Etang de Lers

The plan had been to cycle from my house to Massat, up to the Etang de Lers, over the Col d'Agnes, down to Aulus, over the Col de la Trappe, then back home via Pont de la Taule and Seix. I met Penny at Massat who is in training for a big race in the summer. The climb upto Etang de Lers was long and fairly steep, by the time I'd got there I'd climbed about 970m and the legs were complaining - I got the feeling Penny wasn't finding it quite so stiff but she's been training and this was only my second outing on a bike in about three years (not that I'd done much in the twenty years before that).

The weather was perfect but after the Etang the road was closed because of the snow (they don't clear it as they still think it's a Ski de Fond venue). Not one to give up easily, I decided to see if we couldn't press on through the snow for the last kilometer or so to the Col d'Agnes. Penny wasn't so enthusiastic. I tried to pursuade her that the cleats on her cycling shoes were in fact designed to double as crampons. I pushed on (literally) for a several hundred metres but the snow was upto the spindle on the wheel of the bike and my feet were getting wet so I had to admit defeat.

After a retreat a similar chain of events unfolded as I tried to reach the Port de Lers (the other col heading eventually to Tarascon). I'd read on another blog about a skier and two cyclists who'd gone through the Port de Lers a few days earlier and said it had been cleared of snow by the DDE. There was no sign of any snow clearance when we were there today but below is the photo on their blog of the pair at the Port de Lers....strange! Did someone shovel the deep wet snow back over the road yesterday night?


The descent back to Massat was easy and a beer eased the disappointment.

After rebuilding the headset on the bike which had been creaking all day , I thought I'd cook a cheese fondue but couldn't find my excellent recipe. Some improvisation produced a ball of fried cheese. I added some alcohol to try and break down the fat (I'm sure there was some schnapps in my recipe) it caught fire giving me a flambéed, fried cheese ball. Somehow I managed to smeared it onto my nicely prepared french bread cubes and boiled vegetables.