Jeez Louise, We're In The Pyrenees 1.0
Sooooo, as I mentioned in my previous post about La Rochelle, we got a little fed up with cities, When we are away in the van usually our go to happy place is a little bit of wilderness, whether that's Snowdonia, The Lake District or The Highlands of Scotland, we love that feeling of freedom.
Whilst waiting for our UPS parcel in La Rochelle, it gave us some time to think; we had originally planned to go to Bordeaux next, but we just felt like we needed to change things up. We had discussed possibly fitting in The Pyrenees on our way out of Croatia if we planned to head to Portugal but that wasn't a definite, that was money AND happiness dependant. As we were feeling a little bit unhappy in La Rochelle, we decided to change course...
... and that was that. We changed our UPS delivery location (FINALLY!) and we headed off on the 300 mile journey to the France/Spanish border to the mountains. This suited me perfectly, I had always fancied a trip to the Pyrenees, 270 miles of alpine ridges, numerous 3000+ meter mountains and picturesque views on every turn.
One massive bonus about the Pyrenees outside of the summer months it seems pretty easy to find parking for the night, like most of France in July and August, off grid camping is basically out. We had set our target on minimal research, I had just heard of the mountain Pic du Midi just passed Bareges.
Bareges is an alpine town, situated at 700m in the foothills of the Noeuvielle Massif range. The Pyrenees is full of ski slopes, ski lifts, ski shops, anything skiing to be honest. After our short time here, I would love to visit The Pyrenees in the Ski seasons. I can't ski to save my life and that idea stinks of the hospital but the vibe in the ski towns would be amazing.
As we drove up the Mountain pass into the foothills of The Pyrenees, heading for Bareges, This is the vision for the road trip I had, driving through beautiful locations with my beautiful girlfriend, now Fiancée, by my side with smiles on our faces! This is what I had come for and mountains is where I am happiest! I am not sure why it makes me so happy, but when I 'found' mountains in 2018 after my first walk up the Llanberis Path in Snowdonia I was hooked. If I ever feel stressed, sad, depressed, anxious or even happy I head for the mountains . It makes me happy for numerous different reasons. Sometimes it's being with friends and having a laugh, sometimes it's a route that so technical it requires absolute focus and distracts you from life problems and other times it's just simply feeling free in the hills.
We spent out first night 1750m in Altitude just under the Pic Du Midi, to put it into perspective Ben Nevis is 1345m, so we was pretty high up and the temperature had plummeted. This was an added bonus after the previous week which felt like the centre of the earth. This high up in the Pyrenees the animals roam free and there is huge herds of cows, that can be heard a mile off by their massive cow bells!
We had a really peaceful night on the mountain side, slept well and felt recouped. Although we got a sense we needed to get down quick as a HUGE thunderstorm rolled in, I have never heard noise like it, the whole van was shaking from the rumbles as well as the dark sky lighting up every 10 seconds by fork lightening. I love storms and get excited every time one occurs, but this time I thought 'yeh, this is enough we need to get down!'
We reached Bareges, a mere 1000m lower than our spot from the night and we expected rain, but it goes to show you how different the weather can be in the mountains...it was GLORIOUS!
As I mentioned, we hadn't planned a visit to the Pyrenees, so we didn't really have a plan. I am a few weeks of my Monte Rosa trip and needed to get my fitness up. We found a tourist office, got maps and trail cards and come up with a plan.
That plan was basically to hike everyday, I wanted to test myself at altitude and also make sure I was fit enough to summit the 4800m in the alps which loomed closer by the day.
Although we wanted to explore the weather wasn't great high up so we decided to stay low, we browsed around the alpine towns of Bareges and Luz-Saint-Sauveur and completed some van admin, basically emptying the toilet, topping up drinking water and getting some wine! The weather forecast was not great for the next 5 days but there seemed like there was a weather window between 9am and 3pm the next day, and decided to hit Pic Du Midi de Bigorre, a 15km trail, with 950m of elevation going up to an altitude of 2877m.
Pic Du Midi de Bigorre
This mountain is probably one of the most accessible summits in the Pyrenees with a cable car linking the top to the town of La Mongie, but it still has a great trail. The night before we packed our bags for all weather occasions and kept our eye on the forecast.
The GPS for the Pic du Midi trail can be found on this website:
We Left Bareges at 8.45 to reach our starting point at 1900m on the mountain pass for 9am, avoiding the early morning stormy weather. This trail is advertised as a hard route in the tourist office but well trail marked all the way. With our stuffed bags we headed off up the trail. The clouds started to clear and the Alpine ridges came into view. I knew this day was going to be a good day.
The first half of the trail is advertised as a family trail as it leads up to Lac d'Oncet, to carry on to the summit you simply keep following the trail. The route started to get tougher, constantly steep, zigzagging up the mountain side and I am still not convinced that the altitude didn't start to take effect - laving us feeling zapped of energy. After a tough slog, with no respite we made it to the summit of the Pic Du Midi de Bigorre. South of the summit the views were incredible, but to the north ...Cloud.
I'd really enjoyed the trail up to the summit and with a belly full of baguette, we made our way down. Ellie doesn't really enjoy descents, but the day before I had convinced her to get some poles and she flew down the mountain side. I put my head in my hands and thought, why didn't I buy her them bloody poles 2 years ago!
As we come up with more ideas for the Pyrenees new posts will follow, we are really happy here, loving life and everything we hoped for and even envisioned on our road trip across Europe.
We are planning to stay here for another week or so, 'Jeez Louise, We're in the Pyrenees 2.0'...Coming Soon!