My knee was hurting today and I am a bit tired of riding alone (since I don't keep up with the group) so I got in the van today after 30 miles.
The first 30 miles were almost all downhill, so I didn't actually do much work today. As I mentioned in yesterday's report, we slept at 1700m last night, and we are at sea level today, so we did quite a bit of downhilling today, mostly in the first 30 miles. I knew that there would be a hard climb though, so I quit just before, not wanting to hurt my knee any further.
Ron was driving the van today, and I was copilot and navigator. Ron likes to drive the van, he says it really handles well, and once commented "my MG would love these roads". You can guess from that that the driving was brisk. I had to hold on tight to my lunch as Ron raced along the windy mountain roads, putting the big diesel van through its paces.
We stopped at the top of the aforementioned pass to serve lunch. We had been promised no more big climbs after yesterday but this was nonetheless over 1000m at the top. Lucky for me I was in the van.
Tomorrow is a rest day in Collioure, which is an idyllic little town on the Mediterranean. I have no ambitions other than to do some laundry and take a lot of pictures.
Speaking of which, I liked these pictures from today:
This is a little village tucked up on the hillside halfway up the pass today:
Here's the group just after the pass. You can't really tell from the picture, but the horizon is the Mediterranean. The pass was at about 1000m, so the view was pretty great.
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