And it's all downhill from here... Porte-Puymorens to Vic

Waking up decidedly freezing cold, at a very early time. We changed very quickly because if you have your nipples out in subzero temperatures you know about it... When packing the tent up, we found loads of cold-coma-induced insects laden on the tent surface. Such a nasty place, wet, cold, damp, insects, annoying looking brats, looking forward to cracking on with the day!

Andy caught in the act... of applying chaff cream to his gentlemen parts

The sun not yet high enough to breach the mountain tops (in the valley I realise the photo above indicate sunlight, but the roads were in shadow!), we cycled off in the frozen shadows, down the twisting roads. And ohhhh yes it was downhill! Now just pedalling for speed not for momentum we twisted around hairpin corners sped through towns, bliss. Using the brake handle more than the pedal filled us with jubilation. We then sort of popped out into some plateau, presumably the end of the Pyrenees. Still though we are in France. We got to a town called Bourg-Madame, and there it was a bridge and on the other side SPAIN. We had made the country of final destination! Amusingly now the first thing we managed to do in Puigcerda was get lost. But once back on track, we passed some odd police barricade, they had machine guns, shotguns, and seemed to be stopping cars at random, just before a round-a-bout. We wearily cycled through the cars waiting, and sort of just sauntered past, hoping they weren't going to open fire at us "fleeing." Unscathed, we then got our next shock. We were actually about in the middle of the Pyrenees and there was a little more uphill to do. No not a little, a lot of uphill. We would look ahead a see the road winding around the mountainside, where we would be next. Once to that point, we could see the road still winding around the mountainside. Once to that point... You get the picture. As the cycling was slow I took some pictures.

Andy pondering up the hill

Me vainly taking a photo of myself taken just after the one of Andy above

This seemed to be a popular cycle route however, and some chaps past us (please bare in mind they had no luggage, so they should be going faster). Anyway one was a bit chirpy and shouted "campeones" (Spanish for champions). Now, I thought he was calling us champions, in which im in agreement with. So shouted back "campeones." It was only a bit later on our million mile slog, that it occurred to me, World Cup. As we were wearing bright orange tops, I think he was making reference to Spain beating The Netherlands (i.e. thinking we were Dutch).

Clouds pouring over the mountain tops across the valley

And now it was Joyce's turn to have a good moan. As I had my fair share through the latter stages of France, because of my knee, I let a lot of it slip. But it didn't exactly make the cycle any quicker! We hadn't past much, the scenery was nice, cows will bells filling the air with noise and clouds pouring over the mountains along side us, and then we found a random hotel. So stopping at Hotel Collada de Toses to get some food, drink and rest. I went to order some more coke at one stage and said to the bloke "dos cola" in a dodgy Spanish accent. He then returned with two bottles of cold chocolate milkshake... Cola - coca, in a rubbish Spanish accent I can see how they sound the same... Anyway they were quite nice.

So with Andy pretty reluctant to go on, and me not too far behind him on that matter, though he was moaning intently about how if it was still going to be uphill he would, like, castrating a large bull and beating it about the head until even the toughest of men would fall down weeping. (OK he didn't actually say that, but along those sorts of lines). So setting off on our bikes we set off uphill out of the Hotels grounds. To a gap carved between two rocks. We could see a valley between these rocks. And. Gravity! It was there to make us smile and give us a nice hand. A downhill section! With a huge amount of jubilation I bombed off, pedalling hard, trying to get to the highest speed I possibly could! Caning into corners, braking hard, scrubbing out wide to the other side of the road. Taking racing lines, ignoring cars struggling to pass, completely zoned into being part of the road. After a while of shear exhilaration, I looked back behind me expecting to see the beaming smile of Andy, sitting just behind me. But no, no Andy. F**K, he's bloody crashed somewhere. It was a good 5-10mins since I last looked back. And since I was going over 50 kph he could be miles back. I slowed and looked behind me for a bit. Then looking across the valley, through the pine trees, I could see a bright orange flicker between each tree. He was miles back! So at least he was okay, meant I could pick up my speed again and enjoy the rest of the road.

Now absolutely flying along I started to catch a car, desperately trying to catch it. Taking a few risks, doing a racing line and finding cars were coming head on... I was determined to catch that car. Alas, I got to the end right behind the car, mainly because it slowed up for the 50 kph limit and I went through at 58 kph, yey, first time I've been speeding the whole trip! But as I came into the town, I just could not help celebrating! Both hands off the handle bar, fisting the air, shouting at the top of my voice "whhhoooaaaa" "come on". My buzz, adrenaline rush, pure euphoria, ecstasy was just immense. Im smiling away like a trooper at the moment just thinking about it. I really felt like I had just won Tour de France, and the tourists standing around on the streets were there to welcome me and cheer me on... Eventually Andy came into the town. He claimed he felt his bike would fall apart or his brakes would fail, thus did not go as fast as me. As our Ozzy friends would say "what a pom." For me part of the buzz was the fear I was on the edge of imminent death! Steep mountain edges one side, on coming cars on the other, bikes that hadn't been maintained since leaving England! What a danger cycle. We both instantly agreed at the bottom if we could we would pay a stupid amount to get a lift back to the top and blast back down again. To summarise in the voice and style of my favourite TV presenter, it was the greatest road........ in the woooooooorrrrllldd.

