As it’s the new season 2012 for our bike hire business, we bought some new VTCs (vélo tout chemin) to add to our stable of bikes. Specifically they were bought for three chaps who are going to use them to tour the mountains this month, so after they’ve well and truly run them in, they’ll be ours to hire out.
Mmmm - nice
So, just to make sure they were put together properly and adjusted exactly as they should be, I took one out for a quick ride up and down some hills this afternoon in the gorgeous sunshine.
Very nice...
I must say it was like riding a newer, cleaner version of my old bike, a Giant 1500 hybrid. Very responsive and solid feeling. It changed gears very smoothly and glided along silently. And they look beautiful too.
I may have to ditch my old faithful and take to one of these when the season ends.
At Easter each year (or more correctly ‘Pâques’), Navarrenx hosts a 3 day ‘Foire Artisanal’ where various artists and artisans come to exhibit their work all around the town, inside the ramparts. The weather can be a bit hit-and-miss, it being April, but today, the monday, it was beautiful.
The view down our street during Pâques 2012
The whole village is closed to traffic and everyone can wander from stall to stall to building to building (and hopefully buy something!).
Once again, it’s that time of year. And the weather is just gorgeous for it. Maybe a little too warm for the trout, but we’ll see.
Fishing for 'poisson blanc'
Today I saw Pascal, the son of the local fishing shop owner (Le Poisson Roy) and his friend Pierre fishing for ‘Poisson blanc’. That’s the name for anything that isn’t a game fish and in this case it’s chub. Lots of them and very big they are too.
Pierre doing his best to creep up on the chub
They didn’t seem tempted in all the time that I spent there watching. Pascal blamed it on the sun. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Pascal and Pierre have a very good blog with some beautiful photos and videos here:Bearnish Fly.
Today the temperature is in the 20s again – another beautiful november day, so what better than to go out cycling and make the most of this weather before it becomes properly november-like. It certainly doesn’t seem to nearing the end of the year when the sky is a gorgeous clear blue with not a cloud to be seen.
The Pyrénées Mountains behind a house near 'Hôpital St Blaise'
On this 40km trip, I cycled through nearby ‘Hôpital St Blaise’, Gurs and Dognen. In Dognen, by the church, there is a relatively new resident called ‘Gribouille’, a noisy porker who doesn’t hesitate to come over when someone’s taking his photo.
My name's Gribouille and I'm as happy as a pig in shit...
It has been raining here for what seems like days, almost constantly. Consequently, the Gave d’Oloron, our nearby river has swollen massively and is in the process of flooding everything if the rain doesn’t stop soon.
This is the normally picturesque 13th century bridge
The Rafting centre is literally half underwater and several islands in the river have now been totally immersed. It remains to be seen whether the river gets any higher over the next few days as rain is forecast again until tuesday at least.
While my brother was over we decided to go for a bit of a cycle ride. I was trying to get him to come on our next cycle trip in September 2012. I’d just completed a ride from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean. You can read all about it here. As Peter’s not a regular cyclist at the moment, we went on a leisurely 30km ride around some local beauty spots, Peter snapping away with his camera like a regular Japanese tourist.
Aren - a local fishing spot
So he’s got plenty of great photos of the area which I can hopefully ‘borrow’ for this blog.
Yesterday, my fello ‘Wheezing Geezer’ Barry, and I went out for a bit of training and went a bit further than we meant to. The trip ended up being very hilly and quite long.
After this very steep hill, at least you could gaze over the vineyards of Jurancon at Monein
Then, today we had a group of accountants booked in to do some cycling in a lovely Basque village called Menditte.
This is good for team building apparently
There were ten teams of three out to race each other on an off-road circuit as part of a team-building excercise.
They’d picked a glorious day for it which was just as well, as from Menditte they were off north somewhere for a run then some walking. Maybe after that, some speed adding-up or something?
Our Jack Russell terrier Olive loves to swim in the nearby ‘Gave d’Oloron’ no matter what the temperature is. Luckily today it’s about 25 degrees, so we went for a walk down to the river beach at Méritein and I took our new underwater (well, water resistant) camera. I’ve been dying to try it out for weeks, so here was a great opportunity to see the results.
Doggy paddle!
It’s very difficult trying to point the camera in the right direction and there’s a long delay between pressing the button and the shutter going off.
Mine!
I ended up taking dozens of photos and only a few were interesting enough to keep. Thank goodness one doesn’t have to pay to get them developed these days.
Wooflfllffbbll !
That’s Olive’s tail you can just see, that flicks from side to side as she swims, using it like a propeller.
