Into the Pyrénées

Summer 2016

Toulouse, capital of France’s southern Occitanie region, is close to the Pyrénées and perfectly positioned for a two-week sojourn studying french before we set off into the Haute-Pyrénées.

On the first morning at our school overlooking the Place du Capitole, we find ourselves in different classes and out of our comfort zone. After weeks of wandering it is difficult to sit for three and a half hours at a stretch, day after day, wrestling with the language.

After class and with our homework complete, we explore the old quarter of La Ville Rose (the pink city). The Gothic Cathédrale Saint-Étienne, the impressive basilica dedicated to the martyred Saint-Sernin and the beautifully elegant, soaring gothic church of the Jacobins. Renaissance hôtels built by merchants wealthy from trading in pastel, the blue colour extracted from the woad plant and synonymous with the blue shuttered houses of the south. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, lived in one of these hôtels when he worked flying mail planes between Toulouse and Africa.

As often as we can we have lunch at one of the small restaurants above the Victor Hugo food market, eating delicious meals created from the fresh produce of the region. In the heat of the late afternoon, we find a shady bar by the River Garonne and calm ourselves with a glass of chilled rosé.

One Saturday, we borrow bicycles from our lovely Toulousain host family and ride along the Canal du Midi. It’s green and cool in the shade of the plane trees that line the canal, the air like water. After stopping for a leisurely lunch at a lockside cafe we blithely ride on, before turning for home at Ecluse d’Océan. Then the mistral, the strong, cold, northwesterly wind, blows in. The 50 kilometre ride back is significantly more arduous than the morning’s carefree cycling.

At the end of our intensive language course, we take the train south to walk part of the Arles Camino, a pilgrimage route from Arles to Puenta la Reina where it joins the Camino Frances and continues on to Santiago de la Compostela.

Pale villages, paler earth, citrus orchards and forests. What appears to be clouds in the distance transmutes into a landscape of ranges and high limestone peaks. Storks nests, cornfields and snow in drifts on the shaded northern slopes of the mountains. Italian priests in black cassocks scurry about the railway station at Lourdes, a major Catholic pilgrimage site.

Microbats, a waxing moon and an indigo sky welcome us to Oloron Sainte-Marie, once a fortified citadel, an important pilgrim stop and place of safety. Its massive Romanesque church has a Moorish cupola that dates from the late 11th century.

Oloron Sainte-Marie to Bedous (30 km)

Sunrise and an early morning coffee at the quirky Hotel de France where the evening before the proprietor had denied any knowledge of our reservation and then, with a change of heart, found us a room in the near-deserted hotel and poured us a glass of fine local wine ‘on the house’.

Pastries from the next door boulangerie to sustain us and we are on our way, walking into the Pyrénées. Despite the well-waymarked route out of town, our navigation is a little off-pitch at first but soon we have a song in our step and a sureness of purpose. Church bells and the gentle tinkling of sheep bells. Wild blackberries for the taking. In years to come, there will be an abundance. The local Friends of the Camino are planting fruit trees and berry plants that they hope will provide sustenance for pilgrims in the future. Outside one farm, the owners have set up a shaded resting place, with water and treats on offer.

Out of town and the church of Sainte-Croix with its Cyprus-fringed cemetery then past farms and up through the forest in the gathering heat. The only other walkers we meet are two Spaniards, walking as far as Jaca (over time they will walk all the way to Santiago de Compostela). We keep an easy distance from each other until Eysus, where we lose them when we stop at a bar for coffee and some respite from the hot sun. Along country lanes, past an ancient quarry and the small white chapel of Saint-Christau then alongside a railway line, abandoned for many years and now rebuilt and taking passengers into the heart of the Pyrénées.

