Curious gorge

Before the start of this trip, if you’d asked me what a great day of cycling looked like I would probably say one thing: flat. I was never a fan of long, intense, tiring climbs which cyclists seemed to adore. I think this was mostly because I was riding up hills in busy urban areas with the aim of getting from A to B as quickly as possible and, let’s be honest, hills are not quick to cycle up. My mind has been completely changed by the rides we have done on this trip. The vistas you see from the top of a hill simply cannot compare to the sight from the ground. The feeling of pure elation when you crest the top of the climb and you can see for miles and miles over gorgeous sunny countryside is hard to forget. I always try and tell myself one thing if I’m struggling up a hill: my legs will recover quickly but my mind will remember this achievement and this view for a long time. This new found enjoyment of hill climbing came in very handy for the next leg of the trip as we headed away from the coast and began skirting along the foothills of the Pyrenees. We weren’t actually crossing the mountain range but sticking close to it and we were doing plenty of mountain climbing. 

As we rode along the Pyrenees, the views definitely did not disappoint. The skyline around us was studded with trees and seemingly never ending rocky mountain peaks. When we stopped pedalling, the silence around us was deafening. It felt like we were the only people for miles. It was just us and the many birds of prey (which we are very bad at identifying) looking down at us. We could even click our fingers and hear a distant echo thrown back at us from the mountains. Each climb’s effort was rewarded with more of nature’s beauty and the difficult cycle routes seemed to pass relatively quickly and painlessly. 

On our second day in the mountains, we were heading to a campsite we had found on our map but did not seem to exist online. We thought we had done the smart thing as we checked on Google’s street view that we can see the campsite’s sign on the road, but it turns out that view was nine years old and we were met with just a big sign saying ‘Camping fermé’ (this roughly translates to: uh oh you have nowhere to sleep tonight). We forced our heavy and sleepy legs to take us another 20km and managed to find a great, clean campsite with gorgeous views of the mountains which cost less than £10 for the night. Turned out to be a blessing that the camping was fermé. We put up the tent accompanied by the sound of our rumbling stomachs, had a chat with our British camping neighbours and headed into the town. A lovely French couple that we had seen out walking earlier in the day told us there was a food festival nearby. We were hit by the smell of curry before we even found the festival and both of us knew that was exactly what we needed. The curry stand was run by a man with a perfectly cockney English accent and the other customers around all seemed to be English too. We don’t know why or how but it seemed we had stumbled upon a British holiday hotspot. We listened to music and ate crepes late into the night before resting up, ready for another day in the mountains. 

The next evening we were back to the usual French restaurant experience. For us this involved reading the menu, seeing there was no vegetarian option, asking if they had anything vegetarian and nodding along to whatever French response we got and hoping that some food arrived. We ended up with goats cheese salad followed by ratatouille with dauphinois potatoes so definitely a successful day. The food itself wasn’t the memorable part of the meal though. My phone beeped and I glanced down to see the news that the Queen had passed away. Naturally, we both fell silent to process the announcement of the end of such a long era. I noticed inside the restaurant the French news was giving the same announcement and, of course, no one in the restaurant seemed to react. It was one of the few times on the trip I’ve found myself wondering what is going on at home in the exact same moment. I’m sure that if we had been in a restaurant in England the mood would have shifted, but in France it was as though nothing had happened. We ate our creme brûlée and headed back to the campsite ready for another cycle. 

We continued on with one of the most stunning days of scenery we have been blessed with on the trip. We cycled along the edge of a huge gorge in the mountains where it felt like the earth had cleanly and perfectly split in two. The beauty of the gorge was really in its size and the severity of the drop below us, which made it extremely difficult to photograph. It will be one of the memories that has to live solely in our heads, which somehow enhances how stunning it was.

We were nearing the end of our trip and we, as expected, realised that we wouldn’t have enough time to cycle the whole French-Spanish border and get to our ferry in time. We booked a train from Saint-Gaudens to Bayonne to skip out the final leg of the Pyrenees and to head to the Atlantic coast. The cycle to the train at Saint-Gaudens was all on an old disused railway which made for smooth and easy riding, despite having to reroute round a part blocked by fallen trees. It was a nice path, but with forest on either side of us I found myself pining for the mountain views. Luckily, Spain is the perfect place for that and we were heading there in just two short days. 

Throughout my time in France I was on a mission to eat something I always love on a French holiday: petit suisse. For anyone who doesn’t know, it is a small snack that comes in a yogurt pot. If is somewhere between a thick yogurt and cream cheese. They are one of my favourite things and I don’t know why they haven’t made it to the UK. Anyway, the issue with them is that they normally come in a pack of 12 and, without a fridge, I didn’t see how that was going to work while bikepacking, so I knew the 3 hour train was the perfect opportunity. I managed to find a pack of six and I ate four in a row (Jack had the other two) despite the crazy looks from the people sitting opposite us. To me, this really was the perfect celebration of our time cycling in France.

Our final day in France was one the Jack had been looking forward to on the whole trip. Not because he was desperate to leave France. He was desperate to surf. We cycled to Biarritz and  managed to find a five star campsite which had beach access and rented out wetsuits and surfboards. Jack is a fairly competent surfer but I have had maybe one hour of surfing lessons when I was a kid and never tried since. I did what anyone would do in this situation: I googled ‘how to surf’, read one wiki-how article and decided to give it a go. To be completely honest, I absolutely hated the first two hours. Not the surfing itself. Just walking around carrying this giant piece of heavy foam and trying to lug it through the sea while being constantly whacked in the face by walls of saltwater. Despite managing to throw my body on the board and paddle into some whitewash, I was really struggling and just not having much fun. However, after lunch the sea calmed down a little and I seemed to get the hang of managing the board in the water a bit more. I had an absolute blast. I never managed to fully stand up on a wave and still got regular facefuls of seawater but I started to see the beauty of sitting on the water, waiting for the wave and then letting the power of the sea take you and power you back to shore. I guess it’s just like cycling, the more you do it and the better the conditions, the more you fall in love with it.

Speak soon,

Jack and Baz