The duck on the Col in the morning.
The Swiss outnumbered by Norwegians, Brits, Aussies, Germans, French and Belgians attempt to make up for their deficiency in numbers.
DUCK!
Even though its the first climb of the stage, a breakawway was already forging ahead to scoop to king of the mountain points for the col, and the sprint points that follow it.
The tour provided its usual spectacle, and then in the early afternoon I set out for Carcassonne. I had the best part of 140Km to travel, through some not ideal terrain.
Descending the Col to I traveled through some very picturesque villages.
After descending the Col-de-port-du-Aspet, I had a fairly hard slog through the undulating foot hills of the Pyrenees on my way to Foix. The going was tough, and I took a break in a cafe' to watch the close of the day's Tour stage, as the riders climbed to the high-altitude finish.
The head-wind in the lower lying areas of the Pyrenees was punishing, and I had to pedal /down/ any hill shallower than about 3%.
Things continued to be difficult until I got over a final Col at about 600m above sea level. Having dropped down into Saint-Girons, my last Col (Col del Bouich) took me back up to the altitude where I had finished descending Col-du-port-de-Aspet. Fortunately I climbed the shallower face (as I will admit to having been a bit tired at this point).
I then descended into Foix, and took the N20 towards Carcassonne, with the mountains behind me I was flying along, and was making an averaging around 30Kph, despite my load.
The Chataux in Foix. I was tempted to stop and look around, but wanted to make the distance to Carcassonne.
As I rode down the busy 4-lane road, many of the Tour de France support vehicles passed me by.
As I took the exit for Carcassonne, I passed the hotel where team Liqui-gas were staying, and enjoyed the unusual role reversal of one of their riders, pointing at me ride by with my panniers. I gave them a wave, and carried on.
The road to Carcassonne, was traveled by many of the tour support vehicles and caravan floats, and I was in high spirits, as many of them waved and tooted at me (including team Sky). I had a little race against the LCL time-trial float (he overtook, so I overtook him back and so on).
Fate, sensing that I was in danger of enjoying my self then threw some quite nasty mechanical problems at me. I got yet another puncture in my front tyre and my bottom bracket started to develop a nasty issue. With each turn, the bracket would give an audible clunk, and send a small but perceptible vibration down my right leg. This eventually started to cause a nasty pain in my hip joint, and I found my self faced with making the last 60Km to Carcassonne, with a painful joint issue and a leaky tyre. It was quite annoying being overtaken by all the technical cars from Le tour at this point as many of them had £4,000 carbon fiber racing bikes strapped to the roof, and I was thinking "want to swap?".
I took this picture for my friends George and Jesse, as with the red roofed buildings on the horizon and hay bales in the foreground I felt like I had stepped onto the Carcassonne playing board.
The sun sets as I travel to Carcassonne. Shortly after the sun-set behind me a perfect Lunar Eclipse rose ahead of me. Regrettably I was too tired from constantly re-inflating my tyre and generally dealing with my ailing bike to stop and take a picture of that.
Had I been free from issues I probably would have arrived around 20:30, but I eventually limped into the camp site at 23:20 (10 minutes before they closed for the night).
The last, inefficient 60Km had exhausted me, so I got my tent pitched, made some Welsh cakes and then got some much needed sleep.
Welsh cakes by moon light.
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