At Escot, a village with a 17th-century white church and faded illustrations of the fables of La Fontaine (including the Hare and the Tortoise), we talk to two English cyclists on their way up the steep Col de Marie-Blanque, two weeks ahead of the professionals competing in the Tour de l’Espagne. From here we follow the Apse River through green shady tunnels of box trees to Sarrance and a welcome stop for lunch at a bar with a cool stone interior.

With a few hours of daylight still remaining we decide to walk on to Bedous. The heat is intense but with the prospect of shade and the cooling melody of green water flowing over stone, we think we have the kilometres in us. Up and down a wooded path beneath the cliffs of Mail du Couret and then along a grassy track that sometimes breaks free into a meadow, birds of prey on the hunt. We arrive in the pretty village of Bedous hot and weary from our 30-kilometre walk only to find that the village is fully booked and the nearest available accommodation is in Urdos, 25 kilometres away. Merde! However, the tourist officer tells us that ‘if we hurry we might just catch the last bus’. We thank her, put our packs back on and run. At least Urdos is on the Arles route, even if it takes us further south than we intended by the end of day one. With a new plan to make for tomorrow’s walk, we collapse onto the bus and look forward to a reviving beer.

Urdos to Col du Somport and return (25 km)

With beds scarce this Assumption long weekend we decide to walk to the Col du Somport and then return to Urdos for a second night. We cross the Apse River and pick up the Camino after an encounter with donkeys expecting apples and a very protective goat with two recently born kids. Along sunken paths and mossy stone-walled tracks, eating wild raspberries and regretting not being able to pick the ripe juniper berries to dry and bring home. Clouds of pale blue butterflies anywhere there is flowing water and lizards aplenty on this hot morning. Into the Parc National des Pyrénées with its beautiful beech forests, walking on the carpet of last autumn’s fallen leaves.

Is that the whistle of a marmot we hear? We are told that while we are unlikely to see a marmot, we might hear one whistling, warning the others of imminent danger. The only Izard, Pyrenean mountain antelope, that we see is stencilled red onto trees, marking the boundary of the park.

Up, ever gently up, till we come out into a clearing with sudden and spectacular views of the Pyrénées, their beauty lit soft grey and dusky pink by the sun, snowdrifts in the shadowed crevices. Rugged red boulders, a reed-covered marshland, an archaeological site with evidence of ancient stone-walled fields and a still-in-use dairy farm with cheese for sale. At the top of the pass, the Col du Somport, we walk on an old Roman road from France into Spain. Just 100 metres from the border and deserted frontier post there is a bar serving Spanish food and where only Spanish is spoken. The gracious reserve of the French gives way to the boisterousness of the Spanish. Even the Camino waymarking becomes bolder in style, enhanced by a modern statue of a pilgrim and a shrine featuring the Santiago cross.

Back down the way we came, the aspect different, the descent emerald green with metallic beetles and purple with colchique flowers. Cowbells sounding out across the valley. Flowering heath and late summer wildflowers soothing the heat of the afternoon.

Etsaut to Lescun, via the Col Barrancq (20 km)

The dawn greeting of swallows. A short bus ride from Urdos to Etsaut to avoid walking on the treacherous stretch of road through the gorge. At the bus-stop cafe in Etsaut, we recognise the two Spanish pilgrims we met on our first day’s walk, one of them now injured and waiting for the bus to Canfranc, the other walking on alone across the Somport and on to Jaca. We wish her Buen Camino, cross the river and walk the short distance to the pretty town of Borce, its small church decorated with white flowers on this feast day commemorating the assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven. It is, curiously, a public holiday in secular France (though not in catholic Spain).

Grey-stone farm buildings huddled together to provide protection during the harsh winter months. Once these farms were cut off all winter. No comings or goings, just the relentlessness of storms and social isolation. School children boarded in the village far below and didn’t see their families until the snow melted.

