Trip to the Col du Tourmalet

The evening before Stage 15 of the Tour de France, at a restaurant in Lourdes, we met two nice German TV journalists who had been following the tour for some 15 years.  They advised driving to Argelès-Gazost, parking the car and then cycling to the Col through Luz-Saint Sauveur, some 11.8 miles away.
This I did the next morning and ascended the Col as far as Belpouey (some 3,000 feet of climb) before I was prevented from completing the ride by the Gendarmerie, because of the proximity of the Tour riders and their entertainment caravan.  The furthest I got is shown on the following picture. I sat on the steps with a white haired cyclist camping nearby in a tent, whose longest ride was over 200 miles, to present a letter to Margaret Thatcher in 10 Downing Street on behalf of unemployed in the North!

The top was not so far away as shown on the inset:

I then decided to descend back through the little villages I had passed through, in order to watch the riders pass by. Once again I was stopped in the descent by the gendarmerie, this time just below Luz Saint Sauveur, at the following spot:

It turned out to be a great place to film the riders coming past.