Ciclo Montana Day 5

Today Ash, Scott and Charlotte headed home and it was Mark's rest day but he still drove Kate and Paul and I up above Bubion to the national park where we rode up the fire road towards the secret garden and we took a rocky then bermy descent of a few kms. Kate damaged the spring on her back brake pads for her Hope Minis and we had to remove it and she rode on without it.

We then climbed and climbed back up the fire road to the logging junction from day 1 past secret garden and we dropped onto the GR7 which turned out to be a swoopy gently descending singletrack, a few rocky obstacles here and there to catch you out just as you'd got into your flow and with a few hike a bikes to get round the barracos where the melting snow run off had washed out the track. Eventually the track became more vertical descent and we dropped altitude quicker into Portugos. With no restaurants open we headed into Pitres and had tapas and Fanta Limons in the village square, 3 drinks for less than 5 Euros and free tapas- not a bad deal!

Next we took the now famous "behind teh disco" descent which was a loose stony descent leading into a couple of s bend swictchbacks that were rather steep so we sessioned for several attempts to get around them, eventually Paul made it round on his 5th attempt after removing some loose stones which had caused me to not make the 2ns turn, so I went back for my 2nd try and made it this tim after a minor track stand and push out. Just made it- a tough one.

Soon we were back at base sitting on the terrace enjoying a beer and soaking up the afternoon sun- another top day.