day 3, monday 2^nd august 99

We're woken by a pleasant, Spanish accented voice over the tannoy at 5:45 English time (so that's 6:45 Spanish time) saying that the boat is to dock in 1 hour and 15 mins. I do the usual and go to breakfast. There are many more people than I recall seeing before - where have they all been? Hiding in their cabins? Maybe word of marvin being on board has travelled around the boat and certain people of a more timid nature have hidden for the entire journey. Breakfast is plagued by visions of whole families knelt round their beds in prayer, quivering at the thought of marvin unleashed. The man himself is too much occupied with the fact that his breakfast (4 small bottles of orange juice) has just cost him seven quid.

After untying the Trixie I adjust her suspension again, lowering the rear preload from 5 of 7 to 3, and the front to 4 and then we head off the boat. Spain - well Bilbao, at least - is overcast. The Spanish customs blokes let us through with just a glimpse of our passports. Mine stays firmly in the clear bit of the tank bag - he sees it there and waves me through. Later I learn that one of us saw an attractive woman travelling alone in her car being pulled over for a more, er, thorough examination...

It rains as we plod our way through a genuine Spanish traffic jam into Bilbao. Fuel is acquired and I don my waterproofs. It stops raining more or less immediately. Bugger.

The further we go from Bilbao (Jeremy leading - well, he's been to Espana before), the better the weather. I take off my waterproofs as I'm overheating terribly. Also, it's not raining. Also (2) the suit is terribly uncomfortable and doesn't fit my, ahem, ample frame too well.

We spend a long time on potentially excellent roads queuing behind lorries, indulging ourselves in dodgy overtakes galore. Out onto the open roads at last, which alternate between really boring and most excellent. The excellent ones have lots of long, sweeping bends with some tight corners thrown in for good measure. The boring ones do not. I discover a reasonable amount about how far I can lean the Trixie without anything touching down, while Jeff learns that if he goes too far, his centre-stand hits the deck surprisingly easily.

We steadily make our way into more mountainous country. We also fail to take a necessary turning and instead marvin leads us on an excellent back road which cuts across to our originally intended road. This is not the first, nor is it to be the last, of this day's navigational errors...

We begin to enter a mountain pass that will take us to France. Jeremy immediately hoons off into the distance shouting "I love these Cols". After leading for a while, marvin gets overtaken by Jim, who heads off at some speed. I wait for a bit behind marvin and then think "bugger this, if Jim can go, I can" and I head off in pursuit.

This road is incredible. It winds along the bottom of a gorge - there are tight bends, sweeping bends, hairpins, straights, everything. The TRX laps it all up, mainly in 4th and 5th, rolling on and off the throttle. I catch Jim up, which makes me feel better and then notice marvin in my mirrors - so he wasn't that far behind on his lardy bike.

Near the top end of the pass, the Col de la Pierre St. Martin, we come out into a bowl, surrounded by incredibly beautiful mountains. I spy a pass on the other side of the bowl, but to my utter amazement, the road goes nowhere near it. Instead, it hairpins its way up the side of one of these mountains. As we ascend, I see a cloud rolling its way around the side of the peak. Beautiful beyond description.

We stop near the top at a lay-by/ viewpoint and variously express our awe at both the road and the view. Round the last bend to the top and Jeremy's Tiger is parked at the side of the road. He's been here for about 10 minutes longer than we took to admire the view. Git.

The cloud re-appears as a wall of fog that quickly (in fact, very quickly) envelops us. We set off in a long queue down into France, going at no more than 15 mph as visibility is down to 10 yards, maximum. Straight away, the French reveal their sense of humour. French Joke #1: they've resurfaced the road and all the road markings are missing. The edge of black tarmac is very hard to see in thick fog, especially when you are acutely aware that there's a very long drop to your left.

We enter the French Joke #2: a sudden, unmarked, huge car park. Suddenly there is a vast amount of tarmac & no way of seeing which way is "down, but without the drop". Jeff's glasses choose this moment to finally become too misted up for him to see & he stops. Jeremy stops with him, Jim & I find the road out of the car park & set off. Jeff & Jeremy soon catch up and the four of us are left in a split-off 2nd group. We make our way down the mountain very slowly, unable to virtually see anything.

At one point, the fog lifts momentarily and I see that we've just completed a long, rising right-handed loop that takes us round and onto a bridge over the road we've just come along. The fog then descends before I can finish marvelling at this. It seems to take hours to get off the mountain and indeed, it does take hours.

The four of us stop at a petrol station in the first village we come to and get fuel as well as finally donning our waterproofs. There was nowhere to safely stop and do this before and so we are already pretty wet. By now, it's raining pretty hard, although we've come down out of the fog. We discuss the situation. Annoyed that the others haven't stopped for us, we push on. 40 yards later we round a corner and there they all are in a cafe. Bugger! We have a quick drink and then we're off.

The rain increases and our average speed decreases accordingly. Soon we're onto a mountain road that winds its way back into the fog. Our illustrious leader, marvin, does a smashing job of leading us through this at 20 mph all the way. Every so often the road is covered with weird markings and what looks like graffiti - it's for them silly sods on the Tour de France who were up here a few weeks before! We can't see a damn thing by now, except for occasional (terrifying) glimpses of sheer drops.

There is a top comedy moment when a sheep wanders in front of Jeremy, who revs the Tiger's engine at it. It panics and runs straight along the centre of the road for at least 50 yards! Soon we enter an unlit tunnel that (a) has a bend in it and (b) has no road markings (again). Frightening is not the word.

Several tunnels and lots of hairpins later we encounter a herd of cows in the road, bells jangling softly. A slightly desperate looking Frenchman herds them off the road & we continue. Soon afterwards, right in the middle of a sharp left-hander, is a cattle grid with copious amounts of water flowing under and over it. More abject terror as there's no grip and no wall off to the left. To cap it all, the fog parts to show a 400 foot drop...

It's now set back into rain instead of fog and my gloves are soaked - as are my feet. I can't tell if my waterproofs are working or not as I was damp when I put them on and I have sweated a lot since then. Finally we come out at the bottom of the mountain and realise we have at least 50 more miles of mountain roads to go. A quick chat reveals we don't want to do this – especially as one of the roads is marked on the map as being dangerous! We're all tired and uncomfortable. We make for the nearest town, Argeles-Gazost, find an hotel and book in for the night. Curiously, the rooms have a small dishwasher, but no clothes washing or drying facilities.

It stops raining, but the clouds look firmly attached to the mountain-tops. A wet day tomorrow, too, probably.

We wallop down some top snap in the hotel restaurant and several beers. Great delight is taken in ordering eight beers at a time! During the meal, for no reason whatsoever, we discuss penile cancer in chimney sweeps and garage mechanics. The surrounding tables soon clear...

Knackered, I retire at 11:30 to go to bed and rest my sore and aching shoulders and arse. The rest head off to a different bar where they consume large quantities of Belgian beer. I pray (briefly and somewhat hopelessly, as I don't actually believe in The Big Fella) for better weather tomorrow as its my 35th birthday. Not likely, though, as we have 200 planned miles to go and some 50 miles to catch up on. Ah well...

Mileage: 294