Day 44: L'Etang de Bassiès to Auzat

Letting the sun warm us and dry the tent before we emerged into the day, thousands of tiny crystal rainbows shimmering as the breeze blew through sunny dew drops on the long grass, the lakes below bathing in misty clouds, huge banks of soft pink heather spilling out between the giant silver boulders and soft yellow grass, dark green pine trees lined up like a Christmas tree parade, clouds dancing around distant peaks as I wandered and pondered it all trying to imprint the colours and light onto my mind's eye to keep forever and always, stumbling down dusty stone paths, leaving the GR10 and its weird North-South ways to go East, chasing speckled woods and red admirals and other pretties, a stupid bee flying into Gavin's boot and stinging his leg, a pretty floral village where Gavin had a close encounter with a kingfisher that flew off before I could spy it, wagtails wagging, dippers dipping, so many pumpkin patches, a peaceful campsite with a friendly dog, an absolutely amazing bottle of wine and dinner in the village which included a cheese course where the waitress just brought out half a huge cheese and let me slice as much I wanted... 

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The GR10 does weird things in the Arriège region: it has several confusing branches; it spends entire days taking you North and South rather than head East; it leads you through several ghost towns. After waking up to our tent freezing (again) we wanted to make some sort of progress before winter arrived, so we opted out of a huge North-South loop and followed a local path instead. This led us to a town called Auzat, where we set up camp in a very quiet campsite, Camping La Vernière and went out for a lovely meal in a restaurant in the village: La Tabled'Arconac. It had an entirely meaty menu and The restaurant were a little hesitant when it came to veggie options, but we managed to negotiate a rather tasty salad (I think it involved requesting that it came without ham, and the waitress offered to replace it with cheese or eggs). The noteworthy thing was the cheese course tho. Seriously, this is what I was presented with….

So good.

The vital statistics:
Total hiking time: 5h17
Peak: 1638m
Total ascent: 75m
Total descent: 984m

Day 17: Soussouéou to Gourette

Lingering in our beautiful valley in the morning sun, a kingfisher whizzing past whilst we sipped our coffee, a giant hawk moth drinking crocus nectar, flurries of blue butterflies, a mean looking snake skulking into the bushes, loud red crickets clattering around, hot sunshine and blue skies, lots of climbing, refreshing waterfalls, a patch of snow/glacier, the Pic du Midi d'Ossau peeking out behind us, pink granite mountains ahead, more marmots right before the last climb up the rocky path to the Hourquette d'Arre, our highest col so far (2465m), so many flowers growing in the rocks, thick cloud on the way down past the turquoise Lac d'Anglas on painfully rocky paths with hungry tummies, arriving in another ugly ski station but finding refuge in a yummy crêperie and a hotel. Time to get properly clean again...

 

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I have never seen so many butterflies dancing together in the sunshine as I saw that morning as we climbed up and out the valley of Soussouéou. .

magic fluttery swarms of delicate blue butterfflies

Heading down from remote places like this into another bleak ski station makes for a weird stilting clash of nature and civilization. No question which one we prefer....
 
That being said, the hotel we stayed at in Gourette, Le Glacier was super friendly, very cosy and did an outstanding breakfast.

The vital statistics:
Total time hiking: 6h05
Peak: 2444m
Total ascent: 1060m
Total descent: 1126m