In which we fall out of love with the Pyrenees and think about Brittany instead.
We have been really struggling to work out how to get over the Pyrenees.
Armed with a large map of the area (approximately double bed-sized) we can see a range of choices.
From the left:
– go round the west end, which will drop us onto the bottom of the steep Spanish coast
– go over the top using some small yellow roads which will probably be too steep for us to cycle up with touring-spec bicycles, luggage and long-distance-tired legs, leaving us with tens of kilometres of walking-with-bicycles (as we don’t do “pushing”)
– go over the top using the big red N (Nationale) roads that the trucks use, giving us gradients we can definitely climb hour after hour – anything under 10% is mostly do-able – but some heavy-duty company. Also these mostly have long tunnels at the top which may not be very cycle-friendly.
– go through Andorra. NO WAY, we have done this in a car and it is an impressively awful combination of busy, boring and steep.
– go round the east end, which will require a lot of flogging across the rolling, olive-grove monoculture, Spanish Pyreneen foothills.
If we go over the top we also have to be sure we can find accommodation halfway up as it’s too much climb for us to do in one day.
The whole lot will be 800km of along and at least 12,000m of up. Daunting. We’ve looked at Pau, St Oloron, St Jean Pied a Porte, and no obvious route jumps out.
Also Doris has spent a lot of time on the Brittany Ferries website and the ferry options are very, very limited. It is possible that we might have to wait for up to 8 days for a free space on a ferry.
Then Sid asked: What is the Point of this bit of the Epic Ride? (An interestingly existentialist question that you might have been asking too.) Are we Craving New Experiences or are we really trying to get home? We are both completely agreed that just packing up the bikes and jumping on a plane in Toulouse would be a poor way to end the adventure, but in later years will we really care that we didn’t go to Spain? We could get a ferry back from Northern France, with many crossings each day and lots of room.
This is making sense. We are only Bonkers, not insane.