Setting back out on our rambles after an excellent wedding weekend diversion, feeling the weight of restocking our bags and complaining about it a LOT(!), visiting a 12th century castle, noticing the leaves have started to turn yellow, steep paths, pretty villages, a blue butterfly trying to hitch a ride, the tiniest chapel I've ever seen perched atop a hill, following an art trail with panels of info teaching you how to sketch trees and mountains and flowers, meeting up with Nick and Katie in Barèges (the Pyrénées Hiking Society will be hiking with the full contingent for the next week!), setting off towards the Col du Tourmalet, turning up a valley along a river where a marmot welcomed us back to the mountains and setting up camp just in time for a huge thunderstorm to roll in, cooking fajitas in the most ridiculous conditions ever achieved – in the porch of our tent as the storm thundered and battered the tent!
The vital statistics:
Total hiking time: 6h38
Peak: 1728m
Total ascent: 1398m
Total descent: 401m
Feasting for breakfast, wandering through Gavarnie, urban marmots on the outskirts to show us back into the hills, a red squirrel, a swallowtail butterfly, a cooling breeze making the golden grass dance and keeping us cool as we climbed up the side of a mushroom covered mountain, the Cirque de Gavarnie ever-present and ever-epic behind us, good coffees at a gîte, lunch in the shade before the path suddenly became a scratchy gauntlet with different thorns on either side and scarlet red grasshoppers leaping about, descending into a glorious forest with sunbeams dancing through the leaves then descending again into lightless, viewless, soulless, stony, awful goblin tunnels down to a D road that was as hot as it was long, terrifying scarecrows and posters advertising local cake (I've never been more terrified at the prospect of cake), songs to spur us on blasted out of my phone before finally arriving at a campsite where we are camped by a 12th century castle and have eaten like kings. A very long day!
***
We stayed in this campsite, the Camping Toy - very central with views of the castle across the river
This pizzeria, Che Coulet, in Luz-Saint-Saveur was so good we ate here twice.
The vital statistics:
Total hiking time: 9h30
Peak: 1825m
Total ascent: 866m
Total descent: 1475m
