This article was originally published in issue 80 of Singletrack World
Words and pics by Chipps.
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As strange as it may seem, I don’t get to ride my bike in work time a great deal, so when I get a week of holiday, even at the tail end of October, I can think of nothing better than just getting on a bike and riding. Obviously, I’ll have to take a camera and I’ll probably end up writing about it, but that’s my decision I’m free to make and, therefore, I’m still on holiday. Right?
My interest was piqued by a sunny, dry corner of the Pyrenees
After the not-very-summer, I wanted to remind myself about all the things that make bike riding fun for me: things like bare sleeves and dusty shins, after-ride beers, hilltop views and well-earned dinners. But most of all, there needs to be riding. Technical enough to challenge you, preferably with perfect trail conditions, rides big enough to earn that dinner and impressive enough that you can look back on the photos and be tired but happy about a week well-spent.
I must admit that my early research involved a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet contained a list of costs on one side (flights, guiding, accommodation and so on) and the average sunshine and rainfall of each potential destination on the other. My interest was piqued by a sunny, dry corner of the Pyrenees – near enough to get to easily, with empty trails and ‘probable’ good weather in late October. Nestled in the middle of this region was a mountain bike company run by a husband and wife team I know from many years ago – Ian and Ange.
Let the (Altitude) Adventure begin!
Ian and Angela Pendry used to be regular faces on the UK mountain bike scene in the 90s. Ian raced downhill (for the UK at the Chateau-d’Oex Worlds in 1997) and Angie raced cross country at World Cup level at the same time. With a young family and an outdoorsy look to the world, they decided to do what many people only talk about and sell up and move out to pursue a better life elsewhere.
To the complete puzzlement of their parents and odd looks from less adventurous friends, they bought a rambling old mill-turned-mountain-hotel in the Pyrenees Orientales. The large Cerdagne valley isn’t a region of France that, well, anyone has ever heard of, so that presented both an opportunity and a challenge to running any sort of holiday company there. It does, however, have a few tricks up its sleeve (if valleys had sleeves). Sitting at 1,500m, near the saddle of the pass between Spain and France, it’s at the perfect height for temperature variation in winter and summer. Too cold? Let’s go down the hill a bit. Too hot? Let’s go up into the cooler, shady mountains. And there’s a lot of shade-seeking needed as this is the sunniest valley in France, clocking up 300 sunny days (and 3,000 hours) of blue sky sunshine a year. That alone had me hooked.
Reset the clocks.
That first full day dawned sunny and fresh. Warm enough for short sleeves, but mountain-weather enough to pack a top. I find it always takes a while to get used to the terrain of a new landscape – to recalibrate my riding style and skills, such as they are, to the surroundings. The first day of riding in a new place, whether it be the South Downs or the Sierra Nevada mountains, always finds me riding too fast, or not fast enough: stopping pointlessly on the climbs or bottling simple descents. After a day or so, you get your eye in and what was terrifying or tall on that first day becomes commonplace.
After nearly forever going uphill, the sky started to expand and the trees thinned a little to reveal the top of the day’s climb.
Our first day in the mountains was no different. As I tore off up the first fire road climb, Ian had to remind me that this wasn’t a five minute honk to the top; we’d be middle-ring spinning for anything up to an hour. This was something I continued to forget and Ian and Ange would resort to a subtle, rolling roadblock manoeuvre with me where they’d overtake me, close together and slow imperceptibly down so that I was forced to throttle back without really noticing. In the long run it did me some good as I remembered to spin again and didn’t blow my legs off…
After nearly forever going uphill, the sky started to expand and the trees thinned a little to reveal the top of the day’s climb. Or at least the bit before lunch. This was our sign to get out the packed baguettes. We’d all happily shouldered our own sandwiches, but I hadn’t been expecting Ian to produce a large flask of hot coffee and some stackable cups. The guy certainly earns his money. Sipping coffee in the sunshine and looking down a wooded valley far below, being pointed out the trails we’d be riding shortly; that’s what I was here for.
Saddles down a little and attitudes set to ‘fun’ we set off on the descent. Although the terrain wasn’t too challenging in isolation compared to our usual trails back home, it did need another recalibration of the brain to get used to the scale, the exposure and the extended length of the descents. Crossing an avalanche-scraped scree needed a conscious ‘don’t look down the slope’ self-command, but we were soon back in the trees and ripping through the tree-lined descent like some never-ending Surrey Hills on, well, on a very big hill.
until my front wheel hit a rock big enough to flip me over the bars and flat on my front.
