I dropped into Stanfords earlier this evening, hoping to find a copy of the new guidebook I’m going to take to the mountains, and left about an hour later and over £120 worse off!
Last time we were in the Pyrenees we took the original guidebook written by Georges Veron when he came up with the idea of the HRP back in the late 1960s. In the intervening 14 years I’ve mislaid that, so decided to try the “other” guide - Ton Joosten’s “Pyrenean Haute Route”. The second edition of this was only published last year, so hopefully it’s going to be up-to-date with any changes on the ground.
There’s so much to sort out! If I was just going to set off and walk on my own then there’d be no need to plan a schedule in any great detail, but I’m hoping that various friends will be joining me along the way. To make that possible, I need to be able to give at least a rough idea of where I’m going to be on any given day. That sounds simple enough, but it depends on a load of important decisions.
Before I left home I marked the route of the HRP on my maps and cut out the strip of the map I needed for the trail. As I’ve slowly ambled east I’ve been throwing away the used maps, and at times even tearing off the left hand side day-by-day, all in a bid to keep the weight down. The problem with this strategy is that when I look back west, it’s impossible to identify any of the peaks I can see! As I’ve dropped slowly towards the sea the last few days I’ve had some great views, and it’s been frustrating not having a big map to work out exactly where Carlit and Canigou fit in.
