From the Bay of Biscay to the Pyrenees, from Bayonne to Elizondo, Day 21

Monday 8/7/2023, Day 21Today we completed our third week and we really made it to the Pyrenees. Today was our 1st royal stage (there will be at least 2 more, one tomorrow and one in a few days towards central Spain), especially since it was associated with a lot of skepticism/fear. Today's stage had almost 1100m of climbing, but it wasn't as steep as we feared (maximum about 15% gradient, tomorrow it will be worse), we rode almost 60km and did it very well. We struggled a bit uphill, but we pedaled bravely. we certainly wouldn't have been able to do it without three weeks' lead time and muscle training.
We started in Bayonne in the morning and drove about 15 km along a small river in the best weather (cloudless, sun, no headwind), which took us along really idyllic paths towards the Pyrenees, here the chickens ran across the path. then we came through a region known for its peppers 🌶️ chili peppers. We had never seen fields planted with chili peppers. After that we reached the last village, Ainhoa, which belongs to France, and had a longer coffee break there. Here people spoke not only Basque, but also French and Spanish. The road then went quite steeply uphill, until shortly afterwards we crossed the Spanish border and traveled from France to Spain. Pretty unspectacular. And then we were in the Pyrenees, mercilessly uphill, beautiful landscape, ancient beeches lined our pass road. After 10 km or 1 hour we were at the summit at an altitude of 602 m and despite all our exhaustion we took a selfie of ourselves because we were very proud of ourselves. And then we actually only rolled downhill from there to our destination Elizondo. Arrive at a hotel in the middle of the Pyrenees, very nicely located, sufficiently comfortable, even a pool, here we will relax. Tomorrow we're off to Pamplona.