HRP Day 4 - Aldudes to Roncesvalles

The first three days of the hike were in rolling green hills from village to village, with lots of accommodation and eating options in the morning and evening. That pattern will continue today, but then the hike changes a bit; there will be fewer villages and I need to be more self-sufficient, which means a heavier pack. There's a post office in Aldudes, and I've sent a food parcel there. The post office is only open between 10 am and noon, so I can't hang around too long in the morning.

After a very nice breakfast, I head to the post office and collect my food parcel. I also sent my umbrella and an 'old' map home. I pick up a couple of snacks at the local store and talk to some fellow HRPers. The weather is great for hiking - dry and clear but not too hot - and my pack is still fairly light as I head out for the day.

Arriving at the start of the long high-level ridge

The first 3 hours of hiking were very nice - climbing up those steep little hills you see everywhere in the Basque country. Much of the day involved walking along a high level ridge (at around 800 m altitude) with great views in every direction. Around half distance, though, you find yourself walking on a road. There's no traffic, the views are just as good but the road is harder on the feet and a bit less interesting. 

La Redoute de Lindux (1220 meters) with its Napoleonic fortifications

Apart from a little excursion to climb a summit on the border (La Redoute de Lindux, 1220 m) you stay on the road until you arrive at the Col de Roncevaux and by then my feet were quite uncomfortable; strange, I've never had any foot problems when hiking before.

Corridor outside my room in La Posada

A short descent from the col took me to my hotel in Roncesvalles, La Posada. It's an old hotel (built at the beginning of the 17th century) and it's got a lot of atmosphere. My room is big, with a comfy bed and a private bathroom, but it's also quite spartan. Tomorrow's forecast is poor and I decided to spend two nights here (bivvying in the rain isn't much fun, especially with minimalist gear) before resuming my hike. 

HRP Day 3 - Elizondo to Aldudes

The weather is lovely in the morning, I've got an easy day's hiking and I'm headed to a nice hotel in France. I'm definitely in a better mood today than I was yesterday! I have an excellent, leisurely breakfast, explore the town a bit and hit the trail around 11 am. I'm going to follow the GR11 for 3 hours or so and then cut across the border and descend to Aldudes. The route I'll be taking is marked as the HRP on my map but the guidebook describes a different route; there are many versions of the HRP!

View on the climb out of Elizondo on the GR11

It's a pleasant, gradual climb through woods on the GR11 and, given yesterday's weather, it's surprising how dry everything is. Towards the top of the climb I encounter some of the hikers I passed yesterday and we continue together to the border where the scenery opens up, giving great views into the Aldudes valley. I stop for a leisurely lunch and leave them to pursue the hike. After lunch I leave the GR11 and head along a ridge line that soon offers a descent to a road. A long and increasingly hot descent follows and I'm quite relieved when I arrive at the hotel (the St Sylvestre). 

View into the Aldudes valley - my hotel is down there somewhere

Everything in the hotel is very nice. I enjoy a lazy end to the afternoon before an excellent meal. Quite a relief after yesterday's hiking!

HRP Day 2 - Bera to Elizondo

We're not in the mountains yet and even in good weather the terrain is difficult to navigate (with forests, restricted views and lots of junctions). The dire weather will make navigation more painful (with the inconvenience of being in the clouds, the risk of wet maps etc) so I've decided to follow the GR11 all the way to Elizondo today. Much of the route is common with the HRP but by sticking with the GR11, I can reduce navigation to following red and white stripes. According to the GR11 information panel in Bera it's a 9 hour 20 minute day, so there isn't a lot of time to mess around.

I have a great breakfast in the bar beside the hotel, then head into town to buy a lunch sandwich and hit the trail. The rain is never horribly heavy but it's always there. Given the forecast, I've brought an umbrella to try out; sometimes it helps (when the rain is heavy and the trail is easy) and sometimes it is a hindrance (when I'd like to use my walking poles going down a steep slope). There's a lot of climbing and descending and I focus on keeping a good, steady pace and looking out for these wonderful red and white stripes.

Apart from a 5 minute break to eat my sandwich, I kept going all day. The last 8 km to Elizondo were gently downhill and I passed some fellow HRP hikers there. My feet had been soaked all day and were a bit uncomfortable towards the end. But, after an 8 hour day, I arrived in Elizondo and, just like that, the rain stopped. 

Elizondo and typical Basque architecture

Bera and Elizondo both seem quite typical of Basque towns on the Spanish side of the border (or, as the Basques say, the southern Basque country). You find the same solid buildings and general tidiness that you find on the French side, but more of the buildings are apartment blocks rather than big individual houses. 

Even modern buildings share the traditional architecture

I find my hotel (the Hotel Elizondo) and get installed; the immediate priority is a shower and changing into dry clothes. I'm feeling better by the time I wash my hiking gear and start the process of drying everything. Later I go out to a bar for my evening meal and neither French nor English work. But the barmaid understood enough of my horrible Spanish and I ate and drank well. Fortunately, the forecast is much better tomorrow!

HRP Day 1 - Hendaye to Bera

I had planned to start the hike 4 days ago but delayed things because the forecast was very wet. However, over the last 4 days the new forecast has got gradually worse and it is now almost as bad as when I delayed things. Today should be wet from time to time and tomorrow looks horrible, with heavy rain from dawn till dusk. As a result, I've changed my destination tonight to Bera, in Spain, where I've been able to book a hotel, the Hostal Zalain. 

