Col du Tourmalet

The most visited climb in Tour de France history. So it'll be no surprise for us to tell you that we cycled it on a day that the Tour de France was passing through, in 2024. As a result, the roads could hardly have been busier with cyclists a few hours before the peloton came through, and there was a carnival atmosphere as the sun shone down on us and we commenced the long steady ascent rising up out of Luz Saint Sauveur.

If you've never witnessed the Tour de France in the flesh, booking a trip for this or next year's event should be the very first thing you do after reading this. It's mad. Beautiful, colourful chaos. People dressed as dinosaurs and green aliens mingle with thousands of cycling fanatics wearing polka-dot t-shirts, while the publicity caravan drives through the crowd throwing everything from bucket hats to blocks of cheese at whoever happens to react the quickest. And that's before any of the world-class athletes have ridden past at three times the speed you could ever hope to travel up a mountain on two wheels, with crowds only splitting to let them through a couple of metres before they reach them.

After a relatively consistent and gentle start to the climb (6-7% for the first 7km or so), you'll pass through the narrow streets of Barèges - which, on a side point, is where we stopped for dinner on the way back down the mountain and had a memorably bad pizza by accidentally asking for one with goat's cheese. Anyway, we digress. After Barèges, the vista opens up around you and you'll arrive into a natural amphitheatre, with winding, switchback roads on all sides and high jagged peaks rising above them. It's a feast for the senses.

It's also significantly more challenging as a climb in the second half, with most of it nestled in the 8-9% bracket, so as the kilometres tick up you may find a few corners where you need to stand out of the saddle to keep yourself driving forwards. We would recommend doing it on a Tour day as well if you can - the Tour almost always goes through this pass as it tracks through the Pyrenees - just to experience the vibrant colours and roadside mayhem as you cycle up ahead of the real showdown.

And you're more than rewarded when you eventually weave your way up to the summit, and arrive at the “Giant of Tourmalet”, a large iron statue of cyclist Octave Lapize, who was the stage winner when the Tour de France first visited Tourmalet in 1910 and finished the day by shouting “You are murderers!” at the race organisers for putting together such a brutal stage. Once you've stopped your watches at the top, turn around and look back down over the route you've just taken. Sit on the brick wall, admire the beauty in front of you, and take a moment to be thankful for the awe-inspiring places that cycling brings you to.