Slowly the knowledge comes back; the certainty that you can rely on those gnarled tree roots to be grippy, or that puddle to be more toe-splasher than wheel-eater. It takes a while though. As the trails went on over the week, the fluidity of body-English over the bike came back and the size of terrain started to inspire, rather than intimidate. I learned a lesson in the ‘not taking things for granted’ classroom when I casually went to roll down a drop-in, purely to get out of the way of a photo, only to clip something on the entrance to the drop, accidentally unclip my foot and rode the front wheel most of the way down the steep bank. Most of the way, until my front wheel hit a rock big enough to flip me over the bars and flat on my front. Luckily, or not, my GoPro took the impact. Still luckily, those lenses are replaceable. I learned to remember to keep the respect healthy that day.
Day follows night, follows the cheese course.
Towards the end of those early days of riding, the mountainsides would slowly ease off the gradients at their bases so that we would finish rides with suitably mellow warm-downs on farm tracks and village back roads to wherever we’d parked, or back to the hotel. There was often the chance of a drink or two to wind down, talk over the ride and look forward to dinner. Regardless of whether we’d descended the Spanish side, or the French, snacks and beers were always available, even when the bar’s kitchen was shut.
He’d hooked his first trout before the fly had hit the water
This was only to keep us going until dinnertime. And in the hour or two between getting back to the hotel, the riders would shower, read, snooze, or start on the beers, while our hosts, who’d been up since before they were serving our breakfast, would be preparing our dinner, regardless of how much they’d been riding that day. They have a division of labour where Angela does the starters and dessert, while Ian cooks the main course. On one occasion, it involved him heading out the back of the hotel to the trout pool to catch dinner as well. One guest had been so excited about the presence of the trout, that he’d borrowed Ian’s fly fishing gear, hidden in a tree and cast into the pool – roughly the size of a big hot-tub. He’d hooked his first trout before the fly had hit the water – Ian usually just uses a net and a bucket. Within an hour, eight trout were cleaned, cooked and polished off. There was still desert and the cheese course, of course, accompanied by bottomless carafes of wine and, if you’re lucky, some of the ‘good’ génépi (which is the local strong, clear spirit with some twigs of wormwood in it… it can be very good or very awful. Luckily Ian stocks the good stuff).
Wake up and smell the weather.
Every morning, after breakfast of course, Ian would go out and look at the weather. With the mountain flanks behind the hotel, it wasn’t immediately obvious what was in store, but it was just a short trip to the top of the village where you could see into Spain on one side and down the valley 100km or so all the way to Perpignan and the Atlantic on the other side. One day was a bit grey, so we rode from the house, keeping us within a quick bad-weather-bail of the hotel.
Despite a strong wind, we go to see a different scenery again and rode many of the trails that normally make up the local gravity enduro race.
That never came, so we winched our way up to the local ski mountain, past deserted winter cabins to the top. Ian has an arrangement with the ski resort; they were keen to put a downhill run in, but given the bigger, better bike parks a short drive away, Ian persuaded them to put the same investment into a network of trails more in the Welsh style. Fun, accessible and graded downhills, earned under your own steam. The project is going forward slowly, but steadily, with three trails on the ground already in the first year. So as well as having to play ‘follow the local’ we had to play ‘follow the local on trails he’s built himself’. At least he waited for us at the bottom.
On the one day where we woke up to an inch of snow on the ground and sub-zero temps, Ian bundled us into the van, looked at the weather from the top of the village and we drove downhill, towards Perpignan, until the sun came out and the temperatures rose enough to make riding fun again. Despite a strong wind, we go to see a different scenery again and rode many of the trails that normally make up the local gravity enduro race. We might not have scared the locals with our times, but we scared ourselves and made it through unscathed.
After a few days in the valley, even though I was riding mountain bikes (and on a test bike too), all thoughts of work slipped away and I got to enjoy the pure, guilt-free pleasures of riding knobbly-tyred bikes on dry, rocky, unfamiliar, challenging terrain, with no time to think about work (even if that work is mountain bikes) or bills or anything beyond concentrating on the next corner, getting the weight shifts right and putting the front tyre exactly where it needed to go while sight-reading the constant overload of trail information.
Our lunchtimes became quiet moments in this sensory chatter. We’d all, wordlessly, sit down and unwrap a sandwich. Beate would get out the watercolours, Steve and Nicola and I would drink in the scenery; the red-tiled roofs of the village below, with not a speeding car in sight. Even more rare were other riders; we saw one in a week.
Winter was coming, but I was putting it off as long as I could.
Compared to the busy trails of the Alps, even off-season, the Pyrenees always seem less discovered, less exploited and with more space to hide everything and everyone in. We saw our biggest crowd of people – possibly a dozen, when we had our day off and went to the local hot springs with Angela and her kids. There’s a well-known commercial hot baths near the village, but this was a more natural experience. Just a ten-minute hike off a road we’d previously ridden down, there was a scalding, sulphurous river that flowed out of a steep hillside. The locals had built a descending gallery of rock pools down the hillside over the years. The pools decreased in temperature as the hillside dropped away, so you started at the bottom in the tepid pool and worked your way up as far as you dared.
