Bagnere du Luchon - Tarbes Ussun Lourdes Airport.

“Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” – William Faulkner

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A short walk took me into Bagnere du Luchon and its pleasant tree lined streets.  Twinned with Harrogate, it shares that towns propensity to cure ills with sulphurous hot waters. Its architecture too is the French equivalent of Victorian (Loubetian?).  I picked out a table in front of cafe and ordered a coffee, dusting off my French and flirting outrageously with the young waitress.  At the train station I stood in a small queue that diminished slower than plutonium while I gleaned from  snatches of French conversation that there was no train any-time soon.

This didn't surprise or worry me but an English couple I'd met at the camp-site earlier were well put out as it meant them missing their flight from Toulouse to Geneva. They took a taxi while I decided to hitch, but before that I found a delightful little patisserie in an ex petrol station where I stoked myself with carbohydrates and caffeine, wrote notes and watched para-gliders sail effortlessly across the skies.

A chef gave me a lift to the station I wanted and a train took me to Tarbes.  Another train took me to Lourdes and I camped there just out of town in a camp-site.  I listened to the manager row with his father in law as his wife trudged round the pool with their 3 year old son.  Something seemed to be missing, like in those weird French films of the sixties.  I ate saussison and bread, drank red wine and felt the sun on my face.

What was I doing there? I've no idea! I walked out towards Ossun in the morning dipping a toe only into the bizarre town that exploits hope in sick people and stopped for a quick coffee at a hotel on the way out.  The waitress had a pigeon chest and face that looked like it had never worn a smile.  It saddened me. Lourdes! After another half an hour's walk I reached the plane tree in the picture above.  It shaded an extended family of Italians all enjoying their Sunday lunch, it would be rude, I thought, not to join them and take advantage of the pleasant setting to have my last meal of the trip.

The waitress explained my options, it seemed cheapest to eat the most so I did.  The buffet was an extensive array of little French culinary gems: artichoke hearts, quails eggs, garlicked mushrooms.....followed by steak and chips and the wine was local and delicious.
The waitress had lived in London and seemed faintly amused to hear about my strenuous foray into the Pyrenees on a solo mission to raise money for a children's farm,  "Those Inglish" I could hear her zink "zay are farming children now! Zut alors!"  Her name was Marie-Ange and she offered to give me a lift to the camp-site near the airport. She decided(!) the site was too far from the airport so we drove there to see if there were any hotels.  Not one! So after looking cynically at the grass verges and wondering aloud if I'd like to camp there, Marie-Ange mooted the splendidly generous idea of me staying in her modernised seventeenth century farmhouse, with a lift to the airport thrown in!
The ancient wooden gates opened into a beautifully rustic gravel courtyard across which bounded a collie, still getting to grips with the significance of its own body mass index. A golden coloured cat completed the welcome party, allowing me to stroke it before stealing off with one of those over the shoulder Machiavellian stares Eastern cats seem born to.
I'm sure the sun winked at me through the massive fig trees that dominated the garden, heavy with fruit that would accompany the black coffee and croissants at breakfast.

I felt honoured to be introduced to Marie-Ange's family at the farm above.  The cows there were hand milked and the horses rescued from somewhere,  the pigs were a lesson in close living and the geese were hilarious, like a teenage gang running around bullying anything that got close, now a stray dog, now me! Her niece milked the cows and I was offered a cup full of warm milk, would I wretch at it as I had 45 years ago when trying to swallow warm milk from a half pint bottle at primary school or had the mountains taught me something? 

The milk went down, stayed down, all eyes on me were rewarded by an enthusiastic smacking of the lips and a beam of approval.  

Marie-Ange cooked a charming meal back at her house and we were joined by her sons,  getting ready for University life in nearby Carcassonne.

She was a wonderful host and my first chance to realise how subtle but significant the change in me was after my walk in the Pyrenees.

More importantly the walk has raised over £700.00 for the Adventure Farm Trust in Cheshire which helps terminally ill children get distracted from their fate.

At the airport below I celebrated the successful mission with a beer!
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Benasque - Bagneres du Luchon

"Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up."
Ernest Hemingway

The lengths Eñaut would go to for a pint!

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The bus didn't leave for another 10 minutes. There was only me on it. I thought about this climbing walk coming to an end.  I thought about how many beautiful images I had stored up in my head, and how much use I could make of them when I got back to the sometimes grey, sometimes rainy Manchester.

