very hard
Distance: 102km Unevenness: 2970m
Moving from Arette to Aspe Valley is to see how the smoothed pastoral landscape of the “Pais Basque” fades, and how another similar one comes but in wild version. Here it "smells" already to Pyrenees Central.
Saying Aspe Valley is for us something similar to saying Shangri-La.
And despite the cross-border highway that runs through the valley and the recent works for the start-up of the old railway between Oloron and Bedous. At the end, our territories are the slopes. The Valley bottom on these routes is a mere formality to begin another ascent.
Itinerarie: Arette D341 - Lie - Lourdios - D441 - Bouezou - Lées Athas D237 - N134 - D239 - Lescun - Laberouat - Lescun - N134 - D238 - Escot D294 - Marie-Blanque - Escot D238 - N134 - D918 – Arette
If you want to see the route on wikiloc website click on the green icon on the map.
Paisaje estándar del Valle de Aspe en las cercanías de Lourdios
Col de Bouesou, pasamos de la vertiente de Arette-La pierre St Martin al Valle de Aspe
Descendiendo Bouesou hacia Lées-Athas, dejamos arriba la carretera que nos llevaría a Osse-en-Aspe.
Espectacular descenso hacia Lées-Athas
Circo de Lescun
El refugio de Laberouat, a 1422 metros de altitud espera.
El pueblo de Lescun se encuentra a mitad de puerto, perfecta excusa para hacer una parada "técnica".
A partir de Lescun pocas bromas, resaltes muy duros con descansos al principio...
...y traca final con un kilómetro entero al 14%
Si vas pedaleando, casi seguro que el paisaje lo veras al final.
Si fotografías esto, es que has llegado. Sus casi 1000 metros de desnivel y la pendiente media del 9% pueden engañar. Debido a sus repetidas rampas el puerto resulta mucho más exigente que otros con cifras superiores. Estamos 2 "puntos" por encima del mítico Marie Blanque.
Cuesta abajo todo es más fácil
Y ahora sí que se puede disfrutar del entorno.
We are where we are, in the Atlantic Pyrenees, with a plain to the North with localities at very low altitude and ports that are close to the 2000m range.
The southern slope is more "human", towns are in a higher altitude and the slopes are not so important.
The vast majority of the routes cover the ports of the "greats": Issarbe, La Piedra de St Martin, Laberouat, Bagargi, Artaburu, Arnostegi, Ahuski, Larrau...with slopes ranging between 1000 and 1700 meters. Some routes ascent one of these ports, others 2 or 3 and even more.
We anticipated this so the criteria are clear for each 6 levels that we have chosen for the ranking of the routes.