Category: 2024 Spring – Bordeaux – Pyrenees

The last two days have been a pleasure as we approach the Pyrenees and the Spanish (Basque) border.

Salies-de-Béarn is a beautiful town, obviously very wealthy in its past. It is known for its salt (hence the name) which is mined by pumping water into the underground deposits here. Also, hot springs with salt concentrations ten times as high as the ocean have attracted many people.

Saint-Jean-Pied-De-Port is the starting point for most of the pilgrims who walk the ‘French Way’ of the Camino de Santiago. Lovely walled town, full of shops, small hotels and restaurants. The Camino has several routes, and the ‘French Way’ is used by about 60% of all walkers. It is a challenging walk, and it starts with walking through the Roncesvalles pass through the Pyrenees. Walkers climb to about 1000m over 20kms or so. Not easy.

The video below shows our ride leaving Salies-de-Béarn on Sunday morning through the market, a bit of our journey, and a short video riding through Saint-Jean-Pied-De-Port.

Our third day of riding was much more enjoyable than the first two. The scenery was more interesting and the route took us around many more turns and up and down lots of gentle hills. We had two inconvenient incidents though.

The RideWithGPS app sent us up a bunch of stairs leading to the Abbey at Saint-Sever. Not convenient on recumbent trikes. The video below starts with a Patti and I bumping the trikes up the steps.

An hour or so after that, the app guided us into a long muddy trail – also not good on trikes. We hope you enjoy the rest of the video, accidentally recorded while we push and pull the trikes through the slime. The upside was that the muddy trail was a shortcut that likely saved us about 10km of riding.

This area of South-West France is actively being deforested and reforested. Some areas are clear-cut, with saplings of various ages, and others are being selectively cleared. Most of the reforestation is a monoculture pine, perhaps white pine. We saw many heavily-laden trucks carrying unprocessed wood, and several wood mills with large inventories of construction grade product.

When not in the forest area, huge farm fields were populated by long irrigation machines. Agriculture and forestry here are big business.

Mont-de-Marsan is a large scenic town, with the Midou and Douze rivers joining to form the Midouze flowing to the Atlantic. Tomorrow we cycle south again, for our second-last night in France before entering Spain. We will pass through Saint-Sever with its famous abbey, the starting point for many pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago. Here’s our progress so far. Each icon is a planned accommodation, spaced about 65 kms apart.

And here’a short video showing a bit of the area we cycled through, and some footage in Mont-de-Marsan.

A few pics from today.

We took the trikes out of storage in Bordeaux, stayed the night, and set off southwards to Sore, France. The ride first took us through the Grave wine region, with its endless vineyards and spectacular chalets. Then, all of a sudden, the vineyards were replaced with a rather monotonous 60 km or so of heavily forested land. Some areas were clear cut, but reforestation was obviously a stringent requirement.

For a first day out, 80 km was a bit ambitious, but the terrain was fairly flat. As we approach the Spanish border in the next few days the ups and downs will become much less subtle!

Here is a very short video approaching a beautiful chateaux, framed with vineyards. It’s a 360 video, so drag your mouse to look araound.

Here are a few pictures taken by Patti during the ride.