Day 8: Bearly Legal

The day began, as one would expect, in the morning. In keeping with tradition, we had a delightful breakfast, laid on by our ever thoughtful host, Daniel. The dining area for the canteen felt pretty much like a homely dining room and Daniel sat with us as we consumed a wealth of local jam and fluffy croissants.

We set off immediately after - fact. The start of the journey was a tad dull, with flat main roads snaking through the bottom of a valley as we left Luchon behind, heading east. The riders kept themselves entertained (and efficient) by rotating the front man to tackle wind resistance. Soon enough a more challenging slope became available to a PSYCHED team of cyclists. 

The Col de Menté ascent began with a lovely road that combined the benefits of freshly laid tarmac for a smooth ride with the constant classic mountain switch-backs that the pyrenees is famous for; the best of both worlds. The tarmac was regularly marked with a huge slab of bright pink graffiti proclaiming either 'Ours Non', or 'Ours a mort'. This went on for an extended forested section of about 20 miles, and intensified where there were small settlements. Using our local knowledge soaked up along the way, we suspected these cryptic messages were protests against the introduction of Slovenian brown bears in the region to bolster the dwindling n population. The thought of straying across the path of a 700lb killing machine while cycling along a remote forest track left us panicked – what if we didn't have the GoPro at the time?!

Arm warmers were casually thrown to one side (safe in the knowledge that the support driver was ready and waiting to pick up the garments) as the sun broke through the clouds and unleashed a gentle warm glow into the air. Mike was sure to keep the riders on their toes by regularly enforcing sprints in order to satisfy his thirst for “epic” action shots with the GoPro camera.

Much to the shock and horror of team RAID, the local road maintenance authorities had failed to install road-side KM markers (designed to inform riders of their distance until the peak). With only the 3rd and 7th kilometre signs installed, the riders found it trickier than normal to regulate their pace, leading to poor breath management – the riders didn't feel like taking responsibility for their energy management, so blamed the fatigue on Mike's merciless demands as cinematographer.

As always, Mike had accelerated to the Col's peak ahead of the riders and was enjoying a sumptuous hot chocolate from a cafe's balcony, watching the riders breathlessly arrive. Greg and Tom perched themselves either side of Mike and the three waited, “chocolats chauds” (thats french, by the way) in hand. Bets were placed regarding how long the wait would be for Mark to hit the peak and much to everyone's surprise, he smashed everyone's expectations, appearing before we had even dented our beverages.

As fog closed in we moved inside. A massive team of German riders had already booked ahead at the restaurant, requesting a large batch of pasta to be made for their lunch – the lovely waitress offered us a few portions from the batch, and with the smell of carbonara sauce drifting past our noses and the benefit of having our lunch without delay, we instantly signed up to the dish. There was a Col sign – we had bikes, and cyclists... and a camera. We did the math and realised we should take a photo.

The team layered up with jumpers and windcheaters and rocketed down the long, cold descent. Mike and Greg had already primed the GoPro camera on some of the more alternative panels of the Doblo, and Mike drove in hot pursuit, collecting some groundbreaking footage of the team as they broke several land speed records through challenging switch-backs. There were some terrifying near collisions, but we agreed not to talk about them, as they'd only worry the Raid's only reader – Jan :)

There were a couple of minor bumps in the landscape before the second col of the day: Portet d'Aspet which didn't worry the now road-hardened riders, but as we hit the day's final col, it became apparent that Dad's gears were still causing problems even after the Luchon repair job. This time however he opted for the technique of riding back down the hill to get into the right gear, clearly having learned the hard way to keep his fingers well out of the way.

Not far into the climb, we passed a poignant memorial to Fabio Casartelli, the Italian cyclist who was tragically killed in a high speed crash, descending the section during the fifteenth stage of the 1995 Tour de France. The memorial was immediately followed as we climbed, by a huge banner for an annual cyclosportive event held in his honour – a fitting tribute.

The col was so understated it didn't even have a cafe at the top. But it did have a sign. We took another picture as evidence and then glided our way down to St Girons which to put it bluntly was a crap town. We had some trouble navigating the road system to find the Flamme Rouge hotel but when we finally arrived at our dwelling it soon became apparent we were the only guests in a hotel that could comfortably hold hundreds. As we ventured out into the town, a similar trend appeared: St Girons had a capacity for a substantial influx of tourists, and seemed geared to holidaying activity, but now it was a sad ghost town.

We sat down in one of the only open restaurants – a cozy pizzeria, where a local Frenchman attempted to engage us in conversation. We explained our adventure as clearly as we could, but despite our best efforts he was convinced we were hikers from South Africa rather than English cyclists. Several attempts to explain the misunderstanding resulted in a smashed shot glass and pizzas hastily thrown into take-away boxes so we could get the hell out of the place. The causal chain in that sentence isn't technically correct, but it sounds dramatic, so just paint your own picture. 

We returned to the hotel where Mike diligently flushed the unwanted anchovy pizza down the toilet.