Clouds sit low in the valley and everything is sodden. But the bikes don't mind and are waiting patiently for their riders. 
Hugo wisely declines to join us for our ride today, so it's just Christopher and I that prepare ourselves to face the elements. Waterproof trousers over my riding trousers and a waterproof jacket on top of my waterproof jacket. Yes, two waterproof jackets; experience tells me this will be needed. And I didn't bring any warm waterproof gloves, so I wear a pair of surgical gloves on top of my inner gloves, with my leather riding gloves as an outer layer - that's three layers of gloves.
Loading up the bikes in the rain seems to take forever, but eventually I finish faffing around and we can leave.
The route is plotted and we're going back down the valley and then up the Col du Portillon into Spain. The rain is playing havoc with my phone's touchscreen so I often lose map display and then getting it back with gloves on is tricky. So I have to stop to extract my digits from their multilayered cocoon. But we reach the top of the winding col and are into Spain, but there's no "welcome to Spain" sign, so have to make do with crossing a virtual border.
The rain is on and off, but mostly on, and very definitely very wet. But we can still make good progress as the roads seem grippy enough and the motion keeps our visors clear.
The scenery is probably epic, but it might as well be Brussels ring as all we can see are trees and clouds. We know the mountains are there and see glimpses if them occasionally through the cloud and trees, it's all very frustrating. We get a sense of the elevation from our ears reacting to the pressure change as we ride and fall with the hillside. At least the roads are epic.
Once into Spain proper, it clears a little. The houses have very characteristic dark stone walls and look very solid. We're following the N-230 road, before we turn off onto the C-28 at Vielha. We briefly follow a raging river and I later discover this is the same river we sat beside yesterday in Toulouse, the Garonne.
The roads are twisty and the bikes are cranked well over in the corners; in my mirrors I can see Christopher almost touching his panniers on the ground at each tight turn as his bike leans over. He has to take extra care and also allow space for oncoming cars to get past.
We have been at altitude periodically, passing a ski chairlift at more than 2000m, and the cold is starting to penetrate even if the wet is kept at bay for now. We stop to refuel our bikes and ourselves with a coffee, and to warm up. There are a surprising number of bikers zooming past, all offering that low biker's wave. At the coffee stop there's a group of riders with their female partners who seem very underdressed for the conditions; I'm sure they will freeze their butts off as they get higher.
Later I find myself behind a cruiser motorcycle, which pulls away on the straights but is hampered by a poor turning circle and the worst line in and out of a hairpin bend I've ever seen; the rider ending up on the opposite side of the road at the end of each bend. He's lucky there's no oncoming traffic or he'd be adorning someone's front bumper in no time. I can't bear to watch, so I overtake at the first opportunity. Some riders also overtake us, on their sporty bikes. In the dry, these mountains must be full of bikes exploring their limits and their rider's. The are many radars in operation to catch them.
We turn off onto a smaller road, the L-401 and now we have to contend with goats loose on the roads. We pass through a series of tunnels that don't look as finished as other tunnels we've seen, it's as if the tunnels were dug, but not lined.
We also see a very impressive set of nets designed to catch falling rocks from above
The low clouds are back and after one curve, a wall of rock faces us that seems to be endless as it extends vertically into the clouds. We stop to capture the image, but no camera can do such scenes justice. We try anyway...
Eventually we arrive a Burga and then plot our next direction, including booking our hotel for the night. We can reach Barcelona in about 60 minutes on the motorway or 2hr30 if we take the twisty option. It's 16h30 now so we opt for the middle route, which should see us in Barcelona in about 2 hours. In the end the middle option was not so interesting, but we get to the hotel in time to visit the food court of the Baricentro shopping mall for a ramen noodle dish. Followed by a McFlurry ice-cream.
I have no idea how many km we did today, I think around 500. It was 8hrs on the road and we stopped only 30mins for our coffee.
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