Hell is other people on a bank holiday weekend in the Lakes

 

 

The Lake District has become ground zero for an acrimonious debate in hiking circles about how far tolerance should be extended for what some may regard as anti-social behaviour. The benefits of nature are now so well understood that doctors can prescribe outdoor activity for well-being, but there is a balance to be struck between wanting people to enjoy the environment and also treat it and other hikers with respect.

 

First, the anti-social behaviour. Leading up to the bank holiday weekend in August, Wasdale Head was busy: hikers, climbers, family ramblers, Wainwright baggers, first timers. Everyone looks that kind of happy you only get when you’re outdoors and the weather is good. It’s like we’ve won the lottery. After a circuit of Scafell Pike, I’m washed and clothes rinsed in the six minutes that £1 in the coin operated hot water system will give me, leaving me with ample time to find a nook in the pub for reading, chat to a few others, recharge electrics, and have some soup and chips.

 

But at some point between the shower and the chips, a large group of men pitched up in the camping field, with a gazebo, slabs of beer and whisky, and a sound system requiring earplugs until the receptionist from the Inn had to come over to tell them to can it. There are ‘Ibiza’ campsites throughout the Lakes; fields that farmers open during the season, sometimes with no facilities other than port-a-loos. They are full of massive tents, BBQs, sound systems, and canvas barriers demarcating territory. Humans just love a wall. It’s great that there is so much camping kit now that we can bring all the ‘comforts’ of home. Not so great though if it’s excluding everyone else (human and non-human).

 

Personally, I head for the camp sites that have a moratorium on gazebos and zero tolerance for noise at night.

 

Secondly, the Icarus effect, otherwise known as the human aversion to realistic risk assessments. Ascending Scafell Pike, England’s highest peak at 978m, it’s cold and windy, rocky and steep, even on the tourist trail. I pass several not-having-a-good timers on the way up. Not the right clothes, shoes or fitness. I hope they make it. Humans generally under-estimate risk so I feel for the Mountain Rescue crews who volunteer to haul unprepared people off peaks. Having made this mistake myself some 17 years ago in the Dolomites, I’m in no place to judge others, except the two women trying to walk their dachshund up to High Street when a storm front was forecast and clearly visible. Or the couple trying to carry their chihuahua with them along Striding Edge. That is just obviously silly.

 

After Scafell, I ran into two lads at Angle Tarn who, having lost connection on their phone and therefore lost their only map, had wandered well off their path (the Cumbrian Way). I gave them my spare map and showed them the route, but in the end it was easier to point out landmarks in three dimensions for them to follow down to the valley floor to eventually get back on track. At several points, particularly near popular routes or landmarks, more lost souls needed a hand with directions. Map reading is a dying skill.

 

At a minimum, let’s leave the hubris and the sound systems at home. Check the weather. And thank Mountain Rescue by donating to their services.

 

 

 

Meeting the (Dutch) von Trapps

Cirque de Gavarnie is a natural wonder: 3000 metres at its widest, up to 1500 metres from its base, a 422m waterfall to round out its list of attractions, this natural amphitheatre has been carved out by the movement of the earth over millions of years. With just a 90 minute easy walk or donkey ride from the village to the foot of the cascade, it is unsurprising that in the summer season hundreds arrive daily to see this astonishing colosseum: bus loads of French, Spanish, British, and other assorted world travellers, scouts and school trips.

Among this maelstrom of humanity, let's meet the Dutch von Trapp family; a collective of four adults and six children ranging from three years old to tweenies, in all their tall, blonde glory (and yes, I know the von Trapps were actually Austrian but go with me on this one). 

I truly admire the effort of parents that want to bring their kids into nature, to march them up to a plateau to admire the view, even when the kids may not actually want to be marched to the top, are not that impressed when they get there, and can't wait to get back down because that's where the ice cream is.  

I appreciate that they might not have been used to so much ascent, even if it is Walking 101, but the von Trapp seniors were not put off by their children's lack of enthusiasm ... bless them. As I passed them on the way to Plateau Bellevue, they cheerfully ploughed on, accompanied by what I imagined was a Dutch rendition of 'These are a few of my favourite things'. 

