Starting from the door of the hotel, the Col de Port (1249m) is a gradual and beautiful climb and it is followed by a great descent to Tarascon. Here we join a fairly busy road, which we follow for the next 30km to the thermal spa town of Ax-les-Thermes. Soaking your feet in thermal waters in Ax is highly recommended, before taking on the seemingly endless and brutal Col du Pailheres (2001m). The views are breathtaking and at last we can rejoice in crossing the Atlantic - Med watershed. A long, narrow descent gives us just about enough time to recover before the understated Col des Moulis (1099m) and the Col du Garavel (1262m). Next up is the Col du Jau (1506m) before the final descent which takes us nearly all the way to our hotel. Prades has a reassuringly Mediterranean feel about it, with lots of courtyard cafe's and clay tiled roofs.
No detail of the ride on Day 4 due to a bike GPS failure that lost the track. The Edge 500 locked up at the top of the Col des Moulis and could not be coaxed back to life. Googling at the hotel later I found out how to force a reset to bring it back to life and things looked promising apart from the lost data for a very long days riding over a substantial hillock. Its worth noting that the last 6Km of the Col du Pailheres is over 9%. There is a great descent off the top down a series of switchbacks that you can see from the top of the mountain.
The best descent of the day is off the top of the Col du Jau. The Col itself is relatively uninspiring. There is nothing at the top. However, the descent to Prades seems to go on forever as the road runs along the mountain down the valley and also descends via switchbacks. You hardly touch a pedal for 27Km or so. Watch out for Mossat(?) on the way down. They seem to have recently paved sections of the road with cobbles which took me by surprise and had me checking the bike to see if anything had been shaken off.
