Day 4: The Magical Sky Tram

After the physical and mental exertions of the first three days of Raiding, the team today enjoyed a well deserved rest day. We managed to awkwardly shift our stiff, swollen limbs to the breakfast table in the restaurant downstairs for the now customary bowl of coffee and jam covered bread.

Our hunger was satisfied, but the monster that is the blog hadn't been fed for a few days and was hungry for content. A dedicated crack team spent the rest of the morning sifting through hundreds of images and video clips, while simultaneously spitting out impactful, witty prose.

With the blog updated, our only remaining goal for the day was to find Greg a new pair of sunglasses – the high velocity downhill section from the previous day had left half of his previous pair lying in a tunnel on the side of Aubisque.

On the advice of our friendly auberge hosts, we headed for Carrefour, the local supermarket. A wild goose chase ensued – each outlet offered a selection of sunglasses that were not suited to Greg's hardcore riding style – so packed into the Doblo like sardines we followed lead after lead to track down the ultimate pair, eventually finding ourselves in the legendary pilgrimage town of Lourdes.

We discovered a sports shop, temporarily closed for lunch, and using our adventure initiative we holed up in the adjacent sandwich bar and tucked into ham and cheese baguettes. Under our watchful gaze, the owners turned up 20 mins late. Eagerly we flooded in but the shop turned out to be utterly rubbish; The search continued.

Dad pulled in by statically charged new lycra

After a brief tour of a high-end opticians ended in disappointment, the team's international linguistics expert (Tom) enquired with the saleswoman about possible budget-friendly alternatives; she grudgingly drew us a map to the nearest bike shop. Despite a strong belief she had sent us (intentionally) on another wild goose chase, we soon arrived at a Mecca for bike ethusiasts. The rider's shrieked enthusiastically to each display, admiring state of the art cycling gear – and eventually finding themselves faced with a professional range of cycling shades. Mike, briefly entertained by the craftsmanship of several bike frames, quickly lost interest and returned to the Doblo to read.

The crazy tiny French shop owner sorted / fleeced Greg with some technically advanced, lightweight eyewear and loaded us up with as many leaflets and maps as we could carry – a rare moment of genuine friendliness on the trip - but then we had just fulfilled her sales quota for the day.

Mission accomplished, we set off towards 'Pont d'Espagne' – a view point we discovered on the map that tantalised us with its three-star rating. Mike took the Doblo through its paces as we wound up the mountain road amidst ever more dramatic and angular scenery until we reached a town with a ski lift.

The sight of a “magical sky tram” was a novelty for a bunch of city slicker flat-landers like ourselves, so we immediately parked the car and jumped out giggling. Eyes locked on the plastic pods hovering above us, we bought a return trip to the summit and climbed on board. Digital gadgets suddenly bristled from every team member as a flurry of photo opportunities made themselves available.

The giant cables took us low over the town then swooping up the mountain side, following the gravelly mountain-bike track up through the thick layer of cloud that was floating above the town. As we entered the soft wall of opaque greyness, we had no concept of where we were going, or when the ride would end. We continued our ascent for what seemed like hours, occasionally glimpsing the haunting silhouette of a ski lift gliding past the window.

Mike remained optimistic that we would break through into a sun-kissed parallel dimension, and despite derision from the other team members, eventually we actually did. The view was impossible to describe – but we'll describe it anyway: sun drenched peaks soared up out of the fluffy cloud layer far into the distance. A bit like you expect really when you look at mountains from above a layer of cloud.



We enjoyed this breathtaking vista in the only way we knew how – with a high altitude beer (and a coffee for the Driver). Our Kronenbourgs 'a pression' were delivered by a grizzly mountain man who seemed to have surgically replaced all his skin with coarse brown leather and had a permanent gappy grin. He looked a bit like Freddy Mercury, according to Tom. In a thick southern accent and a sadistic glint he warned us of terrifying conditions the following day on Tourmalet (our next Col), urging us to wrap up for the descent. Dismissively we laughed off his warning, drained our glasses and left.

We returned to the familiar surroundings of our Auberge full of excitement from the day's excursion, and empty of food. We rectified the situation by ordering four huge plates of pasta and enjoyed some Ricard as an aperatif while we waited.

Conversation turned gravely to the next day's riding as we were taking on the most legendary and gruelling of all the Cols – Tourmalet. A few minutes of reassurance and practical considerations were followed by about two hours of toilet humour that left Team Leader in a completely incapacitated state of giggling, capable only of dribbling and crying, with his face creased into a knot of pain. Fortunately he managed to compose himself before the waitress delivered the source of our mirth – the desert – which through a series of barely comprehensible leaps of speculation we had concluded would be a floating shit produced by the chef. Don't ask.