I passed them again later that day, bundled into the nooks and crannies of shade next to a river, trying to manage their small humans' hunger, fatigue and the call of nature, which involved holding the smallest human over the stream so they could free flow their pee into it. 

At this point, just a gentle reminder of outdoor etiquette ... while I appreciate that Cirque de Gavarnie is a relatively easy stroll, with a hotel and three course meal at the end, giving it the appearance of an extension of 'home space', please don't let your kids pee in the pristine glacial streams that run past the camp site and through the village, that people bath in and drink from. It's public commons, not your own private toilet. The same goes for the man who's job it is to sweep up the crap left on the path by the donkeys ferrying people up to the Cirque. 'What a great idea', I thought to myself, 'collecting all the crap to put on someone's garden'. Mais non! His job is to shovel it straight into the same pristine glacial stream that, to emphasise the disgust, people drink from and bath in. 

Two days later I was really impressed to meet the Dutch Von Trapps again at Refuge Baysellance, a solid three hours for adults of upward hiking, along narrow, rocky paths with some steep drop offs. The three year old had been in a carrier but all the other kids had managed it under their own power. While missing their matching clothes made out of curtains, their infectious energy nevertheless took over the refuge, and children and noise bounced off the walls.   

I was less impressed that, due to a miscalculation by the refuge guardians of how many Von Trapps there actually were, I was relegated out of a comfortable bed in a room they now commandeered to the worst spot in the refuge: top bunk, under the slanting roof with only a handful of centimetres between head and hard surface, on the far side of a snoring man between me and the ladder down, with his wife and child's head on the opposite side meeting mine in the middle. Boxed in, there was no getting down to pee until everyone else was up in the morning, so I tried not to dream of pristine glacial streams. At breakfast, snoring man finds me, not to apologise for keeping me and everyone else in the dorm up all night, but to ask if his son can have his refuge slippers back that'd I'd accidentally put on in the dark, despite there being dozens of other identical pairs lying around that he could have used.

The Dutch von Trapps, on the other hand, having slept soundly in their own room, were gleefully up, packed, and ready to descend with what I imagined was a rendition of 'So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye' carried on the wind and fading out as they disappeared into sunlight and mountains sprinkled with saccharin.

[Note to self: to avoid the appearance of misanthropy best to wait till after a good night's sleep before writing notes, or think of a few of my favourite things 😇]

Adventures of an anorak ....

My metamorphosis into an anorak continues ... took the long way to Shimla just so I could spend 5.5 hours on The Himalayan Queen, a narrow gauge railway covering 96km, 102 tunnels, 988 bridges including multi-storey viaducts, and 917 curves up to 48 degrees. Reaching 2075m, with gradients of 1 in 25, it was completed in 1903. Unfortunately the government is now building a new road below it, creating swathes of eroded mountain sides slipping away into the valley below, threatening to take houses, other roads and the rail line with it. The current solution is to spray patches of bare rock with concrete, and to position men with bags of tools at strategic points to patch things up along the way.

 

The fallibility of using the past for future navigational choices ...

It’s an illusion of age that things from the past are imagined in increased proportions; like going back to your primary school and realising how small it actually is when your memory is of a really big place. On the other hand, when it comes to mountains, it seems to be inverse proportions that remain, as my memories of Pic du Canigou (2,784m) was of a much smaller ascent than it actually turned out to be when facing it again ten years later. Admittedly, on my first encounter I was going down with just a small day bag. My recollections may also have been influenced by the guide books that all described it as an ‘easy’ ascent (although perhaps not in bad weather), and the occasional gîte/refuge guardian who may have climbed it once or twice, reassuring me it was ‘trés facile’.

I was still in two minds when I reached a crossroads and was faced with the choice of the shorter, steeper, Le Chimnée, or the longer official GR10 route. I stood there for 10 minutes debating with myself which way to go as cloud descended and it looked like rain, but just as I was about to continue ahead, Mimi and Michel, two lovely French hikers in their 70s I’d been tagging along the trail from Goulier, caught up with me and turned right. I followed, thinking something like, 'I once got down it, and Mimi and Michel are like ... 70 ... so how hard can going up be'. 

