The one who dines with the wolf

After a hearty breakfast, we covered the first few hundred meters of elevation by car on asphalt. Our tour today is called Boucle du Col Girabeau. As before every tour, we went through the same procedure: take the bikes off the roof, check the tire pressure, fill up enough water bottles (history shows that we always sweat about twice as much as we take in - Garmin) with effervescent tablets, quickly check if we have all the necessary clothing (we no longer take rain jackets with us, it simply doesn't rain here :)) and lastly, call up the route on the bike computer and start the tour.

After a short downhill on asphalt, the terrain quickly changed to a comfortable gravel uphill, which switched back to asphalt and then remained on gravel. On the first 1000 meters of elevation, we were overtaken uphill by motorcyclists (also with asphalt tires) and some off-road vehicles. Otherwise, the uphill was comfortable. With enough strength left, we overtook a few hikers just before reaching our first destination, just before our muscles gave up. After a break, a snack, and a quick inspection of the downhill, we saddled up again and received some interested looks from hikers and e-bikers wondering where we were going to zoom down. We zoomed down steeply.

Stephanie's downhill, which was closely watched in the presentation, was a lot of fun. Only the loose ground and some large stones made the downhill not so easy. Fortunately, it was not exposed and we could showcase our skills without major concerns. Pro tip: with a lowered seat post, you fall on average 2 times less. After 3 insignificant falls (2 x Stephanie, 1 x Mini, at walking speed, nothing happened :)), we got into a flow and quickly covered many meters of elevation in steep switchbacks. Cool, but demanding trail (we didn't encounter any other mountain bikers on this route).

Once we reached the bottom, we thought we still had a lot of reserves for the last 500 meters of elevation. At first, it was still going well, but over time it became a bit tough. The remaining path consisted mainly of uphill and downhill sections with forest roads as the surface. There was also a great single trail for a short time.

When we finally finished the last meters of elevation (we were really exhausted), we cheered briefly and glided back down the forest road to the car. Bikes on the roof and everything packed up, we made our way back to the campsite on the comfortable car seats where the well-deserved shower was waiting for us.

Before going to sleep, we were visited by a huge white wolfhound who probably smelled the ham wheel that Mini had eaten before. Luckily, Mini wasn't eaten, just his hand (with ham flavor) was licked. Already lying in bed, we did some toe exercises in front of the panorama. Tomorrow it's supposed to rain. We are planning a non-mountain biking day of travel.