Sunday 4 May 2008 - The Pyrenees Revisited

This afternoon we had the pleasure of meeting Andy and Jan.
This summer Andy is planning to walk the Pyrenees High Level Route (HRP) with his friend Gaz. They intend to blog about it here. Andy is an experienced backpacker and well up to the challenge, but he still needs to finalise his maps and gear. We hope he benefited from the visit to see what we took with us in 2004, listen to our reminiscences, and view the 79 images that Sue made into a slide show for her colleagues at the time (that alone took an hour!). They only have Ton Joosten’s Cicerone guide at present, and are aware that despite containing much useful information this guide does not endear Mr Joosten to others. We strongly recommended that Andy and Gaz obtain a copy of Georges Véron’s ‘Pyrenees High Level Route’ book – the latest English translation of which is a 1991 Gastons-West Col Publication. This is a superb guide book, by the man who devised the HRP, that includes much alternative and wet weather route advice; the Cicerone guide is twice the weight and describes a single route with variable accuracy and little mention of alternatives.
We will be happy to help Andy and Gaz further should they need that, but at present we have them to thank for helping us to re-live a wonderful couple of months in 2004.
I do intend to put more on the web about that trip, probably within this blog. Meanwhile, see here for details of our planned and actual routes, blogged to the spreadsheet at the time, together with reports on a couple of the more interesting days.
The ‘postcard’ for today was taken at our wild campsite beside Lac d’Ansabère on 6 August 2004. The sun was on the tent until 8.30, eagles nested above us, vultures were feeding on an unseen carcass in the valley below. There was no sign or trace of any other humans as we lazed in the sun, transfixed by the lovely reflections in the lake.
Happy Days indeed.