Day 8 : 77.84 miles, 7:19 hours, St Jean-Pied de Port
[ MAP ]

What a pr**k of a day. I woke up with Tourmalet Syndrome still persisting and my knee hurt from the moment I left my tent. An early start was in order to make up for my short day yesterday.

It was an easy start, ten kilometres downhill. I ruined it for myself by thinking about all the effort I would need to recover the height.

I followed a group of slow riders up towards the summit. It was mostly through pine forest with some clearings towards the top. The downhill was fast. I even got up to seventy five kilometres per hour. Got to Escot at eleven where I realised it was Sunday and there was nowhere open to buy food. I was half a day behind my LP guide schedule but by this stage I was beyond caring about catching up. I just wanted food.

It was good to have a stretch of almost forty five kilometres of easy riding. A short steep bastard of a climb took me up to the small town of Larrau. It must have had inclines well over fifteen percent. Thank god it was short. Larrau had a lovely looking campground but I searched the town up and down for a food shop but come up with diddly-squat. I had to go on.

It was a nice little downhill for a kilometre or two and then the road began ascending a true c*** of a hill, Col de Bagargui. It was ten kilometres of climbing but the first seven kilometres were unmarked. I had no idea of how far I had to go. It was doing my head in. Very f***ing steep and exposed to the cruel sun all the way. I was almost relieved to finally get to the first roadside marker; three kilometres to go with an average gradient of twelve and a half percent.

"Twelve point f***ing five percent?", I yelled in anger at the nonchalant cows chewing along the edge of the road.