Day 5 - Col du Soulor and Col d'Aubisque

Rule# 5 free your mind and your legs will follow.

Your mind is your worst enemy. Do all your thinking before you start riding your bike. Once the pedals start to turn, wrap yourself in the sensations of the ride – the smell of the air, the sound of the tires, the feeling of flight as the bicycle rolls over the road, the steepness of the climb, the scariness of the drop, all things to take your mind off the pain.

If someone had suggested leaving the longest and hardest day until the last day I think we all would have suggested that person was slightly mad....... That person is slightly mad, but for other reasons.

On 2nd June every year the locals take the large metal statue of a cyclist 'Montee du Geant', from its winter home in the valley, back up the mountain and place it onto the Col du Tourmalet for the summer. We had intended to join the group and venture back up the Tourmalet. But as we'd already seen the summit twice it seemed stupid to go back again when there was stuff we hadn't done. So we decided to head out and tackle the Col du Soulor and see how we got on, at 4800ft it would be the lowest col we had done and it was only 25 miles away. So again we headed down the valley that morning. As we got to 'Luz we met the giant and a large group of cyclists heading the other way, for the next 5 miles heading down the valley we were advised by numerous people we were going the wrong way!! How wrong they were!!

'Montee du Geant' heading back to the Col du Tourmalet

At Pierrefitte we'd again been advise by Rob at the hotel of a nice short cut along the back roads, again Rob's advice took us along some great roads that brought us pretty much to the base of the climb up to the col. A fairly easy 2000ft climb later and we were at the summit.

Not sure where we all were!

So was that it? Time to go home?..................No.

We'd talked the night before about carrying on and doing the Col d'Aubisque but as were all tired we'd agreed to just do the Soulor and see what happened. Well we were at the top and in the distance we could see the Aubisque, we could also see what lay between us and it:

The road to the Aubisque.

 

Well the only way to describe it is a 3000ft slab of rock with a road cut into it about 1/3rd of the way up. We headed down from the col a mile or so then started the traverse. The road is an excellent two lane road that winds its way along and through the side of the slab. The only issue is the lack of guard rail, barrier, wall or safety net and the knowledge that if you did stray to close to the edge that certain death was not far away. Oh.... and the fact that as you head out your on the right (wrong) side of the road and cycling next to a big drop.

Heading out

At the other end, note nothing to stop plunge to the valley bottom.

I can safely say its the scariest and at the same time most awesome mile of road I've ever ridden across. After the traverse there's another stiff 1500ft climb to the Col d'Aubisque.

Now those are bikes.

The last hill?

So that was it, we headed back over the traverse to the Col du Soulor. I even plucked up the courage to video some of the return ride, see the video posted before 'day 1'.
After getting back to the col we headed straight back down into the valley. Stopping at the base of the Soulor we had a coke or two and a baguette sandwich each. Now all that was left was the ride back down to Luz and the climb back to the hotel!

It was heating up again in the valley, we got to Luz and opted for some more caffeine in the shape of espresso and coke (a cola). Since we'd descended from the Soulor black clouds had started to form and the sky was looking angry, as we set of from the cafe in Luz it started to rain. Cool refreshing 'Carlsberg' rain (if Carlsberg made rain it would probably be the best rain in the world) this rain was just right. The last climb was so much easier with a cool dose of rain.

So that was it we'd set out to have an easy day and ended up doing our hardest, you can trick your body into doing anything if you take you mind of the pain!

Day 5 - 67 Miles and 12,800ft of climbing