We had been hearing about this very nice town, Colliuore, just across the border in France; a few bike tour companies include it on their guided tours. And the Lebanese guy at the restaurant yesterday told us the road was good, basically one long uphill then a huge downhill. And the map showed a nice inland pass, the Col de Banyuls, which lead back into Spain for a subsequent day, so we decided to try this loop. Surprise, surprise.
First as we noted yesterday we had a 5K climb out of Cadaques. No problem, we expected it. We had a big breakfast, then hit the climb. There wasn't much traffic, we moved up pretty steadily and hit the top after about 30 minutes. Then we had about an 8K downhill, really sweet. There were tons of bikers out today cause it's a weekend, halfway down the hill April commented that everyone we're seeing is really tough cause we're all on this major climb. So she was loving the tough biker image. Didn't last long though.
After the downhill we hit the coast at El Port de la Salva. Then we started climbing again, thinking ok, this is the start of the one big climb. But we dropped into the next town, Llance, then climbed again. Whatever, we're getting good at climbing, so there's one extra hill in here, we can see up the road and imagine that high crest we see is the start of the "final" downhill. But no, we drop down to sea level again at Colera. Steep climb out of the town again. Now we're started to get pissed. This climb is pretty long and steep with switchbacks, a road branches off near the top and goes even higher but we swing around and see a tunnel. Awesome, it cuts through the top portion. We love tunnels, it means you're avoiding some killer hill. We're certain this will be the big downhill. But no again, we just drop sharply to Portbou, which is the last town at the border, and there's a huge climb past it. What the hell!!
We take a break in Portbou, and find a bakery. April has a custard filled croissant and I have a coconut muffin. The whole town was out enjoying the central square. Nice atmosphere, old guys walking while holding each other up, we see some hikers doing the GR 92, which is a long distance coastal hike, kids are running around. Of course the Greeks started all this with their central squares, or plakas. Or maybe it was the Albanians who invented it and passed it to the Greeks. Haha!
Suitably loaded up with sugar we head up the pass, it's our steepest section so far for the day, huge switchbacks. We get up to the border, and we see another big downhill into Banyols-Sur-Mer, with a monster climb after it. We're sort of just resigned about the whole thing by this point. And the truth is we're dialed in to our breathing and gears and pace. We cruise down into Banyuls and stop for lunch. We're excited to be in France because we imagine we can speak the language.
Well our French is really rusty, half of it is coming out in Spanish, si, gracias, hola, como esta, whatever. I persist in speaking as much French as I can and all the waiters are speaking in English back to me. It was like, "ok, we get it, you can speak shitty french, now lets get this order completed, i have work to do," haha!
This part of France used to be either Catalan or associated with it, so the menus are half Catalan: crema Catalan, Catalan sausage, tapas, etc. April has the fish special and I have a Catalan sausage with frites. Both excellent.
We order a tea after lunch and load it with sugar to help us get going but no such luck. With full stomachs the climb out of banyuls seemed really tough, and to make matters worse there were a lot more cars. Just north of Banyuls it's all vineyards and wineries, so there were lots of people out touring the vineyards. Sucked for us. Finally dropped into Port-Vendres, which is right south of Collioure, and we make our way through town and drop down into Collioure. And it's freakin packed! The most people we've seen since Barcelona. Traffic stopped in town cause there are so many cars and people. We didn't expect this at all.
We had scoped out a hotel on tripadvisor the night before. We found it and they had two rooms available. I send April in the check out the room selection, it would be unthinkable for me to pick the room. I chat up the guy at the hotel and i get the scoop on the people and traffic. Tuesday is the first of May which is a big French holiday. Thus people also take off Monday and make it a four day weekend. And Collioire is a very popular holiday spot so everyone is visiting. What a drag.
In fact about 1/2 way thru the day, when we had had enough of the hills, I had proprosed a new plan to April. Let's ride for 2-3 more days north along the flat coast to the nice beaches, and the let's train back into Spain, hence avoiding all these damn hills on the way back. We were all excited about this plan. But now we realize everything might be too booked and crowded in France because of the holiday. too much traffic.
So we created another plan, which is stay here in Collioire a second night, and go for a day ride north tomorrow. The we'll have time to check out the town more also. The town is really cool. Old castles and forts right on the sea, lots of restaurants and shops, even a church to visit!
We found a good tapas place for dinner. It was tiny. I was sitting against the wall facing towards the kitchen so I could watch the chef and our table had to be pushed against my belly. I think this cut down on eating capacity. We had a french paella dish made with noodles instead of rice, chickpeas with cumin, garlic chicken, oven potatoes with a garlicky aoli, baba ganouj, bread, 1/2 liter of a local red wine, and then April wanted to try a cannelloni type of spread, which ended up tasting like Mac and cheese. Weird. April talked me out of dessert because we had desserts at lunch. I agreed figuring I'd have a gelato out on the street, but all the gelato stands seemed closed. Maybe a sign??
We figured we climbed at least four thousand feet today. The climbs were about 600-1000 feet each and we did about 5-6 climbs. And the worst is you never get to pedal much on the rolling or flats, it was all uphill, then a coast downhill. So we pretty much just climbed all day. Chris Dubois would have been thrilled.
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