We emerged above the cloud and continued up the valley towards steep, long lacets of moraine and rocky passage. Leaving Mimi and Michel trailing, 1000m dissolved into a couple of hours and I was at the base of 200ft of near vertical rock face.

In hindsight, I should have relied on Google rather than my memory as Le Chimnée is in fact a Grade 2 scramble, defined by the British Mountaineering Council as a point where the line between scrambling and rock climbing becomes ‘blurred, and the use of protection becomes more advisable’. Grade 2 scrambles usually include sections where a rope is a good idea if you’re not feeling too confident. I had no rope, and my confidence had ebbed away with age, particularly following the Italian misadventure. The foul vegetarian dinner that I’d paid a supplement of €3 for the night before had already violently exited and my stomach was gurgling. My period started. I needed to pee. I was carrying a full pack that restricted movement. But faced with no choice, I was going up. 

It helped that it was a weekend and there were numerous agile runners (yes, people run up and over Pic du Canigou for fun), and other hikers clambering around me to provide encouragement. So it was little ledge to little ledge, tiny foothold to tiny handhold, metre by metre apart, steeper and steeper, for I do not know how long (time, like memories of height, was getting out of proportion), until the last three metres of straight up.

Knackered and at the very edge of my comfort zone, I perched on a jutting rock, letting some runners descend, before the last narrow passage to the top where a group of Catalans waited for me to clear the chute and generally cheer me on. One last haul and I was by the cross marking the point that I recalled from years ago, bearing the flags and hopes of Catalans that their country will one day be independent of Spain. 

A definitive edge remained in focus but beyond that clouds rose and fell, along with the chatter of day trippers. The sun and blue sky, the outlines of valleys and crests, appeared and vanished. A step further, the abyss. I could see the sea again knowing it was only five days until I would put my toes in it. 

Slow and steady, first Michel and then Mimi, half my size with twice my pack making me feel like a complete sook, appeared over the threshold and joined me for sandwiches. Quietness descended, with a slightly disturbing thought murmuring in the back reaches of my mind: ‘how the feck did I get down it the first time!'

L'Ariege sauvage

You know you’re in a remote part of the world when you can’t get any phone signal … for days. L’Ariége has the reputation for being the most difficult section of the Pyrénées: there are fewer gîtes, fewer towns for resupply, fewer people about, and longer, steeper ascents and descents to walk over each day. But the reality is not quite as fierce as pre-departure wild imaginings may lead you to believe. The walking can be hard going but is more than compensated for by the spectacular, by the sense of having an entire mountain range to yourself, by attempts to market the area more and make the trails clearer, and the hospitality in some truly stunning gîtes.

The ‘hard going’ is evident in days of anything from three to seven hours of climbing, with the usual knee breaking descents on the other side. Fortunately, they love a lacet in l'Ariége and I lost count of how many I must have walked up and down. Not that I’m complaining, but I was feeling a bit seasick after an hour or so of tight turns on the descent from Col de l’Arech.

The weather can add to the ‘hard going’ no matter what part of the world but this was the first time I had to re-route a section as the evening thunder storm rolled in and stayed. The next day the weather would not settle and the mountains were invisible in torrential rain and mist. It took several days to get some sunshine back as the valley’s slowly cleared and the leaden sky sucked up wisps of cloud.

But on the side of the ‘spectacular’, after the rain the rivers and waterfalls were in full throttle. This section of the GR10 passes from high pastures to woods and ravines, and later the pines and granite cirques of karst country. It also contains some near perfect traverses of varying length: from the twenty minutes it takes to walk along the side of the valley from the Mines de Bentaillou (1870m) to Col de la Catauère (1706m); the last hour through forest along an old aquaduct into Marc; the dappled mule track above a roaring ravine from Pas de la Core (1385m) to the hamlet of Esbints (810m), tucked into the hillside in the forest; or the three hours from the Barrage de l’etang d’Izourt (1647m) to Goulier (1110m).

