Andorra-Pas de la Casa-Canillo..

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The bus up to Pas de la Casa was not your average bus journey into Manchester, or was it? Well Manchester isn't duty free, so motivation was a key difference. One doesn't carry an empty rucksack and a passport to pick up a halter-neck top from Chelsea Girl! (Though you can pick up duty-free cigarettes and tobacco from most Manchester pubs - try Burnage for good Dutch rolling).
At the border a suitably officious looking Customs officer climbed on board, setting off a wave of rummaging for passports, particularly irritating for me whose passport was secreted away in a-I couldn't remember which- hidden compartment of my rucksack. It had to be hauled in and out of the corridor to let the officer on and the various (though I want to say nefarious) individuals off the bus, to catch up on their slow conversion into cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, and emphysema,  patients, that they looked like extras from a Howard Hawks film we'll put down to my, still to be tweaked by the mountain, imagination. 
No-one was arrested. We arrived in the capital.
The photo above can't convey the feelings that were evoked in me by it.  That is photography's shortcoming. That's why writing is such a perfect compliment to it. Have I changed the subject yet? No! Damn! 
"Let not women's weapons, water-drops stain my man's cheeks!" King Lear.
Don't go near mountains then Lear! 
Mountains should be classified as a class A drug. They have the power to remove the pattern of conformity that society demands of each of us and at the same time reinforce it: Up the mountain the paradox is realised. (Read the book for the elongated version of this: "J'arrive: Sobre la Cena." Gerrard Armor (Published 2043).
Behind me and opposite the chair lifts was the post office where I returned a Craghopper fleece, 5 litre kitchen sink, first aid kit and Mountainlife culottes back to my flat in Manchester. The cost of postage:17 euros, cost of goods: 17 euros, weight 1.5 kilos.
Behind the post office was a ferrot.. farroc.. feroca.. plumbers supplies shop. I popped in here to see if they had any tape for the package.  The lady in the shop was Spanish. I bought an end role of gaffer tape for 1 euro. The tears this time were ones of joy. Suppressed nevertheless, joy at noticing the woman's relief in hearing me speak Spanish and my relief at being able to speak to someone, more fluently than my knowledge of French/Catalan, Spanish/Catalan, Portuguese or French for that matter had allowed so far. Everone's familiar with that look one gets following this exchange:
" Hi are you American?" "No, Canadian!"
" Hi are you Australian?" "No, New Zealander"
" Hi are you from Brighton?" "No, Hove (actually)"
Well Andorra will lure the most able diplomat into these faux pas (plural!).

Time for a photograph and to get away from people.

This ground hugging thistle (Carlina acaulis) was named after Charlemagne,who, on his way over the Pyrenees to thump the Arabic occupiers of Spain, had his army struck with the plague.  An angel told him an arrow fired would land on the plant that could cure it.  Barbora, friend of  Martin, the Czech ornithologist I was soon to meet (and lose), told me that behind the flower head, rather like a globe artichoke is an edible disk, thus its nickname "Hunter's Bread",  The rhizome too, like a cucumber and edible, contains an antibacterial carlina oxide. 


I took a bus to Canillo, a little town still in Andorra, that would provide me with a good point to join up with the GR11 again and a good walk around to Coma Pedrosa the next mountain I'd climb. 
When I arrived I went straight to the tourist office to double check where I could find the path, it was siesta so after several milliseconds of optionizing I took refuge from the midday heat under  a parasol over a table that might be judged to be thoroughly naked if not offering support to either a glass of beer or some culinary repast deserving of a lonesome adventurer.

Ensalada con Queso de Cabra y Cerveza!!

Following this divine intervention, and forgetting about the Tourist Office, I teased myself that I couldn't get another kilo out of my rucksack and send it home, Oh couldn't I! 

Gite d'etape @ Hospitalet pres-l'Andorre

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So I left lakes, mountains, clouds, fresh air, marmotas, trout and wild garlic aside for a day at the behest of my back, whose chant, at first inaudible, grew steadily to such a pitch that I could barely hear the butterfly's wing tips flapping together, or dew forming, or mushrooms growing: "This rucksack is too heavy!" Mellifluous it wasn't but to the point, and my back deserved no less attention than any other part of me. I would go to Pas de la Casa and send some stuff home.

My trail ended at a road: a broad swathe of tarmacadam painted into the hillside before me, on it all sorts of crazy vehicles groaned up and down.  Ducking left under a hedgerow I sought a quieter way into the village Porte Puymorens. There, as everywhere in France, the official language is French, but with the Andorran border a couple of miles one way and the Spanish one a couple of miles the other ( including a Spanish enclave around Llivia!), the doors squeaked in Catalan the dogs barked in Catalan and the pression poured in Catalan.  Oh whatever revelation awaited me at the top of mountains- and there were a few! There was always 1664 or Estrella or other demi-god at the bottom of them.  Mine stood before me on an iron table outside a characterful a French bar as you could wish for.

