Day 4 Domaine de Bassibe - Segos
After a great sleep in, She and I just made it downstairs before the 10:30 breakfast finish. Fresh plain yogurt with honey, cheese and bread, muesli, OJ, Cafe au Lait -how good is that breakfast!!
Finished packing up when Francis and Linda called to say they had arrived late last night and they could see our Hotel from their room 1/2 block away.
Francis had come to France over a day earlier to ride the Etape du Tour race which is the actual 181K stage the TDF will be using several days later. Francis is not only a terrific guy but an exceptionally strong rider and completed this brutally tough course with three difficult Col’s in roughly nine hours (the TDF peloton does it somewhere around 5:30 proving their ability is mind boggling).
Josee, Steve Bauer’s partner picked us up in Pau in the early afternoon for a short drive to Le Domaine de Bassibe, our Pyrenees country Inn for the next three nights. We arrived and met the rest of our tour group which totaled 18 riders and six guides/staff. We had two riders from Montreal, one from Kitchener, eight from Calgary and seven from Vancouver. While we enjoyed a great get to know one another lunch, Steve and his staff got our bikes organized for a 50 k ride before dinner to make sure our machines were all dialed in. About 1/2 the group brought their own bikes and the others including She and I brought our shoes and pedals and were using beautiful Argon 18 Helium loaner bikes provided by Steve. Argon is the supplier of bikes to Steve’s pro cycling team SpiderTech.
The nearly two hour ride was up tempo and it was clear we had a strong group for the next six days of riding. A glass of champagne pool side back at Bassibe and then a very nice French country dinner before early to bed in preparation for the next day’s surprise.
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