A beautiful roll out with Atlantic breakers crashing onto the beach, the surfers readying themselves for a day in the water as we whizzed past. The road wound its way along cliffs that were punctuated with small basque towns whose names were made unpronounceable by the number of X's in them.
Bob set an early pace of around 30kph, which on the rolling coast road felt fine especially after a great breakfast.
The first climb, the Col St Ignace, came and went, the descent spectacular, its twists and turns plunging us into the valley at over 60kph, so fast that Nick couldn't keep up through the bends. We lost him and then lost our way. There's not much time to work out how many syllables the next town has when you flash past at nearly 70kph!
Our detour was bought to halt by a call from Nick and we were only 8 km out so we quickly rejoined the right road.
Suddenly Bob decided to put the hammer down and for the best part of 40km we raced at 35-40kph on the flat, me grimly hanging on to his back wheel trying to hide in his slipstream. We shot through a group of 20-30 local cyclists who seemed amused to see a young(ish) man hanging on with gritted teeth and wild eyes, sweat pouring from every pore, flies splattered across his legs and face (yep, that was me).
We stopped for lunch at St Jean Pied de Port, a pretty place with street cafes, and shop windows decked with flowers. Nick produced a fine picnic served from the back of his car. Local cheese and meat never tasted so good.
Bob spied a bike shop and headed in to sort out a technical issue with his gears. I waited in the baking-hot sun, glugging water as Bob paced frustratedly outside the shop.
I suffered from the long stop at lunch, my legs felt like lead and I'd eaten too much. After a short while we hit the Col d'Osquich, which ground its way through woods and fields to open out at 500m with the most amazing views. The descent was superb, the road flowed and fell from the top with a sinuous beauty and required no breaking all the way through its banked corners.
Arriving in Tardets we grabbed a quick drink, had our cards stamped as a record of the route and headed in the direction of Arudy, our overnight stop. We were supposed to climb the Marie Blanque ( which isn't part of the Raid) but because of the stop at the bike shop we were running behind schedule.
The road to Arudy was a tedious drag through a forest with a surface that made a scabby horse look lovely. It bumped and ground its way over a series of climbs that wore the mind down before the body. There had been a recent, feeble attempt at resurfacing it which had left a covering of loose gravel that pinged off the frames and stuck to our sweating bodies.
Thankfully Arudy eventually appeared and although broken by the day's 200km, after a shower and a fantastic meal suddenly life didn't feel quite so bad. The Hotel de France is a most elegant, in a shabby chic way, French way family-run hotel, where, despite my schoolboy French, I was able to understand the owner taking the piss out of my weary arrival and the fact that several glasses of wine had straightened me out!
Tomorrow's itinerary includes the Col d'Aubisque and Col du Tourmalet, the giants of the Pyrenees.
TODAY'S STATISTICS
Distance 200km
Time 7hrs 35mins
Ascent 2377m
Calories 4000
Average cadence 90 rpm
Max cadence 166 rpm
Avg speed 26kph
Max speed 67kph
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