The town we made at the end of the "hill," banners already set up to congratulate us...

With a slightly more relaxed cycle we cruised into the next town, Ripoll. Here we stopped at a nice looking restaurant and had some pizza. I had a pizza with orange and ham, was really really good, orange on a pizza is a must try, damn good! Again as we are good at, we lost our ways a bit trying to leave the town. And ended up on some of the worst roads we have had on the trip. They were repairing/ making new roads, so they were dug up, machinery creating loads of dust and crud on the roads. Wasn't really that nice. And then we had to go through tunnels... With no lights and the pretty dark tunnels wasn't too pleasant. The roads were fairly quiet, but were reminiscent of the motorway roads of France, which didn't fill me with much joy. So finding a route off this road was my priority. And we did find a road pretty much went along side. Following it down towards Vic, went well, until we got to a round-a-bout. And we found the road we needed to take was blocked off by a overturned pig lorry... Crap. Everywhere. Nice. We asked a policeman standing nearby how we should get to Vic. Well the conversation did not go like that, more like. Point down the road, he says no, we say Vic, Vic?, Si, OK... lala lallal lalal lalla dos lalalala dos lallala, pointed at the road and said no and then pointed at some gravel on the side of the road and said si... (the llalal is Spanish words we had no clue what they meant, I could only pick out "dos") anyway he was pointing down a tiny little farm track (the road thing was we wouldn't be cycling on tarmac, but gravelly crap), so we followed this road took the second exit and came back onto the road around the lorry.

Pig lorry in the process of being lifted up

We got into Vic and saw a Decathlon which is a shop a bit like Halfords, we stopped by and decided they might be able to pump our tyres up as they were incredibly flat. I went in because I "know" more Spanish, to find someone to help. So I wondered about a bit, there were loads of workers, but decided I should as ask the attractive girl. So went up to her "Pardon, senorita", "Si", "errm, do you speak English...", "a little" (normally when they say this they are very good, not this one, she was telling the truth!), "bici..", "si", "Ok, our bici (me doing some weird pedalling motion with my hands), tyres (stupid tyre shape motions), I get a blank look... So I find a bike, point to its tyres, "si", I point to a pump, "si", I make pumping up tyre motions, "OK un moment por favor". She goes off to find a bloke, he comes back and starts noshing away in Spanish to me, I say "No espanol." He goes off and finds someone else, he speaks a bit more English and explain it all again, he asks to see our bikes. Runs off and comes back with inner tubes! NO PEDRO. We want our chuffing tyres pumping up! (all said in the head by the way). Andy said which I had been saying all along, we need our tyres pumping up. He goes "ahh you need your tyres pumping up, follow me." Whaaaat, Ive been saying that for ages, to about 40 people, why when Andy says it in English no attempt at Spanish its suddenly easily and quickly understood! GOSH. So we get taken to a new bloke, in one of those sections you see in PC world where the geeks hang out, but this one had bikes. This bloke spoke near on perfect English. Chatted to us about his cycling (he was a mountain biker), how we should get to Barcelona from there, that we should have mats to sleep on in our tent... A top bloke. He pumped Andy's tyres up first and struggled because Andy's bike is rubbish and then did mine and found it a lot easier. And said to me this bike is better and I said the same as the rider, he laughed loudly, "hahaha aaa yeeees, the bike is good and the rider is good" hahaha, my hero.

We left a good hour later, and it was getting darkish. Problem was though it was getting dark because the build up of clouds. Real, proper menacing clouds, deep black, thick. We made it to a bus station, and the heavens opened out, the most torrential rain we have seen on our trip and the worst rain I have seen in a while anywhere. And to top it off there was lighting bolts flying around everywhere, was very close to Armageddon. But the bus station had a bar, so we sat on some benches outside (under a shelter) and had a nice drink. A bloke then came up to us and jibbered away constantly, literally no clue for quite a while. Then we figured out he was trying to tell us to go to the supermarket to buy beer from because it was cheaper! We must have either looked; very poor, alcoholics, both... im going for the stench that was emitting from us, must have looked like tramps. Realising we would never make our campsite about 20 miles on, we resorted to phoning my dad to find out where we could stay for the night. No campsites about, so found a youth hostel.

Andy and I enjoying some beers during the storm (though it looks surprisingly light, was a nasty old storm)

Once the rain had stopped a few hours later. We made our way to the youth hostel, and somehow communicated with the workers we wanted one night and if we could take our expensive bikes to our room. (Andy did this by pointing at his bike and doing that rub with the thumb against the fingers, like Egyptian taxi drivers do when they want cash). We got some food in a nearby supermarket, something amusing happened at the till, but I can't quite remember what it was about, it basically involved me not having a clue what was going on... All I remember was I thought she was trying to charge me about £7 for a peach. I'll ask Andy for details. So we had a very pleasant nights sleep, first time in a bed for many days, had a shower and room to move about and we weren't about 4inches away from each other, instead, a good 8 foot gap!

Enjoying my massive lump of meat, Turkey if you are wondering!