Today is a Sunday and that has made the planning a bit tight. The earliest train gets me to the Hendaye just before 11.00 and the reception in the hotel closes early, so I can't mess around at the start. Straight out of the station and heading east, looking for the GR10's red and white stripes. I soon picked them out and started following them. There are a few marginal (almost spurious) differences between the GR10 and the HRP at the start; I just followed the GR10 to save navigation time.

Getting out of Hendaye and into the countryside went smoothly and I was soon hiking in rolling hills and heading towards la Rhune, a well known Basque hill. There were lots of short, sharp ups and downs before I took a tunnel under the motorway and found myself on a more sustained climb. The gray weather and scenery were almost Scottish, but the rain held off and I soon arrived at the Col d'Ibardin on the border. At this point, I left the HRP and headed down to Bera on a Spanish hiking trail. 

The Town Hall (on the right) in Bera

In Bera, I passed the town hall and saw a moving memorial to the Spanish civil war (the families of Francists were expelled from the village and the memorial denoted this by metal footprints in the village square). I picked out the start of tomorrow's hike before heading to the hotel, which was actually a couple of kilometers out of town. English was my language of communication in the hotel - the patronne huffily didn't speak any English, but her staff were eager to help. My room was modest, but it had everything I needed and only cost 25 euros.

Later on I went out for a meal at a bar called Zubiondo where French worked better for communication. There was a nice family atmosphere and I watched pelote basque on the TV as I ate. 

HRP - The Introduction

The Haute Route Pyrénéenne (or HRP) is a long distance hike. It traditionally starts in Hendaye on the Atlantic coast and pretty much follows the crest of the Pyrénées (on the France-Spain border) all the way to the Med (though, of course, it can be done in the opposite direction). The current guidebook describes it as 44 days of hiking, and these are generally pretty long days; with rest days and some bad weather people generally take somewhere between 50 and 60 days to do it.

The HRP is rather more intense than most long distance hikes (e.g. the GR5 or GR10). First, it stays high in the mountains on pretty rough terrain; at times, it is more like a mountaineering route. Huts are further apart in the Pyrénées than the Alps and you're seldom near a village, so you often have a choice between really long days to get to accommodation or camping. Navigation is also an issue; there are no red and white stripes to mark the HRP and sometimes there really isn't a discernable path. 

I live locally and I don't plan to do it all in one go. Instead I'll do it in sections over the next 2 or 3 years. My approach is to carry very light bivouac gear but to use huts when it makes sense (maybe 70% of the nights). I had planned to start the hike a couple of years ago but Covid 19 (and the associated health measures) put paid to that. But I'll be heading to the start of the hike by train tomorrow morning. I intend to do the first of the HRP's 5 sections, Hendaye to Lescun, which should be 9 days of hiking, before the summer 'busy' season.

Cycling in the Time of Coronavirus

It was only ten days or so ago when France started entering lock-down, but it feels like a lifetime ago. It suddenly became clear to me that just leaving my house would be severely restricted or even completely forbidden. I had lots of questions, including 'what would I do for exercise?'. 

I hate stationary cycling (compared with the real thing it's just so boring), but that seemed the most obvious choice. So I went online and ordered a 'home trainer' so I could continue to ride my bike at home and maintain some level of fitness and sanity. It duly arrived just as France entered full confinement. Now I choose a different part of the garden each day (gotta reduce boredom) and set up my old road bike on the home trainer and cycle for 40 minutes or so. 

It's nothing like as pleasant as real cycling, of course, but it helps maintain fitness and fills my days. The confinement is a bit strange but it's not unpleasant for my wife and me. But spare a thought for families with small children stuck in small apartments without a garden. Or for the medical professionals that are likely to be overwhelmed by critical cases in the weeks to come. And all of this is likely to last at least a few months.

La Cirque de Gavarnie and la Breche de Roland

La Grande Cascade

I finally got round to visiting two places today on a hike. The first was the Cirque de Gavarnie, a huge wall of cliffs that looms above the village. The hike to the cirque is very popular with all sorts of tourists but I left them behind at the cirque. I climbed up the wall via the Echelle des Sarradets, a simple but sensational route with great views over to the Grande Cascade - said to be the highest free-standing waterfall in Europe. After that, some more gentle hiking took me up to my bivouac for the night and a nasty surprise - I had forgotten my thermarest and a chilly night awaited me!

Climbing up the French side of the Breche

Next morning I climbed up to the Breche de Roland. The frontier between France and Spain is a super sharp ridge, almost like a shark's fin, and the Breche is like a gap in the fin. It's a bit hard to explain it but it's pretty sensational when you are there. My hike took me through the Breche then some hiking on the Spanish side took me up the Taillon, a 3114 meter mountain. Then I turned round and started the long descent back to Gavarnie by a different route.

Spanish side of the Breche

I was very pleased to visit both places, but it was a little bittersweet. Just 30 years the climb up to the Breche was all on a glacier; it must have felt much more like the high mountains. Today, the glacier is almost gone and you do the climbing up a dusty moraine (like a heap of gravel). For about 20 meters you walk over the tiny remnant of the glacier; it is pink with algae - the darker color helps the melting and the melting helps the algae. It's the same story throughout the Pyrénées - they may be glacier free in 30 years. Climate change is a concern of mine (I have started a website on the topic); while glacier loss in the Pyrénées is a relatively minor consequence it's still sad. 



Some pics.