Europe: Footloose on Hiking Trails

Pyrénées, Pireneos : France and Spain

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East London UK, October 1, 2008

We made a brief stop near Geneva to visit with Peter & Henriette (~1976 Canada) and watched a wee bit of the Olympic games (table tennis!). The Swiss highlight had to be the deep fried cheese balls, a local speciality, that for some reason or another, has not gained international culinary status. Then our European journey hit top gear with an Easyjet flight to Gatwick followed by a 25 GBP Ryanair return flight to Sweden to visit Leon (Honduras 1997). We visited Stockholm and Leo dazzled us with his culinary abilities, but our highlight was wild mushroom picking in a beautiful Swedish forest - 30 kilos in all. Whilst we had complete faith in Leo's knowledge of wild mushrooms, we were nonetheless elated to awaken following a mushroom feast. Woosh, it was back to England and off to the wilds of Stratford-on-Avon to visit Simon & Louise (Pakistan/Nepal 1984). They took us out on a taxing hike along the local canal, including a steep ascent over a series of locks. We were rewarded with a mandatory pub stop and later a classic Anglo-Indian restaurant meal. It was good training for the rigours of our next destination: the Pyrénées.

Our first Pyrenean base was Bagneres-de-Luchon, which is popular with the French, who are often on doctor-prescribed treatments. It may not be a fountain of youth, but it sure made us feel young - we were the youngest chickens in town. We hiked up to a place called Lac Célinda (2400m) and our overnight stay set the tone for our September mountain experience. It was bloody cold and the wind whipped up during the night; it was strong enough to bend our tent poles onto our skulls. We discovered that the Pyrénées is not a good place to catch up on sleep.

Conventional wisdom is that the Spanish side of the Pireneos is warmer and drier than its French counterpart. We had been warned that it can be hot over there, so it was off to Spain we went. What the Spanish Pireneos lacked in warmth, it made up in appearance: the Colomèrs area and its 40 lakes amongst granite mountains is superb. As for "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain", it is a saying that can be used as a mantra when spending a rain day in your tent. We pressed on in clear skies up the Molieres valley and stayed at a hut at 2360m. The metal door slammed shut and the handle came out in Sheila's hand, locking us in. Glenn's quote of "This is not good" rang true, though we did manage to open the door. We crossed over the highest pass of our summer (Molieres at 2835m) into Spanishy divine alpine country. We made a strategic retreat from the mountains and headed back to France over the Port de Venasque to sit out a streak of cool, wet weather, best described as agitée.

The rest days were a blessing to Glenn's bunged up knee. It seemed natural enough to visit Lourdes on the same day of the Pope's arrival. We did not drink the holy water and throw away our walking sticks. The trekking poles came into play the following day and Glenn's knees were kept functional with a steady stream of ibuprofen. Starting from Gavarnie, we climbed up to the snowline towards and over the Breche de Roland (2800m) which is a missing tooth in a rock wall. We asked a group of macho French guys about conditions above. They took one look at Glenn's running shoes and asked if he had other footwear: yes, of course - flipflops! Chris had recommended the route, so continued over ice, through swirling clouds and 15cm of snow into Spanish sunshine.

After passing through the Ordesa Canyon, began to play hop scotch, alternating countries each day for a week. It is easy to differentiate the two countries as neither nationality seems prone to venture into the other. So it is a uniform bonjour and ¡ola! On the other. Noses are longer and the bread and coffee is vastly superior on the French side. Spain is a nocturnal society where shops reopen after lunch at 5:00 pm and the stalwart of diurnal communities, the library, opens its doors at 7:00pm in smaller towns. We found the Spanish side of the Pireneos to be a little wilder and fewer villages along the trails.

We sometimes hitched in and out of mountain towns for supplies with good success on both sides of the border; the French were astonishingly responsive. Hitch-hiking is illegal in Spain but that did not stop people from picking us up.

In Bujarielo, the cows had a full moon party inside the campground and kept all but the soundest sleeper awake with their quaint bells. Sheila was spotted chasing cattle away in the middle of the night to no avail. The Pireneos are not a good place to catch up on sleep.

We crossed a series a series of high passes and walked through beautiful valleys. The weather held steady but wind and cool nights encouraged us to sleep in a couple of refuges when we were above 2000 metres. The Pyrénées continued to surprise us with each day so different from the others. Finally, we followed a border ridge around the Pic du Midi d'Ossau and later descended into late summer via the Chemin de la Mâture (a path carved out of rock to enable the transport of ship masts in the late 1700's). The Pyrénées and Pireneos were superb, a fitting conclusion to a summer of walking in Europe.

TREKKING NOTES

• The Pyrénées are wild by European standards. The mountains even boast a population (15-20) of bears, close to local extinction but recently supplemented by Slovenian breeding stock. We didn't see any.

• Resupply was a little tricky in Spanish mountain towns. We failed to find milk powder in Sallent de Gallego for muesli and fell back on cold pizza for breakfast.

• It's a shame that flying is out of fashion environmentally because it has never been so much fun with the no-frills Ryanair. The cabin crew cleans the plane between flights, the pilot checks the tires and the no-reserved seating energizes the passengers. The plane disgorge from front and back, the plane sits empty for 3 minutes then the next set of passengers storm on and they are off. Checked luggage costs extra but toilets are free and they even sell scratch lottery cards on board Flying is fun. Easyjet is similar but seems a little better organized so their flights don't have quite the same buzz.

• Our most exotic hitch-hike was from Terigal, Spain to the French border. A Ukranian couple, living in Israel driving an Alfa Romeo with a Russian speaking GPS system picked up 2 Canadians who they thought were Spanish until we switched over to English.

• There is bonjour, buen giorno, ola, hiya (England) but our fave is Swedish: hey!

FOR THE RECORD
- snakes sighted in Europe: 8
- number of parks staff sighted in the national parks: 0
- number of countries visited: 6
- longest period without passing through a village: 9 days (Northern Corsica)
- 2008 tent nights: 185
- Banana Index: Switzerland 2 for 1USD, Sweden 3 for 1USD, Spain 2 for 1USD and France 3 for 1USD.

PYRENEAN ROUTE

• Luchon - Hospice de France - Col de Pinata (2152m) - Lac Célinda (2395) - Vallée du Lis - Luchon

• Salardú (Spain) - Colomèrs lakes (2200m) - Port de Caldes (2568m) - Restanca Lake (2000m) - Port de Ruis (2340m) - Val de Molières - Molière Refuge (2360m) - Covet de Molières (2935m) - Plan des Aigualluts - Benasque - Port de Venasque (2344m) -Hospice de France - Luchon

• Gavarnie - Brèche de Roland (2804m) - Goriz (2200m) - Ordesa Canyon - Bujaruelo - Ara Valley - Col d'Arratille (2528m) - Wallon (1900m) - Lacs de Cambalès - Col de Cambalès (2700m) - Responmusa (2200m) - Arriel lakes - Col du Palas (2517m) - Arrémoulit (2305m) - Col d'Arrous (2259m) - Sallent de Gallago - Crête de la frontere (south of Pici de Midi d'Ossau) - Lac Ayous (2000m) - Col d'Ayous (2185m) - Chemin de la Mâture - Etsaut

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