mountain the road was treacherous, with huge piles of gravels particularly on the hairpin bends. It was a very slow and hard ride down and at the bottom I pulled into a car park exhausted. Daz had also had lots of problems, he reckoned he had nearly dropped his bike at least 4 times on the way down.

We stopped a while in the car park regaining our composure, then set off looking for a petrol station. Again the GPS proved invaluable and found a couple of petrol stations nearby, the first was closed but we filled up at the second one. I cannot overstate how useful touring with a GPS system is, I personally will never tour again without one!

Fortunately from there on the roads were very good indeed, starting off with a nice sweeping road winding its way through the valley. There was another Gendarme checkpoint but we got a lot of warning from other traffic well before it.

There is a mountain between France and Andorra and you have the option of going through a tunnel or over it, we naturally decided to go over it. The road climbing up was really good fun, with very wide hairpin bends and sweeping corners in-between. It also seemed to go on forever!

At the top of the mountain there was snow and we stopped for a few pictures, then it started to hail so we quickly jumped on the bikes and carried on. It was only hailing at the summit, once we'd gone a mile or so down the other side of the mountain we were back into lovely sunny weather.

As this was the halfway point of our trip I had decided to book us into a hotel so we could have a night of comfort. I had booked us into the same hotel Nig and I had stopped in last year. We arrived at the hotel at around 2pm, unloaded the bikes, then nipped up the road to a bar and had burger and chips for lunch.

We returned to the hotel, lubed the chains and then decided to go for a bit of a ride to see the local area a bit. This turned out to be quite tedious as there was a lot of roadworks and Andorra is basically one big town. After around 30 minutes of negotiating traffic and road works we turned round and returned to the hotel to chill out.

We had a very nice 3 course meal in the hotel which was included in the very reasonable price, and had a few beers before calling it a night. Outside it had got quite cool and damp so we were very pleased we were in a hotel.