Just a 'few' photos from a recent trip down to Guillestre to stay with Phil, Emma and Ollie.

I headed down there with John, or Scares as he'll probably appear as in this summer's biking diaries. The general plan was to help Phil and Emma with odd jobs around the Chateau, [well that's the address!!], and get out on the bikes as much as possible.

Our first ride was in a local guide as the Tour du Queyras and ended up being one of the longest in terms of time. I have to take responsibility for most of that, but I'll blame a series of mechanicals, well, punctures - rather than lack of fitness!!

The ride was a good mixed bag of climbs - mainly on 4x4 track and fast single-track descents. I think Phil is on a short downhill section that made up part of a long traverse that took us to one of the sweetest descents of the trip.

Always hard to convey how sweet on photos...

...especially as the best bits are always too good to waste by continually stopping for shots - so you'll have to make do with these!

A 'nice' climb after after a very late lunch.

Quite how we went from the possibility of a quick sandwich to a full rabbit, tatties, pasta, veg. and salad combo - I'm not too sure.

A heavy climb straight after a heavy lunch - you'd think we'd know better!

Still, the scenery and the actual trail on the climb were pretty impressive.

And the reward was well worth it - lunch forgotten as we tackled a fairly aggressive set of switch-backs down to Chateau Queyras.

Again, decent single-track rewards for a long 4x4 track climb.

Scares heads into one of the last sections with the Chateau still a little ways below.

Worth pointing out one of the downsides of early season holidays - the ice cream shack at the Chateau was shut :(

After a day working in the garden it was time to get ready for another ride.

Ollie helping me clean my bike - yes, that is a can of WD40 and he wasn't letting go of it. No surprise that his vocabulary has a lot of bike bits in it - and it helps that there's usually two of them for the 'how many are there?' game!

Debating the options - there's a huge choice of trails close to Phil and Emma's.

One of the main goals of our riding was to help Phil develop a decent number of riding options ready for when they open the Gite to clients. Phil has invested in a GPS unit and using this with a couple of local guides we could create individual rides - adapting existing trails or creating our own to suite our needs.

We opted for a relatively short loop known as the in the Circuit de Barbein, quite close to town. After a road climb through some rather flash hamlets with matching views, it was more 4x4 track through woods and meadows broken up by some short single-track descents.

Back into the open for a great last section to the ride. There was a short, tricky section back in the trees behind the boys that was a real dog - big loose rocks on the flat with bushes virtually blocking the trail - good fun though.

Phil and Scares had done the run last year and ended up with a fair amount of road trundling on the second half. Lucky for me, this time round Phil sussed a link up to the second half of our ride from a couple of days before - Scares on the upper end of the sweet end section.

Big air...

Payback for a cheeky uplift came the next day...

...although we took a good whack out of the initial climb by leaving a car at the book start/finish and driving the van to the end of the tarmac.

That still left a lot of climbing - most of which was on 4x4. We'd already climbed a fair amount when we had a breather at these chalets - they had obviously had a lot of work done to them and had a pretty good view.

Part of the view - Guillestre is tucked away the wooded area on the left.

You first - the great thing about riding in France is there's usually a source or two on route to help cool down and top up with water.

Back to the climb - quite a long one this, even though we'd managed to miss out the early part. Of all the rides on the trip, this one perhaps had the biggest diversity in terms of the surrounding terrain and expansive views.

Phil approaching the end of the 4x4 track - getting close to the tree line.

This section was nice and technical - although not all of it was ridable. There was an interesting little bit between the big rocks I'm heading towards.

Looking back to the rocks - Scares makes light work of it.

Plus the last twenty minutes to the Col were very steep and rocky - a bit of portage was necessary.

Pay back for the climb was the best descent of all - given that rest weren't too shabby - this was in a league of its own.

So guess how many photos there are...

Part of the descent included a huge section of tight but flowy switch-backs.

While predominantly a walking track the trail could have been purpose built for bikes.

Lower down there were some great exposed sections - although, as ever, I struggled on the loose stuff. You'll have to take my word for it...

Unfortunately the weather turned nasty for a few days - almost putting a halt to the biking and odd jobs.

After a Sunday soaking on a great if damp and greasy ride that Phil and our cameras sat out, the sun returned in time for one last big ride.

This one was to be a mix of a couple of Phil's shorter circuits linked up using the guides and GPS.

Having not ridden some sections in the past, we came across quite a lot of portage sections - a little disappointing as we already knew the early part of the climb would be really tough as Phil and Scares had been there before.

As ever, the pushing and carrying soon forgotten.

But we decided that this would probably be best kept as a private ride rather than one for future clients.

This section was nice and technical - stretches of cruising and nasty slow climbs over some rough terrain.

Never looks that exposed in the photos...

A real feature of the area are these washed out gullies and couloirs - ranging from monsters like this to really narrow ones that you need to anticipate if you don't want to get down the hill even quicker.

Given the time of year its amazing how much trail maintenance that goes on after the spring melt - also they don't seem obsessed with digging horrible drainage ditches across the path every twenty metres...

The last zip down to Saint Marcellin - there is a chair a little further up the road that heads up into the Vars ski area that Phil, Karl, Norma and myself used back in March.

Once down in Saint Marcellin we had a long tarmac climb up the other side of the valley that eventually led to the inevitable 4x4 track.

We could have carried on climbing but opted for a variant - the early descent was a mix of single-track and some wider stuff that was a bit roughed up by cattle, sheep and goats which were just being moved to their summer pastures - which meant a bit of barbed wire dodging too.

That didn't last long and we soon linked into the best downhill sections of our soggy Sunday ride - now not at all greasy and not yet dusty - perfect.

I'm about to cross the top of one of those gullies - doesn't look much eh? Hmm. Scares just had time to get one shot then carefully run back a metre or two and dive into a convenient little hollow on the uphill side to let us pass! I nearly fell off laughing as I rolled by.

The lower part of this ride was one of the first I rode with Phil last summer. It starts and ends nicely at the house and has some really good riding - a great way to finish the trip.