http://www.gitelhospitalite.com/
After a requisite amount of misinformation from a variety of self interested sources led me back to the barman as a possible locum travel agent, I discovered, quite to my surprise, that there was a railway station some 250 metres down the road and the next train to Hospitalet was in 30 minutes!
I blinked coming into the station and missed seeing the town centre.  After alighting from the train with eyes wide open I nearly missed it again, not that I had great expectations, but the pressure of patterns tilted me towards the wrong assumptions! I soon found the Gite which was run by a lovely lady called Liliane and her husband Christian Loustau.
I met an affable veterinarian from Warrington there with his sweet girlfriend, a teacher from Chester.
"We're going to eat at the only restaurant open at the big hotel at the end of the road" they told me. Well, I planned to join them there, but by the time I'd ditched my sack and clothes by my bed, found my folding, and had run my fingers through my hair, the beastly restaurant manager announced in a fluster that there was to be no more service that night (at least that is what I thought he'd said!).  This poor lonely 52 year old man stood for a moment trying to distinguish among the clientèle his animal lover (and the vet), hoping they would see him and wave him through the barrier of a business model that didn't hold any reverence for profit.
They may have been there or not I couldn't remember what they looked like, I turned, trying not to let on to my stomach that nothing enriching was coming, and sloped out of the hotel.
Back at the Gite I walked into a kitchen and there they were, also unworthy of a place at the last supper.  We enjoyed sharing plates of pasta with goblets of red wine and swapping stories about the trail.  I retired relishing the good company and attempted to sort out the excess gear that was going home soon.. Mr sandman's slick professionalism overtook me, however, and I awoke to a new and beautiful day.

Day Three

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The next morning the sun sprang out from behind some distant ridge and, with the unheard cock crowing in another valley, dispelled all demons that might unsettle a lesser man.  Up and decamped I waved farewell to the silent reservoir and nodded to the empty cows.
Leaving La Bollosa and heading north west along a valley floor I had a pretty easy time of it and could have called it a rest day but for the  climb around the corner by the lake to drop onto Estany de Lanos, (Estany is Catalan for lake). Portella de la Grava the col was 2426 metres! The long lake along the valley floor with the free cabana nestled under the high ground by its north eastern edge was a sight to feast the eyes and dim the memories aching knees fought to reinforce.
It was too early in the day to think about settling down so, rested and watered, I headed along its southbank ending up through a confusion of signs running down the GR7 to Porte Puymorens.
Wait a minute, rewind..., the lake which twinkled with a thousand diamonds as a hot afternoon sun washed its persistent rays across its sapphire flanks, Scree falls looked like they were purposefully diving for her cool, fresh depths.  The hills that backed her to the north still bore the scars of mining days while dotted about her skirts little gems of tents mocked camouflage like un-sucked boiled sweets in prime reds, yellows and blues.  I stopped by a merry stream rushing to join the cool mother blue and filled my bottles, and filled my mouth, and throat and stomach with such fresh water it seemed to brighten my sight. My whole body and soul seemed to be joining the landscape, melting back into its simple ways.

Wild Camp 1

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It had taken me 8 hours to get up and down Carlit and round to the north end of the reservoir. It was 79 metres short of 3000m high, the refuge was at 2005m so while I'd only climbed the height of Snowdon today, I'd done it with 15 kilos on my back at an altitude 2000m higher than Snowdon! I thought that was worth a pat on the back, and would have given myself one had not all muscles around my shoulders started seizing up.
I sought some altitude and cover for my camp and found it with the view above thrown in.  The tent went up easily and the re-sculpted coke-can stove threw up a homely spume of flame with a soft ghostly quality, ideal to try and put life into the Vulcan dust that masqueraded as dehydrated spag-bol.
The quiet of the early evening gave no clue to what was to come.  I finished off the meal with a vanilla tea care of some hotel or other and squeezed into my bag at about 9.30 that I might wake up early and put some miles behind me in the morning cool.
When a katabatic wind gets up, or rather down (it's from the Greek katabatikos meaning 'going downhill') it doesn't do it teasingly, no, it's high density air coming down a slope under the force of gravity, yes, like an avalanche.  Lying peacefully in my green fabric coffin above ground and thinking of my joy at seeing eight Egyptian vultures circling overhead while ambling by the lake earlier, I suddenly heard an enveloping noise like a plane crashing nearby as the block of wind entered the pine forest around me like a wooden comb into afroed hair!I lay there waiting for it to subside which eventually it did.  By now though it was after midnight and as my mind wandered in and out of sleep a new unrest approached.  The beauty and irritation of life is that it is foundered on patterns.  Camping wild in a foreign country, in strange terrain in the exhausting pursuit of bagging a few peaks leaves no time to understand or, perhaps more importantly, become a part of the patterns around you.
The soft discordant jangling must have entered my mind amid discomfort from the wind and latched on to some insecurity so that it manifest itself like some spread of spectral apparitions sweeping through the valley in the wake of the tsunami wind, like so many ghosts of Christmas past looking to drag me into eternal flames.  The jangling as it got nearer moved backwards and forwards so erratically against the now background drone of the wind that I awoke brim full of, let's say, curiosity.  You've no doubt guessed it was merely a herd of cattle moving on to pastures new, and now that the patterns of bovine eating habits and Greek winds had made them selves known to my subconscious I looked forward to cosier nights sleep.

