Top Of The Mountain

After a fab night’s sleep we were up and about at 8.30am. We were met by the two wagging tails of Bilbo & Eddie as we exited Rox.
The morning was spent chilling and eating breakfast - our own home produced honey (thank you bees) in weetabix is a new found delight for me.
The traffic moving up and down the mountain at our spot had almost ceased due to road closures, but amateur cyclists by the bucket loads continued up and down and at our hairpin corner it was incredible that there wasn’t an accident as uppers and downers passed within inches.
At 1450 and spot on time the first of the Tour caravan vehicles appeared over the mountain crest and down towards us. The frenzy of catching thrown goodies from the vehicles then commenced. Small children who missed some goodies were quite rightly handed their missed goodies by grown ups who had acted as kids for those brief seconds. The atmosphere was fantastic - just good honest enjoyment.
The first riders were due at 4.30pm at our location and so we watched coverage of them climbing up the other side towards the summit, which meant we only then had a couple of minutes before they sailed past us.
Just before the summit Tadej Pogacar broke away into the lead and was followed a short distance behind by Jonas Vingegaard. The normal two ‘ Prétendants’ to the crown at the end of the 21 day tour.
A short while later both hurtled down to our location and round the hairpin on onwards to the finish. The next hour was spent watching single riders, small groups and finally the last main bunch descend past us.
And there it was done for the day!
At this point and unbelievably through the blazing sunshine we felt raindrops.
As we had planned to move after the race in any case we started to pack up our belongings and camp equipment. The raindrops had eased when about 40 minutes later we said our goodbyes to Craig and Kate - and Bilbo and Eddie and we joined the masses descending the hill. How we didn’t have at least three cyclists under the van on the descent we will never know, the public on bikes were like ants around every vehicle and we saw at least two accidents. At the bottom a very friendly Gendarme was turning every motor vehicle around to go back up the hill and down the other side the way we had arrived, via La Mongie - Nightmare.
15 minutes later we were waving goodbye to Craig and Kate once again as we drove back past them up the mountain.
Our onward journey to our next destination near to Saint- Symphorien was due to take approximately 3.5 hours. When we reached the crest at Tourmalet we knew that was never going to happen. The traffic was at a standstill as far as could be seen, which from that location was a bloody long way downhill. It eventually took us 3.5 hours to get to the outskirts of Tarbes which should have taken 1 hour.
Eventually from Tarbes we drove our return route to Pau and then the A65 up towards Roquefort.
We stopped prior to Roquefort and pulled into an aire for the night. We had researched a local village for a bar to grab a drink and watch France v Morocco but without success.
Once parked up we managed to get the France game on my phone weirdly by using the ITV hub app - which worked perfectly with no VPN needed.
We had some nibbles and a couple of drinks before retiring to Rox to watch the second half. We made it to the second French goal and then decided that was enough for us and we called it a day.
A fab day up the mountain, it’s really worth the effort, if not for the cycling for the views and atmosphere.
Tomorrow we head for Stage 7 and we hope to get somewhere on the flat in the forest in the Landes area.
Tadej Pogacar is a machine - but all of the riders are incredible!

Song Of The Day:
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough - Marvin Gaye & Tammi TerrellRead more