We woke early for breakfast as the SAG wagon was going to set out at 9:30am, this is what we had right outside our window.
This is a team car from one of the teams in Le Tour de France. Apparently (according to Jan) a lot of the he teams stay in Lourdes as it is close to the common mountain stage climbs each year.
Our job today was to support the group of riders that were doing the longest ride, 90kms.
Here are a couple of snaps from the van window.
Not too bad considering we were doing about 100 and the glass for glossy and tinted.
Now there were 2 climbs to be done on this ride, The first was
Here was the view
This place had 2 cafés on it and a heap of horses and sheep.
This guy was as stubborn as, and this is the van we were travelling in all day.
Kelly enjoying the wild life.
A panoramic!
I also had a coffee while we waited for the riders to crest the top.
Ah here some are now
Some more beautiful shots
The second climb was, Matt look an eagle!!
This also had a cafe located right on the top of the mountain. The reason why these guys stay in business is the cycling traffic they get most of the year round.
The way there was stunning
Some Tom foolery on the way
Some nice shots too
To get to this summit you had to got through here
There was another one that was long and was completely dark so the riders had to essentially feel their way as they didn't have any lights on.
Found this in the cafe on the summit.
The guy who won the 1926 Le Tour de France. In those days you had no support, it was much longer and you had to fix your own bike. If you broke a front fork you had to go to a blacksmith and repair it yourself, the blacksmith was not allowed to help otherwise you got disqualified. This guy won it an hour ahead of his rivals, now that is tough stuff. What was also interesting is that he owned a cafe on this very mountain when Jan (our driver) was growing up and was considered a French legend.
Here are some pictures from the top of this climb.
On the way down the worst thing happened, we came across an accident, someone on the decent.
He had over cooked the corner and "supermaned into the side hill", he was in a ditch on the side of the road made as comfortable as he could be by his friends. This picture was us waiting for a helicopter (that eventually didn't arrive) to air lift him out. It was quite scared as pretty much everyone didn't speak French so it was a real struggle until Jan (our driver) came to the rescue (incidentally he speaks 4 languages, legend).
We found out later the guy had 5 broken ribs, broken collar bone, broken other shoulder and 3 fractured vertebra. So a word of caution to all cyclist please be careful and mindful when decending, cycling can be a very dangerous sport (I am looking at you Andi and only because we care *grin*).
We were dropped off by Jan at the bottom of the Hautacam, the final climb for the day for Le Tour.
Here is what the crowd was like
And this went for miles.
Kelly got a cracking shot of the leader of the General Classifications Nibali. He is the one in the the Yellow jersey behind his 2 team mates in aqua.
A couple more for good measure.
It was home again to the hotel.
In an attempt to make sure I was going to be ready for tomorrow's ride Jan offered to give me a once over as he bought his massage table with him, I gratefully accepted and went to his room at 7:30pm, it was awesome. We chatted about his experiences with the pro cycling teams, very interesting.
We then went out with the tour guides for dinner, another night shot of Lourdes.
This is what I had, freshly made, I saw the base being made by the cook, very very tasty.
Dinner seems to be getting later and later hear, mostly because we get back late but also because it is light until 10pm.
Looking forward to a ride tomorrow.
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