Along the Pyrenees....

[Wapping]

Lifted from a thread and sticky in the Spanish sub-section of the Travel section, here is a link to a nicely set-out trip report.

https://sdtravelogue.blogspot.com/2020/07/2000-miles-in-spanish-pyrenees.html?view=timeslide

It takes a little while to load on my iPad, so be patient.

What is good in the report is:

A. Just enough words to set the scene and explain what the fellow was doing.

B. Just enough pictures to build on the words.

C. Some decent screen shots of maps, showing the roads ridden.

Richard

PS The sticky is here: https://www.ukgser.com/forums/showt...Pyrenees-and-back-again-ADAC-map-and-GPX-file

 

[Wapping]

I picked up on this comment in the report:

From recent days' experience I knew that the 8.5 hours it said it would take on paper would realistically stretch upwards to 11 and possibly beyond.....It did.

I had exactly the same thing on my last lap of France, which I have done several times. This time I picked really small roads and cols (all D roads, so no pure goat tracks) to ride all the way from Millau to Apt, in the heart of Provence, in a day. The vast bulk of the little roads are of course the French national limit, so the software assumes you’ll be riding them at say, 50 mph. The simple truth is you can’t keep up 50 mph, all day, on roads that are very narrow (sometimes just a car wide) and often full of hairpins, let alone stop from time to time to look at a view or to just take a drink of water. Add in a village being all but shut for a mass amateur downhill off-road bicycle race and riding one side of a gorge in order to loop around and ride the other (in order to still keep going west to east), then mix in about 10 miles of freshly laid gravellons and the time period taken grows.

I was ready for this, knowing that the software’s estimate of 5.5 hours or whatever it was, was vastly over-optimistic. I reckon it took me nine hours. That is fine as I set off at 08:00, expecting to arrive at about 17:00, which I did. Had I simply believed the software’s estimated time and set off at 11:30 and not 08:00, I might have found myself trying to find a motorway.

In short, if a road looks narrow and very twisty on a map, it very probably is. Then work out just how fast you can ride a loaded up 1600 (I was away for a month in all, camping) on worn tyres, all day along them.

 

[Deleted account 240831001]

Plenty of interesting looking day routes on there and as you say; it’s a nice, clear report

 

[Davisonstuff]

I picked up on this comment in the report:

I had exactly the same thing on my last lap of France, which I have done several times. This time I picked really small roads and cols (all D roads, so no pure goat tracks) to ride all the way from Millau to Apt, in the heart of Provence, in a day. The vast bulk of the little roads are of course the French national limit, so the software assumes you’ll be riding them at say, 50 mph. The simple truth is you can’t keep up 50 mph, all day, on roads that are very narrow (sometimes just a car wide) and often full of hairpins, let alone stop from time to time to look at a view or to just take a drink of water. Add in a village being all but shut for a mass amateur downhill off-road bicycle race and riding one side of a gorge in order to loop around and ride the other (in order to still keep going west to east), then mix in about 10 miles of freshly laid gravellons and the time period taken grows.

I was ready for this, knowing that the software’s estimate of 5.5 hours or whatever it was, was vastly over-optimistic. I reckon it took me nine hours. That is fine as I set off at 08:00, expecting to arrive at about 17:00, which I did. Had I simply believed the software’s estimated time and set off at 11:30 and not 08:00, I might have found myself trying to find a motorway.

In short, if a road looks narrow and very twisty on a map, it very probably is. Then work out just how fast you can ride a loaded up 1600 (I was away for a month in all, camping) on worn tyres, all day along them.

Thanks for putting this up. Your experiences mirror many of mine. What I would say though is that when we're away we're usually up against time in general so the challenge is to see as much as possible and that often means we end up paying the price . I always fall foul of it but I think going forward I need to reign it in a bit. I think I could probably cope with a Google estimated 7 hours OK. This is also one of the reasons I tend to tour in early summer for the longer days rather than wait for September when the days are shorter. Ideally I'd like to do both .

Do you have a link to your French tour? In particular I'm always looking for interesting ways to get from North to South. French D roads are fantastic.

 

[timeandtide]

Thanks for posting Richard - I enjoyed that!

 

[RedRick Esq.]

Good article that

Having ridden the full length of the 260 as far as Sort which is a great road it is interesting to see the deviations from it and food for thought next time i get over that way

 

[wessie]

Good article that

Having ridden the full length of the 260 as far as Sort which is a great road it is interesting to see the deviations from it and food for thought next time i get over that way

Sort is a good base: like this author, I spent a few days there using it as a base to do some of the north-south routes into France and loop around. Jaca & Pau also good bases to use for circular routes.

 

[wessie]

I did many of those roads last year and a few of the western ones in 2018. Picked up a ticket on the French side of the Col d'Izpegi on the way towards St Jean de Luz.

He dissed the Col Ste Marie, which I quite liked, especially the eastern side. I had similar problems with low cloud and could not see a thing on the 2 highest passes on the French side.