It’s summer now and there’s nothing for it but to walk steeply up, following goat tracks through open meadows with little shade, the 30+ degree heat punishing and the 1,000-metre climb up Col Barrancq relentless. The spectacularly beautiful mountains and up-close sighting of an eagle, its magnificent wings glowing golden, more than compensate for the effort of the climb. Azure blue gentians still in flower. Mountain heather just beginning to blaze. Up into cooling green beech and fir forests and finally to the top of the pass, with views of the impressive 2,884-metre high Pic du Midi. Defended by great rock walls, it stands stately and alone, dominating the landscape.

The drumming of a woodpecker in the forest below and the clanking of cowbells from further down. People out foraging for mushrooms and wild blueberries. After a steep descent, we come to the small village of Lhers and from here it is a pleasant amble on farm tracks, forest paths and narrow lanes to the stone-walled mountain village of Lescun.

Surrounded by abrupt grey mountains, it is lively with walkers enjoying the terrace bars on this hot, holiday Monday. Before we even check into our small hotel we sit in the shade and enjoy a cold beer. Revived, we wander around the town before a wild, late summer storm lashes the village. Thunder, forked lightning and hailstones empty the terraces of feast day revellers. Old men stand by windows in the semi-darkness of their houses and silently watch the rain fall. We have an attic room with spectacular views of the Cirque de Lescun and we too watch the storm play out.

Dinner is included in our tariff, a communal and convivial affair shared tonight by six people. Two French couples who met walking the GR10 route from St Jean Pied du Port and are celebrating the end of their six-day walk and us, unwitting intruders to their party but made to feel welcome nevertheless. Aperitifs, a generous tureen of zucchini and mint soup, baked tomatoes, the recipe a speciality of the region, as many terracotta jugs of red wine as we desire, tiramisu for dessert and to finish, a digestif, Izarra, another local speciality, bright green and bitter on the nose but delicious to drink.

Lescun to Cabane du Cap de la Baigt and return (19 km)

Out of the village, past a herd of unperturbed goats eating stinging nettles and whatever part of the trees they can reach, through still flowering soft grassy meadows, along a tree-lined gully, then up a track, past farms and farmers at work. Following the muddy wake of cows through woodland to a clearing and stunning views of the Pic D’Anie. Horses with bells on; cows and sheep as well. An orchestra of bells.

Animals still grazing on summer pastures high up in the Pyrénées. If you are lucky you can buy freshly made cheese from one of the stone cabanes. These huts serve as refuges for walkers most of the year but in summer they are home to the shepherds looking after cows, sheep, dogs, donkeys and tough mountain ponies. Transhumance, the relocation of livestock to high mountains for the summer, evolved during the Middle Ages and lasted into the 20th century before it declined due to pressure from industrialisation. Now a resurgence is underway throughout Europe, led by Slow Food activists, ecologists and livestock breeders reclaiming the heritage and sustainability of this millennia-old tradition. The drailles (drovers’ way) in use in France for the transhumance were once the natural routes of wild animals migrating between mountains and lowlands. Some of them have now been designated as UNESCO World Heritage sites.

The heat is not as intense as the past three days and the climbing not as arduous. Deeper into the heart of the Cirque de Lescun and what was hidden reveals itself. Karst landscapes, steep-walled soaring grey peaks, great limestone pinnacles grander than any cathedral spire, lakes and hanging valleys. A mountain environment of staggering beauty and majestic grandeur.

Back down in the lush green valley, at the foot of the beech and fir forests, are three-storey stone farmhouses. In winter, the animals used to occupy the bottom storey, the human occupants lived in the middle storey and hay was stored in the top storey, providing not only winter feed for the animals but insulation as well. This part of the Pyrénées, the most westerly of the High Pyrénées, is on the edge of the Basque country. Many of the men in Lescun, old and young alike, proudly wear the traditional basque black beret. 

Early the next morning we leave the mountains for the lowlands. From the train window, we see white herons riding bareback on white ponies, pale villages in a sea of sunflowers and olive groves. When we close our eyes we experience vivid flashbacks of wilder landscapes and images of astonishing beauty.