Being on a bus felt strange, it was going to take me to Benasque where I assumed the modern European transport system would whisk me off to Lourdes, plane and England so quickly that I would suffer the cultural equivalent of the bends.  

I felt for the perplexing pouches under my eyes, that had formed overnight, they had gone.  I learnt later that it was caused by the rapid descent yesterday (Thanks Hazel). The bus moved off and I enjoyed the view out of the window.  As we wound round the bumpy mountain-hugging road the man behind the wheel told me that I might want to get off at the junction ahead as he was going to Benasque d'Hospitelet first (a border point near France).  I looked at my map and saw that where he dropped me was still on the GR11 and I could follow that into Benasque.

The path wove through roads and camp-sites, forests and reservoirs, bridges and meadows.  I stopped by a river and lit my stove for a last 'wild' cup of tea, burning up the last of my alcohol, having a last moment of quiet before reaching the town. Beautiful blue wild flowers welcomed me into Benasque.  The girls in the tourist office were very helpful but the bus timetable suggested travelling to Lleida, to pick up a coach to Toulouse and it was all going to take days!  They suggested the agencia viaje (travel agent) where I was able to charge my phone in the back of a computer, but the agent had no suggestions for getting to France that didn't involve going to Barcelona first, he pointed to the tourist office.  Back there I explored the option of walking into France, a phone call was made to the manageress' friend; some hours between points were relayed; it was settled, I'd get back on the bus I'd got off that morning and go to Hospitalet de Benasque and walk over to Abri de la Hospice de France.  Those of you whose IQ is greater than their shoe size might be wandering why I didn't figure that out for myself!  Well I did, but wild horses weren't going to stop me coming in to Benasque for a jamon y queso bocadillo, beer, fresh fruit and coffee! Not to mention recharging my phone.  A Frenchman on the mountain had told me I could get a bus from here! And I certainly would have.  The decision to walk wasn't a disappointment, though it might have been 2 weeks earlier.

Back on top just before the French border.

One foot in France

Walking up to the border at Portillon de Benasque I met a farmer taking his cows down, he pointed the way out to me with his gnarled stick. His dogs meandered about sniffing things including the cows who phlegmatically lumbered down the well worn path like grannies.  The way was marked clearly but the HRP bore off near here and I liked talking to strangers.

Before I met Hurve (ooervay) who took the picture of me with one foot in France, I'd managed to scramble up Pic de Sauvegarde (2738m) 'because it was there'.

Hurve was a mountain runner, as slim as a biscuit, something over six foot and neatly turned out.  I followed him up to the col a touch worried, not knowing how steep the gradient would be, that I may have to chalk up my fingers and do a little crevice work.

Luckily there was no verticals and we arrived at Refuge de Venasque after negotiating a path we shared with a flock of homesick sheep.  After all the peering down chasms I'd done I didn't want to suffer the ignominy of being head-butted into a tarn by a hormonal French ewe!

The Refuge was very inviting and I stopped there just to have a coffee with Hurve.  It had been such a long day: waking up with swollen eyes; a bumpy bus ride; a calm walk into town; the joy of food and celebration of beer, another bus ride, more climbing, saying hello to France and rain; goodbye to sunshine and Spain.

After leaving the refuge I descended into thicker cloud and the rain increased. It didn't alter my mood though, it was just the weather.

Down an uncertain path, back and forth across a river, sheep bleating, their bells' dissonance, fatigue creeping through me, it couldn't be much further, could it?

It was, and though tired when I reached the Hospice de France, I looked through its windows and saw few people spread around a formica based canteen, no log fire, no clashing of froth topped flagons, no serving wenches, no, it was only 5 miles to Bagnere I'd carry on.

Walking along that road was not the same glorious experience that mountains offer and my feet soon alchemied  into lead, my rucksack now wet was and felt heavier and my hat was now so sodden that it allowed through the odd drop of rain to cool my neck.

Eventually not far from Bagnere I came to a car park at the back of which was a Gite of some description.