Lying there in a hot pool, looking up at the blue sky, through the turning leaves of autumn, I could feel the cool breeze playing across the surface of the steaming water. Winter was coming, but I was putting it off as long as I could. It would definitely be my last week of riding in shorts and short sleeves of the year, but I’d go home with enough warm riding memories to keep me going through the darkest months. My biggest problem was going to be wanting to come right back again once the snow had gone to carry on where I’d left off.
Adventures at Altitude.
Altitude Adventure is in the Pyrenees Orientales, in a tiny village called Saint-Pierre- dels-Forcats. We went on a regular ‘adventure trails’ trip, which costs around £450 a person, plus flights. You get seven nights accommodation and at least five day’s guided riding. There are other trips on offer if you like more uplift assistance with your downs. There are Scott rental bikes available too if you want to rent something bigger (or lighter, or newer) and not fly with yours. Their new big trip is the Summit to Sea; a four day expedition that starts at the hotel and descends (by way of many climbs too) to the distant Mediterranean. 200km of riding with 7,500m descending (oh, and 6,000m of climbing…)
altitudeadventure.com
Guide to good guides.
A good mountain guide needs to do many jobs well. An ability to ride well is a given, as is an expert knowledge of the trails, but a guide needs to be many other things if he or she is to give you that ‘perfect’ week of bike riding and time-off that you’ve been craving. There are all the dull safety aspects: bike repair, first aid and navigation and knowledge of escape routes and emergency services, but again, that’s something that needs to come as standard.
Ian’s matey bluster stands him in good stead with groups of Essex lads while Ange’s willow-like physique belies a technical skill that would leave most of those lads in her dust.
Where a good guide excels is in all the peripheries that are so well delivered that you don’t consciously notice them. On the first ride, the guide will be evaluating your group, seeing how you all cope with climbing, with the altitude, with the technical features of the trails. Is one rider far stronger, or weaker, than the rest of the group? Is everyone keen to improve their riding and push some boundaries, or are you all happy to simply be there? The guide needs to read the riders and group-dynamic and work out if gentle encouragement will help a rider through a tricky section, or would funny put-downs and humour be a better way to defuse a tense moment?
Beyond this personal analysis, the guide needs to know more than ‘ride bike, fix bike, follow trail’. If a rider wants to know what those penis-shaped mushrooms are over there, they should know the answer (and preferably if they’re poisonous or delicious and whether or not to stuff some into your CamelBak). An old boundary wall, shepherd’s hut or hot spring had better come complete with some local history and perhaps a personal anecdote about meeting those three old pensioners who were dragging a giant elk they’d shot on the far side of that mountain over there.
Ian and Angela both have years of guiding between them and the people skills to back it up. Ian’s matey bluster stands him in good stead with groups of Essex lads while Ange’s willow-like physique belies a technical skill that would leave most of those lads in her dust. And yet, on the flip side, Ian can coax a timid beginner down a rocky descent and make them feel like a mountain biking superstar while simultaneously ripping the piss out of a mountain bike magazine editor’s lack of fashion sense. Ahem.
Ian’s humour even translated to his Mountain Leader assessment, where his chosen specialist subject was on left-handed squirrels; you can tell that from looking at an eaten pine cone to see which way the spiral of munch-marks goes. He still tells this story to the Mountain Leaders who now come for their own Plas y Brenin assessments at his hotel.
Ian has always loved a good chat and our two-hour ride from Barcelona Airport was a solid slab of conversation. In between pointing out historic fortified houses in the river valleys and discussing winter tyres and summer camp sites, we stopped for lunch, just on the Spanish side of the border to refuel and load up with food and anecdotes as Ian went through some of Altitude Adventure’s recent history.
Joining my girlfriend and I on this week of riding would be a couple of other old friends and former clients of Ian’s – Nicola and Steve, both mountain bike guides themselves who’d just taken early retirement and were slowly drifting through France to winter in Spain, basically just living the life. As we drove through the Spanish, and then the French countryside, we got a chance to see the mountains grow around us as we headed north into the heart of the Pyrenees. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Pyrenees; my first foreign mountain bike holiday was in the Pyrenees in 1992 in Bareges, on the Col du Tourmalet. Given the early years of mountain biking then, we had a full-on week of minibus-shuttled descending with our steel hardballs and cantilever brakes. It was pretty ahead of its time. It was going to be interesting to see how that first trip would compare to this one, 20 years later.
We spent the first evening building bikes over a coffee, then a beer or two while Ian regaled us with an overload of trail information. In fact, this constantly updated voice-over continued throughout the week as the ever-cheery Ian filled us in on everything from French planning law, through local trout farming and firewood-collecting etiquette to enduro racing.