L’etang d’Izourt, an artificial blue behind a grey barrage, is trapped by 270 degrees of high peaks. It is stunning. But the traverse from this lake is back in the ‘hard going’ category. It is not flagged in the Topoguide as difficult but it should be … in big red capital letters. The trail is in bad repair as the path is little used now the gîte in Goulier is closed (due to reopen in October 2017). At times it disappeared into heather clinging onto steep slopes, at others times it became a rock scramble around cliff edges. It is totally exposed with a 500m to 700m drop to the valley floor. With few secure places to stop and take the pack off I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I’d like to but did remember to look back occasionally at the clouds and light working against each other over the mountains (with thanks to Seamus Heaney for the imagery).

Turning the nose of the spur and descending to Goulier I finally found someone to point me in the direction of the path down to Auzat: an ugly village of powerlines, pipes and abandonment. All through l’Ariege are ruined orries, cabins and hamlets, abandoned in France’s rural exodus towards the industrial revolution. Auzat is dead. Even the bus is long gone and I had to catch a taxi to Tarrascon sur Ariege (30km away) to make my train. It’s a sad place to leave the mountains but also a marker of how isolated l’Ariege can feel.

‘Solitude’, if that is what you’re after, is a strong feature of this section of the GR10. Previous blogs have highlighted my Greta Garbo-like desire to be alone when out walking and l'Ariége is as close as it’s come to the Pyrenees being all mine. As with the traverse from d’etang d’Izourt, from Artigue to Fos I was the only soul on the mountain all day apart from a troop of isards who grazed warily but without running as I ambled by. Perhaps because it is more isolated there was more wildlife present than previous years, including birds, foxes, snakes, and something akin to a pine martin or stout that popped up from time to time.

The sense of solitude extended to several ‘install yourself’ gites where you make yourself at home, have a cup of tea and wait for your hosts to eventually show up to cook dinner. Twice I was the only person in the gîte, sleeping the sleep of a single person: one eye and ear always half open. Interestingly, most of the single people I ran into were women wild camping along the trail: a moment of recognition that required no translation. 

It is always ‘hard going’ to manage the desire for solitude with other people’s desire to interrupt it to talk about their dietary requirements and the pain in their knees, but while Mz Austen may suggest that once names have been exchanged ‘there’s no escaping the acquaintance now’, I beg to differ. I resolutely refuse to give in to any attempt at attachment (not counting requests for help obviously), and always add in a couple of short days or a random rest day to lose the overly attached.

Still, some sections of l'Ariege were quite busy, related to attempts by the local tourist industry to boost numbers to the region. PassAran, for example, is a new sportive hike between France and Spain following parts of the GR10. It looks tough but has become very popular, especially with the Spanish, helping to keep the gîtes and refuges on the course in business. There are obvious signs of improving the paths on this particular section, with better signage, for example, and the three young men trimming the trail with whipper snippers above Maison du Valier. Of course the down side is overcrowding and perhaps people taking to the trail without figuring out that it’s not the middle of a city. How the young men got their float tyres, deck chairs, £20 pop up tents and sound system up to l’etang d’Ayes (a solid hike up from the parking bays to 1694m) is a mystery at once impressive and annoying.

Refuge de l’etang d’Araing was also busy with walkers, fishermen, climbers, feral shepherds and a man who seemed to have run there (which in fact he had as I discovered when I ran into him the next day for a chat – he was spending his weekend running around this section of the mountains with just the slight problem that he had forgotten exactly where he had left his car in comparison to where he thought he was on the map). I noticed that everyone at my table (I’m the only woman out of ten) was wearing a GPS watch – about £3000 in watches alone – all of which started beeping at 6.30am the next morning.

This sense of parts of the region being spruced up seemed to affect the gîtes along the way as well, some of which are the best I’ve ever stayed in for cheap comfort and superb food. Maison du Valier, for example, insisted on guests using their fresh sheets, and the hostess spoke French so deliberately that I could understand everything! Similarly, Village de Vacances de Marc has clean sheets and a buffet where I was instructed to push the chicken to the side of my plate and eat as much of the rest of the paella as I wanted.

