After a night at a near perfect campsite with no small amount of rain, we climbed up over a mountain for our first ‘proper’ bikepacking. This day took us to some very remote mountains with summer villages of people who move there to graze animals when the snow has gone. We rode on gravel tracks, grassy tracks and muddy tracks until at one point we could go no further because the rain and mud had combined to create a mixture more akin to peanut butter than anything else! 

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This peanut butter mud clung to our tyres, our brakes, our frames and our legs so badly that we could barely walk at times, let alone cycle! At one point we resorted to using Josué’s spork (cuichette in French as I learned - how fun) to remove mud from our drivetrains…

The Shepard dogs here are also incredibly fierce - they have a job to protect their flock and they take it very seriously indeed. In honesty it feels a little irresponsible to have these animals that want to attack indiscriminately any stranger who may pass anywhere near the farm - usually the Shepard himself is needed to ward them away and they are not often the quickest to respond when you have multiple angry dogs yapping at your heels. Thankfully we have avoided injury from dogs so far but Jo’s rear tyre was not so lucky - one dog decided to sink his teeth through the sidewall which led to a frustrating half an hour fixing inner tubes whilst a bemused Shepard watched on, initially protesting the innocence of his dog until he saw the hole in the tyre!

The thunderstorm continued to blow but our spirits were high as we finally made it back down to valley level and a well deserved meal and guesthouse!