I walked in through the open door from the dark and called out "allo".  I nearly said it twice but presumed the joke wouldn't travel and I didn't feel very funny.  A woman's voice was talking into a telephone in the first room and so I pushed the door open softly.  The lady had finished on the phone and looked at the big, dark, wet, hatted stranger as he struggled through his fatigue to remember what language to speak in. "Bonsoir" I offered and then: "do you ave a rrroom for tonight".  Of course she didn't, it was home to any amount of children on summer camp, so while she hunted for the panic button I made myself scare, chuckling to myself on my way back to the humourless highway, into the spray of tankers and the insecurity of an unbooked hotel room.

Another mile and I came to a camp site.  The office was shut so I picked a spot and pitched my tent. Made a sandwich, drank water and lay down listening to the sound of happy teenagers until very quickly the sandman cometh...

Ballhiverna down to the refugio Colomers

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Everything had been so plain sailing that I felt spoilt again by the success of my four peaks and the end of my adventure.  The top of Ballhivernas was the hardest to obtain though, and I almost closed my eyes in order not  to spook myself with peripheral glances at the immediate chasm that opened down to my left.  The peak was 3062m while the valley floor was at about 1300m. The diagram above is uncannily accurate, except the tarn at '3' was in the next valley above '9' which is where the dotted red line on my map told me to go. The Spanish couple had wandered around looking for a way down as bemused as I was by the apparent lack of an obvious descent route. Then they disappeared from view and I was alone.  I saw them later heading north 50 meters apart making their way slowly down some grey scree.  Not happily!

The path I followed must have been used last in the 1930's by some Hemmingway character sneaking arms into Spain, listening for tolling bells and ricocheting bullets, perhaps to a Hoagy Carmichael melody.

Back in the here and now I found footsteps, just one set, (no, not my own) that headed round the bowl of scree that fell into a small and very rusty looking tarn.  I followed them sensing that it was one way and going back in this heat, up this terrain, would be too difficult later to even bear thinking about.  But I trusted myself to cope with whatever lay ahead and that was a seminal moment for me.  I didn't feel brave and I wasn't scared. Far away on the other side of the valley I could see the lake where I should have met Martin and Barbora. 

Martin on Aneto

 Trees in the valley below looked minute but I had to ignore that, it confused my understanding of how I would get down! The rocks in my hanging valley were as irregular as in the picture of Aneto above, I stumbled round to the top of the waterfall that was fed by the rusty tarn. I climbed down it crossing over it occasionally It seemed easy and I kept going to the bottom of it when it disappeared into the mountain and I was on another lower hanging valley floor.  Looking up the waterfall I was amazed, wishing I had power in my camera phone to record it, I was at the bottom of a 30 meter waterfall with my just my 13 kilo bag, some chocolate and all the water I could drink.  I still had a long way to go but staying near the river seemed to provide the best access to lowerness and I descended steadily.  Sometimes I had to rock-climb down dry waterfalls which was fun, each new ledge had more flora until gradually I arrived at the tree line and approached the valley floor.  A marmot stuck his head up from his earth mound and considered me for a while. I should have headed for the river and got over it before it became a gorge but I had a suspicion I could reach the cabana on this side and meandered down through pine-tree graveyards and cattle filled meadows following carefully built cairns until after crossing a wooden bridge a track led me to the refugio Colomers.

What a disappointment! Not a guarded sanctuary with all the benefits introduced by the Romans over the centuries, sewage, hot water, electricity etc but full of  similarly worn out trekkers having just conquered Aneto or preparing to.

I dumped my bag and asked a young Czech the time, it was 8.00pm. another 12 hour day.  The young man was one of three brothers, he'd twisted his ankle and they were all waiting for it to heel.  They gave me an enormous mug of tea and set about making another one.  I was more than grateful.  There was a bus stop near by which I walked over to and learned I could get a bus in the morning to Benasque.  Naively I believed this large town would be able to connect me to France and Lourdes airport, eh huh, no sir!

I ate my last dried boef bourginon with water from the Czech kettle and crept into my tent at about 9.30.

In the morning I woke up and could hardly open my eyes! Conjunctivitis? Mosquito bite? Who knows, but when the swelling had gone down enough for me to see out of them I noticed a coach standing with its engine chewing diesel! Bugger not 8.00 o'clock then, 7.00! Anxiety, only yesterday a hazy memory, leapt back into my life and oversaw a hasty rucksack packing and ginger skip over to the quivering footplate under a closing door......