There seemed to be a competition along the trail to see who could make the best picnic lunch. Marcel from Fos is up there with four pieces of fruit, the ubiquitous bread and cheese, a cereal bar and last night’s left over goat’s cheese crostini. But Village de Vacances de Marc gets the prize: two hunks of break; a chunk of cheese; two boiled eggs, already peeled; a whole tomato; apple AND nectarine; mayonnaise tubes; and TWO packets of crisps.

All other meals were consistently a tour de force of local cuisine for ridiculous prices. At Artigues, it was truite bio, tarte de myrtille, rosé de table and kick arse views of the mountains. The serious comfort food of tarteflette (without the lardons for the veggies) of Gîte Presbytère in Aulus les Bains made me institute a Montelbano (no talking) rule on the other English speaker at the table (I literally said to another human being that I needed to concentrate on my potatoes). Auberge des deux rivières offered a three course gourmet dinner and the smell of fresh pain au chocolat in the morning. The restaurant was all wood, stone and stuffed animal heads. It was one of those evenings when the manager, Robert, who is barman, waiter, maitre d’, and translator, effortlessly switching between English, French, and Dutch (he’s Belgium), wanted to proudly surprise me with a starter that turned out to be turkey stomach confited in duck fat (I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was vegetarian). The chef arrived with my ‘surprise’ salad, dressed in an apron over his running shorts, while the old sheep dog did a circuit of tables looking for handouts. Everything came from ‘up the road’ and tasted better than anything I paid £200 for at Le Gavroche.

But the farm gîtes of Esbints and Rouze were my favourites. Esbints was a collective of cats, dogs, chickens and two lovely young farmers who run sheep for meat as well as produce vegetables, fruit, jams and sorbets. The dogs spent most of their time chasing the chickens and fighting for attention with the cat that goes off stalking phantoms. It is a low-tech farm in keeping with the self-sufficient atmosphere of the region. Our host carried loads of straw on his back like a Nepali, from the field to the barn. Everything we ate was from the farm and I get daal! Oh joy. Not cheese or eggs, but real daal. The French tried it but preferred their mouton. The guardians, as in other gîtes in l’Ariege, joined their guests at the table and over dinner the discussion turned to farm life and bergers. I have started to understand how respected they are in this region for the job they do. 

At Gîte de Rouze I was greeted by a troop of staring goats standing in the middle of the lane, who then spookily surrounded me, wanting a scratch behind the ear, and then followed me all the way to the gîte door. The patou appeared to check me out but just wanted a scratch behind the ear as well (note: never scratch a patou behind the ear in the wild). The garden was full of vegetables and a dairy that makes 20 types of cheese. Our dinner was entirely from the farm: bread, baby goat (chevrette) for the carnivores, butter, milk, cheese, yoghurt, vegetables, jam and sorbet from Esbints. The fire was lit, there was a big jug of red wine and talk turned to the local protests over re-wilding bears, including something said about people who live in cities and are vegetarian (I decided discretion was the better part of valour and held off announcing that I think re-wilding is a good idea). In the morning our breakfast bread was warm! Seriously, someone got up at 5am to make bread for us. They left our bills stapled to our picnic bags and asked that we put the money in the unlocked cash box by the door.

The one exception to the exceptional hospitality was Refuge de Bassies. The spectacular setting at the foot of a circle of granite peaks did not make up for being told I had to buy my own toilet paper. The heating couldn’t be turned on because the heater didn’t work so at night it was every layer on plus four blankets (which was probably a bit excessive as I had to shed thermals and two blankets during the night). There were no lights in the dorms or vestibule and in the morning the main dining room lights didn’t come on till 0800. Although this may be related to their solar power it didn’t make for a cheery establishment. I did get a room to myself though.

