Section One - Complete

After nine days walking, I’m having a rest day in the village of Lescun today. I was hoping Lescun might have an internet of some sort but, despite most GR10 and HRP walkers pausing here for a day, no-one has thought about the money to be made from having a connected PC.

Luckily that disappointment has been balanced out by meeting some great people here. Yesterday I met Klaas - a retired climbing instructor from the Dutch army, who has the same tent as me! He’s also doing the HRP solo, and has an even heavier bag than me, which was reassuring.

This is more like it...

After days of miserable weather in the rolling foothills of the Pyrenees, the last couple of days have finally provided some proper mountains and some fantastic views. You’ll have to take my word for it I’m afraid as the phone charge situation is still bad, but I’ll upload some photos when I get to a PC that can read my camera’s memory card.

Tuesday began with an amazing climb of Pic d’Orhy from Iraty. The weather began warm and clear, but there were clouds building near the mountain and by the time I started climbing I was back in familiar surroundings - thick fog. After about 30 minutes climbing up a steep slope wearing hat and gloves, I suddenly found myself staring over the edge of a huge cliff, with unlimited visibility. Behind me there was a wall of fog and visibility of under 30m, but in front there were mountains and valleys stretching to the horizon.

Still Alive

I haven’t passed anywhere with Internet for a few days and the phone is getting very low, but I thought I’d better just reassure anyone who thought the bears might have got me already.

The weather has gradually got clearer over the last three days and today the sun finally appeared for the first time. There’s been a bitter northerly wind though, so I spent yesterday in fleece, goretex, hat and gloves - it was more like spring in Scotland than summer in France! The wind kept things pretty cool again today but, after a week of dark clouds and fog it was a huge relief not to have to worry about rain. To celebrate I washed some clothes and hung them off the back of my bag to dry.

A break in the rain

To speak to people in this part of the world you need to know Basque, French and Spanish. My French is passable, and I can say hello, thankyou and goodbye in Spanish, but it was a great relief when the lady who ran the taverna last night spoke a few words of English. She explained this morning that it’s rained for the last 10 days, and said “this year is very strange”! She then read something from the local paper, telling me it had rained a huge amount on the local mountain yesterday. Having been there at the time, this didn’t come as a huge surprise, but she was making an effort so I thanked her anyway.

Dark Days

It’s probably a good thing I couldn’t post anything last night, as it wouldn’t have been very positive. I had a wet and windy night on Tuesday, on a hill about 2 hours outside Hendaye, and the rain carried on all through Wednesday. I arrived at what should have been the end of day 1 completely soaked and demoralised, and stayed in a hostel to try and dry some kit out.

Goal in concrete, plans in sand

My plan had always been to get the couchette last night and start walking this morning, but I bumped into a friend, Lucia, at Gare du Nord and ending up having a lovely dinner with her and her aunt. Instead of getting the train, I ended up admiring the Eiffel Tour from the Trocadero as it flashed its 1am lights, then partying into the the early hours with an American Airline crew!