Perpignon

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My trip was book-ended by kindness from strangers: After a pleasingly uneventful flight into Perpignon, during which I managed to resist buying anything, I kept leapfrogging (so to speak) a mother and daughter couple who, like me, were looking to take the navette (mini-bus) into the city centre. This not proving to be as straight forward as it might be in another country, the mother invited me to join them in their taxi.  They had been delightful company sitting next to me on the plane and patiently ignoring my attempts to contact passing meteors and their spiritually enlightened passengers by various noddings of the head, dribbling, snoring and other twitches more familiar as final death throes of uncommon poisons than tics of a slumbering mountaineer-to-be.  So I was more than happy to repay their sufferance with half the taxi fare, or indeed all of it.  The lovely Mrs Connell, had been on a business trip, the fare was deductible, The net was a welcoming gift to me entering her adopted country - win, win!
Another time I would know to get straight on the bus out of the city centre and head for the hills.  The enormity not so much of the challenge, but more my lack of preparation for it meant some time spent acclimatising- to the French language and culture - was in order.
Perpignon's asset is it's lack of character, being fairly bland it doesn't attract hordes of tourists which would blemish its plain 'girl next door' complexion. Its chief attraction seemed to be a Castillo barely big enough to defend against Munchkins let alone Cathars
I found a 'cheap' pension thanked the kind Monsieurs for their help in my best Arabic and set about, in the still heat of the afternoon, looking for culture

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The bars on the main street up to the station provided me with a taste of the Spanish/French/Catalan mix, as well as a bearded, Panama hatted, fully enlightened Irish man, a painter of women, a scourge among 'Philistines' (yes, yes, more irony, zut!). More of Alan Wallace in another blog.  The evening was finished off watching Toulouse wallop I less local side in another bar, learning what "Q'est il a fait?" meant by the constant, and finally irritating, repetition of it it by the man behind me with the slow eyes. 

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"For my part I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our lives more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints."

Robert Louis Stephenson
Travels with a Donkey


I lifted this quote from Chris Townsend's book: Long Distance walks in the Pyrenees which has been useful for looking at distances and routes. I also based my kit list on his in this month's TGO (The Great Outdoors) for his 1200 mile walk on the Pacific Northwest Trail. I've nearly got everything I need, I'm just looking for a titanium pot under £50 and have decided not to take the 2kilo rucksack that put my back into the most painful spasms on the Offa's Dyke walk , (can it really be two years ago!) I'm splashing out  on a Go-Lite Pinnacle instead.
I have read Travels with a Donkey though, and it is a great read. He had to cope with wolves up on the Haute Cevenne I don't think there are any wolves in the Pyrenees.
Yesterday I strengthened my legs with 18 holes of golf at Mere then a couple of sets of tennis at the Albert. I really earned my Timothy Taylor and got some more sponsorship to boot. (just click on the link here!)
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Two Frenchmen coming to fish and the GR11 marker.

"O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths, to steal away their brains!" (Othello)

Shakespeare's pithy little maxim on the hazards of alcohol pinged around my dull, aching head, recently emptied by purloining pints. This following a  great evening at a 'tidy' Italian restaurant tucked away among the winding farm-tracks between Abersoch and Nefyn the night before.  Then it trudged slowly back into my memory how I had promised  Rod Pearson, (For whose sixtieth this party was in honour) between potations, pottle-deep, back at his house how I would tramp across the Pyrenees to raise money for the Children's Adventure Trust Farm over in Lymm, Cheshire. A fantastic place where unfortunate youngsters find sanctuary from there personal misfortunes.

The year quickly disappearing through a familiarly damp summer I decided to 'just do it' and booked flights to two airports (Perpignon and Lourdes) the 'plan': to walk along the Grande Randonnees between them taking in 4 good sized peaks along the way.

Training has been an hour on a treadmill at a local gym every day and plenty of swimming for stamina.