54 Degrees North ~ 3 Degrees West: Pyrenees 2012 Day 1. 'The Tourmalet'

Lance Armstrong was wrong - It is all about the bike

The boys went for another trip away at the end of May/early June. This time to the Pyrenees to ride the classic Pyrenean Tour de France climbs.

As expected, with no families to look after and big boys packing for themselves, it all started in chaos before we even left the UK. With confiscated flammable aerosols and endless deliberations over compressed gas canisters. - What do you means its the rules? How are you supposed to oil your chain with no can of oil spray and blow up my tyres with no air?

So the planned 'we'll have breakfast in the airport as there's always loads of time' turned into 'shit we take off in 10 mins where's our gate?' So we legged it in the general direction of the departure gates while one of the party was checking that no-one was oiling any aircraft wheels with his confiscated £2.50 can of GT85 spray.

Has anyone noticed that Manchester airport have now put a slalom course through duty free before you get to any departure gate, a bit like sweets at a supermarket, no f'ing good when your in a hurry!

Anyway we got on the plane with a few minutes to spare, the 2.5 hour flight 'flew in' (sorry). Our transport was waiting for us as agreed along with a large trailor to take the bikes carefully stowed in rather large boxes, or in some cases big padded bags.

So after about a 3 hour drive we arrived in the village of Bareges and the Hotel du Tourmalet which is about 25 miles South of Lourdes and just about half way up the Western slopes of the Col du Tourmalet. We arrived in the first throws of a thunder storm!

Hotel du Tourmalet

First things first, I need to explain about the rules: Velominati.com is a cycling web site that has a tongue in cheek set of rules which to most keen cyclists make perfect sense.

Rule #4 - Its all about the bike.

Or to put it another way :
The Bike. It is the central tool in pursuit of our craft. A Velominatus meticulously maintains their bicycles and adorns them with the essential, yet minimal, accoutrement. The Rules specify the principles of good taste in configuration and setup of our machines, but within those principles lies almost infinite room for personal taste.

So as we've travelled all this way with a big box's full of bikes, or at least that's how they left the UK, we needed to check out the bikes. In about an hour of reassembly and test rides we were ready for a proper test.

What better than the Col du Tourmalet the summit is about 8 miles and roughly 3000 ft climbing from the hotel, the thunderstorm had passed over and the night was clearing up so off we headed.

I supposed I should introduce my fellow Velominatus, so here in no particular order: