Day 46: Col de Sasc to Angaka (plateau de Beille)

Feeling tired from yesterday's climbing and a night in the tent surrounded by cows (their bells kept waking us up then lulling us back to sleep!), meeting a friendly cowherd who asked if we had seen his cows (we had yesterday!), finding a cosy shepherd's hut with a serve yourself cheese shop - goat's cheese, mmmm - then today went down, up, down, up through sunny forests and cold lightless forests, mostly at an unreasonable gradient, there were cows eating leaves off the trees, an unmanned cabin in a sunny meadow for cooking our odd combination of food for lunch and an usual butterfly dancing around me and sunbathing on the rocks, a weirdo hiker in a mask, a friendly British hiker guy, a jay squawking in the forest, finally reaching the top of the last hill and stumbling upon a teepee/yurt haven where we are staying tonight - a cosy dream come true! An elvish lady has sold us bread, cheese and wine, let us shower in a tiny bath in the middle of her yurt and made us feel welcome in foresty paradise. Life is brilliant!

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The serve-yourself cheese shop near Col de Sasc was yet another example of tiny gestures of kindness and trust that made our hike so amazing. It belongs to a shepherd who leaves his amazing wooden lodge home unlocked as he goes out to tend his flock, so that hikers can serve themselves to his handmade goats cheeses. There was a note with directions for where to find the cheeses and how much money to leave. We bought two goats cheeses – they were delicious!

This very unusual butterfly fluttered around us as we ate our lunch outside another empty shepherd's hut down in a sun filled valley.

Angaka, the tipi/yurt place which we stumbled upon was a little dream come true for me. Our map for this section of the GR10 was brand new and there was a campsite sign on Plateau de la Beille but no mention of anything in the guide which is a few years older. So we were not really expecting there to be anything there and we were happy enough to find a suitable place to wild camp near a water source. But then we saw a couple of signs pointing towards “Angaka village nordique” and mentions of “GR10 bivouac” and were intrigued enough to follow. What we discovered was a delightful little settlement of tipis that are fenced off in a clearing amongst pine trees and decorated with peace flags, garlands and hand painted signs. I think I'm right in saying that they will let you just pitch your tent and use the compost toilet facilities but we certainly weren't going to turn down the opportunity to sleep inside a cosy little yurt instead! As we were the only people staying there, we had a yurt all to ourselves for just 15 euros each. There was a huge supply of free firewood for the wood burner and the lovely lady in charge let us use the solar powered shower in the staff quarters. It was without a doubt the cutest shower I have ever used, suspended over a tiny bathtub in the middle of a yurt (it doubles up as a table when not in use). She also sold us some extra supplies (if you book in advance they will cook you a meal ) including bread, cheese, a bottle of wine and plenty of breakfast supplies. The yurt was incredibly cosy once we got the fire burning – there were matresses for sleeping on and warm woolly blankets.

The vital statistics:
Total hiking time: 8h30
Peak: 1890m
Total ascent: 1223m
Total descent: 1201m

Day 45: Auzat to Col de Sasc.

One of our most exhausting but ultimately rewarding days in a while. Setting off slightly late but getting the last baguette and plenty of cheese in the shop, climbing more than 700m up before lunch, then heading straight down the other side back to the altitude we started at, then climbing up again for hours, firstly through horrible unacceptably steep goblin tunnels (no view, just dank awful climbing), collecting all the colours of autumn leaves to cheer myself up and making leaf pictures in the village of Gesties, an old terraced village perched high up on the mountain, still more climbing for us, to a col then emerging out onto golden grassy plains dotted with pinky purple crocuses and when we turned around the mountains were basking in the late sunshine, glowing brighter and stretching further back as the golden hour came and we climbed higher, powering up to 1904m and bursting into happy tears at the top from the sheer overwhelmingness of it all, heading down to another col where Fabien, a friendly shepherd insisted we had an apero with him and his 3 friendly dogs and showed us the way to an unmanned cabin where we have planted our tent and made fire for cooking potatoes. And then sunset came and the whole horizon glowed and glistened and turned pink and orange and golden. Ascending more than 2300m in a day is worth it for all this.

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The vital statistics:
Total time hiking: 7h54
Peak: 1904m
Total ascent: 2361m
Total descent: 1323m