Listening to thunder roll around the valleys through the night, celebrating one year since we got married by eating all the pastries in the bakery, hiking up out of Cauterets along cascading waterfalls on the rocky forest path to the Pont d'Espagne, dipping in and out of the cloud, a crazy big yellow and black salamander crawling along the path, arriving at the Lac Gaube in time to catch the last warm rays of sunshine over the mountain side making it glow deep turquoise, sipping wine and admiring the view, setting up camp by the river and watching a dipper do its dippy dance over pebbles on the opposite bank as the evening sky clears and Vignemale looms in the distance...
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There is another GR10 variant out of Cauterets that takes you to Luz-Saint-Saveur in one day rather than 2 or 3, but we had decided from the very beginning that we wanted to take the longer route past Vignemale and Gavarnie and it was worth every single moment of the extra time it took.
The vital statistics:
Total time hiking: 5h24
Peak: 1729m
Total ascent: 951m
Total descent: 164m
Sleeeeeeeping, resting and napping whilst firecracker lightening boomed though the valley and rainbows appeared, lazing about after a long week of many mountains climbed and then enjoying a very very tasty pre-niversary meal and some fancy drinks.
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The Camping Vignemale was a lovely peaceful campsite in the last week of August. Excellent pitches, only about 10 minutes walk into town and clean sanitaires where the radio was always playing a happy song.
We went to the Pizzeria Gril Giovanni both nights that we stayed in Cauterets. It was delicious – we tried an amazing buffalo mozzarella salad for starters and the pizza and the pasta were incredibly fresh and tasty. A special mention must also be made of their Kir à la myrtille which I very much enjoyed as an aperitif. Sadly, we didn’t manage to eat a dessert as we were so full – but they looked delicious. Lots of veggie options and super friendly staff.
Devouring local honey and homemade jam at breakfast, second coffees at a geranium/begonia filled restaurant terrace, climbing through dark quiet pine forests and into the hot sun, up, up, up surrounded by epic views and purple flowers, powered by mars bars, past waterfalls and more marmots (hooray!) to the col d'Ilhéou (2242m) where rows of ragged peaks appeared on the horizon, continuing down to the blue blue lac d'Ilhéou where the refuge people cooked us some damn tasty omelettes and proved once again that it is possible to procure wine in very remote places, finding baby lizards, descending more stony paths in the hot sun past wild raspberry bushes, ugly ski lifts and crazy big waterfalls into Cauterets, finding a pretty campsite to rest in, devouring pizza and marvelling at the madness of ultra runners who are halfway thru a 160km route...
The vital statistics:
Totak time hiking: 9h21
Peak: 2243m
Total ascent: 1245m
Total descent: 1368m
