Pyrenees Trip Report
keith57
Posts: 164
Just spent a week in the Eastern part of the Pyrenees. Stayed in a friend's apartment, John Redhad, in St Laurent-de-Cerdans. Excellent area for road biking and loads of un-developed off-road biking potential as well I think. John picked me up at the airport so it was quite an economical trip as I didn't have to hire a car.
Using the new Rapha book 'The Great Road Climbs of the Pyrenees' managed to ride up some very interesting hills. The toughest was 'Col de Mantet' - the book said the maximum, gradient was 10% - my Edge 705 indicated 10 - 16% for much of the last 10k!
One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to some outside natural hot springs after one the rides - very hot and excellent recovery for the legs!!
St Laurent-de-Cerdans is a smallish sized town about 90 minutes from Girona Airport. It has a cash machine, hot croissants for breakfast and a couple of bars. There are great restaurants just over the border in Spain which offer incredible value for money. I flew by Ryan Air and I had to book and pay extra for the bike to travel in its box but there were no problems with baggage-handling. Flying home I found the Spanish check-in staff very friendly - they knew about the bike and whisked it away from the check-in desk so I didn't have to drag it to excess baggage myself.
John has a great apartment for rent too - very bike friendly with large basement area for building and storing the bike and kit as well as all the usual facilities in the apartment itself. He's thinking of fitting the basement out properly with lots of bike hanging hooks, track-pump, bike stand, etc. Somewhere safe to keep the fragile carbon framed bike at night out of harms way!
I've put some photos up on Flickr. If you view the Google Map tracks at the original size you can make out the names of the towns and the route quite well. I've added some detailed comments to the routes as well.
Photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fachwen/se ... 521871445/
Using the new Rapha book 'The Great Road Climbs of the Pyrenees' managed to ride up some very interesting hills. The toughest was 'Col de Mantet' - the book said the maximum, gradient was 10% - my Edge 705 indicated 10 - 16% for much of the last 10k!
One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to some outside natural hot springs after one the rides - very hot and excellent recovery for the legs!!
St Laurent-de-Cerdans is a smallish sized town about 90 minutes from Girona Airport. It has a cash machine, hot croissants for breakfast and a couple of bars. There are great restaurants just over the border in Spain which offer incredible value for money. I flew by Ryan Air and I had to book and pay extra for the bike to travel in its box but there were no problems with baggage-handling. Flying home I found the Spanish check-in staff very friendly - they knew about the bike and whisked it away from the check-in desk so I didn't have to drag it to excess baggage myself.
John has a great apartment for rent too - very bike friendly with large basement area for building and storing the bike and kit as well as all the usual facilities in the apartment itself. He's thinking of fitting the basement out properly with lots of bike hanging hooks, track-pump, bike stand, etc. Somewhere safe to keep the fragile carbon framed bike at night out of harms way!
I've put some photos up on Flickr. If you view the Google Map tracks at the original size you can make out the names of the towns and the route quite well. I've added some detailed comments to the routes as well.
Photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fachwen/se ... 521871445/
http://www.fachwen.org
https://www.strava.com/athletes/303457
Please note: I’ll no longer engage deeply with anonymous forum users
https://www.strava.com/athletes/303457
Please note: I’ll no longer engage deeply with anonymous forum users
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