Cirque de Gavarnie

We arrived at our quiet little hotel in time for a sensationally good dinner, the food so good that we felt in no rush to find a way to watch the England v Netherlands semi-final at the Euros. We eventually managed to get a local tv stream on the laptop to watch the second half, only for it to get glitchy towards ninety minutes, finally to freeze. We had so little expectation of England scoring (we'd not witnessed a single attack on goal in the forty minutes of football we'd seen) that there was no great panic. And then we discovered that Watkins had scored. Of course he did. We always look like a decent team when Southgate finally makes his substitutions with five minutes to go! 

We've enjoyed a relatively chilled day here, in warm and mostly sunny weather, although there were thunderstorms around this evening. We could hear them in the distance but they failed to deliver any rain here. Forrest has very frustratingly picked up an achilles injury, training a bit too hard the week before we left (I remember that myself - feeling great and enjoying running hard and fast way too much), meaning that we had to abandon any idea of doing a big hike today, settling for a walk out to the Cirque de Gavarnie and then a climb up the Pic des Tentes (2322m), only a short distance from the col of the same name. The views were utterly spectacular. Being reminded of the scale of the mountains here, and with a mind as to what's to come on the bike in the few days ahead, I was possibly grateful that Forrest didn't have me following him up some big mountain today.

We stopped at a bike shop in Argelès-Gazost, near where we are staying, to catch the last bit of today's stage, thrilled to watch another win (the third) for Biniam Girmay, although dismayed to see Primož Roglič go down (yet again) and lose more time. That poor guy. The racing, every single day, has been riveting. Saturday is the day we get to ride some of the route ourselves before the pros come through, hoping to watch them somewhere on the second climb of the day. Bring it on!