Maybe it was a mistake, doing a col with Maddy; Nick now seems determined that I should regain the fitness I had 10 years ago as quickly as possible and with that aim in mind, is finding as many hills as he can to drag me up. It’s a very different experience riding with Nick from riding with Maddy; he has the sort of gears that simply won’t allow him to ride uphill at my pace, whereas Maddy’s gears are lower than mine, allowing us to potter at a very gentle pace. Nick’s very good though, waiting for me at the top of every hill with words of encouragement, if not quite long enough to recover from my efforts.

So when a big club ride into the Pyrenees, organised by Maithé and Pierre, had to be cancelled due to storms being forecast that weekend, Nick decided we’d go early to beat the weather; we could still visit Maithé and Pierre at his family’s home and his birthplace, a ride of around 55km, over two “little” cols. We set off on Tuesday, parking the camper at Arette. The forecasts aren’t very accurate here and we had a big storm that night, leaving the roads soaked on Wednesday morning and the clouds well down on the mountains. As Maithé and Pierre wouldn’t be around on Thursday and we had to leave on Friday, that only left Wednesday afternoon to visit them. There wasn’t time to do our planned warm up on the flat, so we set straight off; the first col (col de Lie) started 500m out of the village and had some quite steep sections, Nick flew up it and I eventually plodded my way to the top, promising myself all the way that I was going straight back to the camper from the top, but once there, somehow I got talked into continuing. The second one (col d’Ichère) was longer, but felt less difficult. What we didn’t know was that Pierre’s house is partway up another col, the bottom section of which, as far as his house, is truly savage. I thought I’d never make it and had to stop and hang over the handlebars for a few minutes shortly before we reached the house.

But what a welcome we received on our arrival! All Pierre’s family was there and keen to give us a guided tour of their childhood home and feed us drinks, bananas and cakes before we headed home for the return trip under leaden skies.

We took a flatter route home as I wouldn’t have made it otherwise and treated ourselves to a lovely dinner at the local restaurant.

The following day Nick went out again, doing another four cols along a 75km route as I took the easy option of the village museum.

On the way home we stopped for a night at Oloron Ste Marie, a town made up of three ancient villages, all built on steep hilltops and united during the time of the Musketeers by Captain Treville. Definitely somewhere worth another trip.