About us

In the Summer and early Autumn of 2015, me (Sara) and my husband (Gavin) hiked all the way across the French Pyrénées, primarily following the GR10 footpath which goes from Hendaye on the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean town of Banyuls-sur-mer. It took us 61 days including 8 days of resting our weary legs.

I kept a daily log of our adventures, encounters and experiences which I posted to my instagram account with a collage of photos from the day. They started off with just a list of highlights from the day - creatures we saw, observations about the weather, a list of place names - and grew longer and longer the further we roamed. We had many enchanting encounters along the way and every day brought new landscapes and natural wonders to marvel at. I tried my best to capture these fleeting moments in words and photos. Now we're back in civilisation, hundreds of kilometres away but the mountains linger on in our minds.

And so I have decided to gather together my diary entries here in one place, along with some other longer pieces of writing that I'm working on now that we have finished. We might have stopped wandering for now, but I’ll never stop wondering about those beautiful Pyrénnées...

Many people have completed this journey before us, and you can read all about them elsewhere, if you'd like to. I’ve decided to gather my account here and compile some (hopefully useful) information about our journey because there are two things which make us a little unusual to other accounts I found online:

1. Rather than staying at Mountain refuges/gîtes d’étapes, we slept mostly in our faithful Coleman tent (affectionately named Colin - see above). When researching our trip, I couldn’t find that much information about people who had hiked the whole path with a tent – I’m sure that they exist as we certainly weren't the only people pitching our tent along the way; I just couldn't find whole lot of info to help us prepare. 
2. Unlike the vast majority of the French population, we are both vegetarian. This can prove troublesome in France, particularly in rural areas. That being said, there's plenty of tasty veggie food to be had in the Pyrénées if you know how and where to seek it out.

I'm adding in links to the campsites we stayed in and veggie-friendly places we ate in as I go along if I can find a website (and if we thought the place worthy of recommendation). However, this isn't intended as a guide : if you go to the mountains you'll have your own adventures following your own feet. But if something from our wanderings can be of use to somebody out there, or just make you wonder a little about what lies in the mountains, all the better.