Meaning of "Tourmalet"
Some Frenchmen believe that Tourmalet translates into "bad trip" or "bad detour" because in French Tour translates into "trip" and mal translates into "bad" - however the correct language to translate from is Gascon, not French, because of the mountain's location in the Gascony-region and the "du" in the name, which is the Gascon pendant to the French "de". Then Tour becomes "distance", which is spelled "tur" but pronounced "tour", mal is translated into "mountain", and et becomes "the". The translation from Gascon to English then becomes "The Distance Mountain".
Read more about this topic: Col Du Tourmalet
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