Pic Carlit - First Peak

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Yesterday I had sat and stretched among the wild horses of the plain becoming more arrogant about the ease with which I'd master this task. Pulling a golf bag up the sixteenth was not to change approved training methods for climbing mountains.  Hey-ho I had breakfasted well and was focused. I climbed.
The fearlessness and dexterity of 5 year olds on mountainsides should be an encouragement and to the well balanced individual it probably is, however when you're climbing them to balance yourself, the sight of a girl the same age as your underwear leaping about the crags like a ibex on laughing gas can unnerve you considerably.
Obviously I was disappointed for the young thing when her mother took someone's advice not to attempt the final 100 or so metres.
So slow was my progress that by the time I staggered up to the crater lake in the picture above, she was probably at home reading Don Quixote in bed.  My own windmill took the shape of a rucksack whose weight seemed to be increasing exponentially with its distance from the earth. Whatever that last sentence means a change of plan needed to impose itself on the chaos of my unbridled operandi.
I hid my pack behind a dry-stone windbreak. Clutching a dry-bag with some chorizo, dry bread and water I edged up through the undisciplined rock towards the summit.  The afternoon winds picked up and I tried not to look like the opposite of a white man might at a Klu Klux Klan meeting. (OK, but tread carefully-ed)
The view at the top suspended my apprehensions and I enjoyed my few vittals before having my photo taken with the Catalan flag marking 'ownership' of the rock.

Soy Catalan.

I climbed down and was heading towards the north end of the lake to wild camp.  To get to the reservoir path though, I needed to go past a hotel bar.  Two cold beers and a jambon y queso bocadillo later and with refilled water bottles I sauntered round the lake to pitch my tent and settle down for my first night under canvas.
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Day two: Pic Carlit

A good breakfast and parting sentiments to my three French friends, e-mails swapped and rucksack adjusted I set off into the unknown of my first peak.  Would the altitude affect me? Would I get my bag to the top? I didn't know, but a loose plan was easily changeable without disappointment.
the path was part of the Haute Route Pyrenees (HRP) which was a little more challenging than either the French GR10 or the Spanish GR11. This meant there may be trouble ahead! Especially as I'd never been higher than a 1000 metres without skis or an airline meal! (oh Ryanair once)  Many a boot before mine had come this way among the trees and exposed the roots into a web of tripsters but otherwise it was a very scenic lower path soon opening up into a small system of lakes.
The reason I had to take my rucksack (I did mention its 15 kilos?) to the top was that the map showed the HRP disappearing over the back and on to L'hospitalet pres de Andorra, a much shorter route than the GR10.
I was not alone on that mountain and had to dig deeply into my linguistic reserves to explain the seeming madness of marching up a 50 degree slope with a 33lb rucksack in the midday sun.  But if I didn't understand the patois I understood the look.http://www.justgiving.com/gesarmor4peakspyrenees click this link to donate your £4.00 (or more!!)

Day One: Mont-Louis to Refuge de Bouillouses (14K)

So after soaking up a few cultural French beers the night before and acclimatizing to the heady 250 metres above sea-level, I walked down to the coach station the next morning adjusting the straps on my rucksack.  I didn't want to suffer the pain in my back caused by not utilizing the waist strap properly.  It was all tight now, but a lot lighter than than the 19 kilo pack I'd carried up the 300k Offa's Dyke path.  Only 14kilos and it felt like a needy child clutching on to me.
With an hour to wait I voted unanimously to tidy up my head with a hair cut and found a unisex hairdressers  that looked like it might cut one man's hair a month....perfect! Full of the perfumes and ambience of feminine care I indulged in a deftly executed hair-wash and cut that sent me out towards the mountain air feeling like a new man.
All bus rides in the Languedoc-Rousillon department are 1Euro. The bus dropped me outside the little fort village of Mont Louis.
Designed by Vauban a long time ago, this citadel provided me with a chance to top up with bread, chocolate biscuits, alcohol for my stove and some chorizo and cheese.
I walked from 10.00am to about 6.00pm, I was falsely led to believe it had turned cold by the evenings katabatic wind coming down over the reservoir, La Bollosa. Tired and at the foot of Mount Carlit I opted to sleep in a cabana and take an evening meal with my room mates the three Frenchmen: Didier, Michel and Patrick. http://www.justgiving.com/gesarmor4peakspyrenees

The ol' Catalan mercenary (Gaudix) turned waiter above ushered us to a large table in a corner and made us feel as if we were receiving exclusive treatment. A large carafe of local red wine and a basket of bread soon  centred the table which then received its (large) plates of starters: a mixed bean salad with tomatoes, this needn't draw further comment.  However the main course soon followed as we raced ravenously through the starter and it too was a hardy mountaineers style bean themed local speciality.  More wine was called for: a deep sleep might muffle the analbatic winds to come.