This week’s photo challenge is about the Achievement of someone we met along the way.

While hiking Pic St. Loup one day this past summer we came across a hiker/biker.  Understand that Pic St. Loup is a dauntingly huge mountain in the Hérault Valley, but for some unknown reason we thought they had ‘Disneyfied’ it with wide, smooth walking paths since everyone we came across in southern France, from youngsters to seniors, had talked about hiking Pic St. Loup.  So off  we went to conquer this montagne.

We reached the peak of the mountain after 2 hours of huffing, puffing, sweating and persevering (because we were too far in to turn back) as I noted in a previous post.  We were quite near the peak at that point and as we looked ahead we saw a biker, yes, a man and his vèlo coming down the mountain towards us.    Surely they were filming an episode of ‘The Great Race’… but no, he was completely solo. No helicopter dropped his bicycle at the top of Pic St. Loup. He took (dragged, schlepped, rode?) his bike to the top of Pic St. Loup! Quite an achievement.

The views from the top of the mountain were spectacular, and we spent the entire day debating if this hiker was l’athlète du jour or le fou du jour…still not sure.

The ‘path’ up Pic St. Loup

Ah…the path widens

What kind of shoes do you wear to hike over boulders?

We made it! The view from the top was spectacular

Fabulous view almost touching the clouds…all that’s missing up here is my bicycle.

Seriously, how did he get this bike up here?