Two cols in one day - woo-hoo!

Lovely day today, so Andy and I set out from Pissou on our roadies with the intention of bagging both the Col de Saraillé above Massat and also Col de Latrappe above Aulus. It was my first outing on my 2nd new saddle and I was really hoping it was not going to give me any bother. We reached the Col de Saraillé and I thought that with a couple of minor adjustments/fine tuning I would have it about spot on. My riding position and comfort on the descent down to Ercé felt much better, so on we went to Aulus where we stopped to fill up with water before tackling Now, we have done Latrappe before from the Aulus side, but that was after only having ridden from Ercé, 10kms down the road! This time, we had already covered 32kms and gone up one Col, so how much energy would be in our legs, that was the question.

The answer was 'enough'! We made it in one steady push, only 5kms but with 370m of ascent. A lovely fast descent (I touched 60 kph in places!) down into the Ustou Valley followed although we did seem to be battling 10-15 kph headwinds most of the way down which we could have done without. On arriving at Seix, we decided that rather then head back over to Massat via the Col de Saraillé from Oust (another steep, fairly sustained climb) we would take the easier but longer option (26kms to be precise) of heading back up the D618. We were both pretty tired by the time we reached Massat so had a brief break in the square before the final push back up the hill to Pissou. It had been our longest outing yet, 80kms with 1067m of ascent in 4 hrs. A good ride.