Day 5: Prades to Cerbere

We made it!
A fine sunny morning greeted us as we set off for the final stage. "Nice and steady" everyone agreed, before we got on the nice fast downhill road with a tailwind and the fast boys at the front set an infernal pace, howling along at well over 35 km/h, looking pretty swift in our matching Marmot Tours jerseys. At a roundabout, the peloton engulfed a couple of serious-looking locals out for a Saturday morning spin. They sat just back from the front for quite a while, until the front boys got fed up and peeled off to let them do some work on the front. Big mistake! They drove the pace up even higher (obviously time to teach Les Anglais a lesson!) but eventually turned off and sanity was restored.
After a welcome "convenience stop", we split into 3 groups to make it a bit easier along the busy road. In my group, Bob (who had had to abandon the challenge due to a bad knee on day 2, but was determined to ride to the finish today) was obviously back in good form and the pace soon rose again. Yet again I found myself hanging off the back, but when we stopped at a cafe in Argeles sur Mer I found that my back wheel had developed quite a wobble and was rubbing the brake as I rode. I slackened off the brake and we continued, but the twisting ups and downs of the coastal road soon took their toll and it got worse. At Port Vendres I stopped and found it had pulled a spoke through the rim and was now wobbling enough to rub against the frame. There wasn't much else to do but call for James in the support van and ask for a wheel change. Luckily, he was only about 10 minutes away and we quickly swapped the wheel and got going again. I still wasn't quite able to hold the pace, so dropped off the back and enjoyed the last few km on my own, soaking up the sunshine. Before I knew it I rounded the last corner into Cerbere and saw the sea-front bar of the hotel where the others were waiting.
We had made it! James handed me a glass of champagne and we waited for the other groups to appear before the celebrations began including the obligatory feet-in-the-sea photo to match the one in the Atlantic back in Hendaye.
(...photos to follow!)