Day 36: L'etang d'Araing to Sentein

Waking up early for a refuge brekkie, lazing in the tent whilst the sun evaporated the raindrops, heading down the valley past a dam built in 1935, turning off the GR10 to take a local footpath through the vallée des Biros down to a village for supplies, jaggedy mountains glowing in the mountain sun, mounds of tiny mushrooms, foresty paths zig zagging down gently to a river as the sunlight glowed green all around, emerging onto a road where all the butterflies were dancing like crazy round buddleia bushes and pink flowers, arriving in Sentein (another deserted village) to find a shop selling all we need and an empty campsite all to ourselves to while away the afternoon hours watching the sun disappear behind the mountains as the dandelions glowed and the spiderwebs shone...

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We decided to turn off the GR10 at this point so that we could buy some much-needed supplies. The path down through the vallée des Biros was a beautiful diversion – cool, sunlit forest with well signposted paths, emerging into a valley that was full of butterflies fluttering in the hot sunshine.

 
There is a small epicerie in Sentein https://balacet.wordpress.com/2015/06/11/lepicerie-a-sentein/ which has everything you could need for hiking supplies. We bought a huge amount of food there!
 
The campsite in Sentein http://www.ariege-pyrenees-tourism.co.uk/camping-municipal-la-grange/sentein/tabid/22679/offreid/e05654d9-4292-4611-8593-fdf10428f046/more-information.aspx had already closed for the season when we got there, or rather, as the lady in the shop said, it was “closed, but not closed” – meaning that the sanitaires were open (hot water not guaranteed!) and we could pitch our tent if we wanted. We would have happily paid – it was peaceful, clean and worth the very nominal fee they were asking (about 3 euros according to the sign) – but there was nobody there whatsoever.
 
The vital statistics:
Total time hiking: 3h54
Peak: 1924m
Total Ascent: 13m
Total descent: 1144m