With legs still rather achy from yesterday’s unplanned mountain hike (climb!), we set off to cycle up the Tourmalet.
The Col du Tourmalet is one of the most iconic Pyrenean climbs and one that we’d wanted to add to our CV (after having climbed Alpe d’Huez, Mt Ventoux and The Stelvio Pass in recent years). It’s the Pyrenean climb used most often on the Tour de France.
The road was quiet - with just a few cars and a reasonable number of other cyclists grinding their way up.
Starting off, the sky looked grey but once we eventually emerged from the clouds, the mountains were awesome. From the summit, looking back down to the clouds was really something. It was so much warmer on the top of the mountain than it had been at the start.
From where we started, we took a little over two hours to reach the top of the Col.
We split up for the long decent (I like to decent a lot faster than my sister) - so we met up back at our hotel and went for lunch and a celebratory glass of rosé.
We’ll leave the mountains tomorrow and go east (on the French side of the Pyrenees) - probably.