Port de Bales descent (France) – Bike Touring The Pyrenees

Halfway through our Tour to The Tour trip we took a detour so that we could climb and descend the Port de Bales pass. Not used too often in the Tour de France – this was still a dirt track in 2006 when the tour was looking for new climbs and decided lay down some tarmac on this one for the 2007 edition. This climb definitely created some drama when Contador attacked Andy Schleck when he had a mechanical and that him his yellow jersey and 39 seconds on the day. Ultimately Contador won the overall tour victory by 39 seoncds…

For me this road looked to tempting to miss after spying it on the maps. So many twists and turns, and a bit off the main path traveled meant it would be a quiet one. We climbed up and over in the direction the tour never goes because the narrow descent is deemed to dangerous by organisers. Bot sides seemed fairly dangerous to race down but the side we descened is longer and has many more corners. Luckily there was no need to race down and I took all the corners really wide to make sure there would be no issues with oncoming traffic. A beautiful day on the bike and one I’ll remember for a long time. The detour was well worth it!

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