 Notes to self:

• Icebreaker really is the best. After seven hours of ascent, sweating in 32 degrees of heat, yes, I’m going to sleep in it and wear it the next day.
• Gortex really is better. I’ve worn a Berghaus brand wet weather jacket for years along with gortex pants for really wet days. They were both severely tested in a Pyrénéen storm this year: six hours of walking in rain ranging in intensity from a shower to sustained torrential downpour. The results: legs completely dry but the top was very damp and cold. I’m now going gortex all the way.
• Embarrassingly, I somehow always manage to be as slow on the descent as the ascent, so after watching a young woman with a full pack gracefully descend a boulder field I decided I can do better by sucking in the stomach, tucking the butt under and leaning back into my sac à dos. It feels odd, but it seems to work. I'm open to other suggestions.

A fortnight of cheese sandwich lunch stops

Day 1: With view towards Bagnères de Luchon (1230m).


Day 2: Pic de Bacanère (2193m).


Day 3: Carrefour d'Uls (1820m).


Day 4: From Gîte d'Eylie en Haut (990m).


Day 5: Cabane de Bessett (1494m), looking back at what has already been climbed and descended in the morning.


Day 6: Between Col d'Auédole and Pas de la Core (1550m ish).


Day 7: Auberge des Deux Rivières (541m).


Day 8: Soggy cheese sandwich in lashing rain with zero visibility, Col de Pause (1527m).


Day 9: Salle de manger, Gîte Saint Lizier d'Ustou (740m).


Day 10: Passerelle d'Ars (1485m).


Day 11: Col de Bassiès (1933m).


Day 12: Former aqueduct, above Marc (1010m).


Day 13: Barrage de l'Etang d'Izourt (1647m).

Brexit, and other things lost in translation

It was inevitable on this year’s meanderings through the Pyrénées that Brexit would be le sujet du jour once the locals found out I lived in London (not that I ever admit at first to living in Britain but always start off by stating my Australianness, pre-empting any hostility that seems to have remained between the two countries since about the 12^th century).

'Pourquoi?’

Good question. And my response in Frenglish went something like this:

‘Parce que pleusiers raisons.

Une: le premier ministre David Cameron et son enemmi, Boris Johnson, sont narcissistes.

Deux: le pays est divisée. Dans le Nord, les peuples sont plus pauvres parceque de la deindustralisation, la mondialisation et le chomage. Dans le Sud-est, les peuples sont plus riches et ils n’ont aucun soin pour le Nord. Le Nord levée son doigt dans le ciel vers le Sud-est.

Trois: le democratie fecking ne marche pas.

I’m not sure it was the best explanation. It became even trickier when some Spanish asked ‘pourque?’ as I speak no Spanish and they spoke no English so we drew maps on the serviette in between eating pasta and gateau basque.

Language becomes tangled at the frontier, crossing over and back, ignoring Westphalian borders and imaginary nation-states, exemplifying why Europe as a cultural entity (not the EU as an economic project) is worth fighting for. Walk anti-clockwise around Pic du Midi d’Ossau and at some point bonjour becomes hola and then back to bonjour again. The refuge gardes generally speak at least four languages (French, Spanish, English and German). At communal tables people extend patience and grace to let me practice my atrocious French, and to converse with German French, Swiss French, Southern and Eastern French accents (even other French people had trouble following the latter so he switched to English).

There is a recognisable expression on someone’s face when they don’t understand (furrowed brow; head tilt; eye squint in concentration) and alternative words, sentence structures, hand gestures are used to keep the conversation going. The non-English nor French speaking Spanish men at les Viellettes were determined that we would have a conversation even if it was in pigeon, piecing together whatever language we could to include everyone in the debate. I’m always amazed at how few verbs we actually need to make ourselves understood. 

There are occasionally questions though that I will never have an answer for because I couldn’t think of the words fast enough to ask them before my protagonists had passed, like:

• Why were two young people taking their goats with them on a hike over Col de Riou?
• At my picnic spot above Luz Saint-Sauveur, where did the tall woman go and why were 20 goats following her?
• And how did the nude hikers I passed on the way to Bagnères de Luchon prevent their backpacks rubbing the skin?

The ‘strange’ invokes a necessary interpretation of cultural practice with its inherent risk of getting it wrong. Whether the cheese on the dinner table is for the vegetarian pasta only or for the veal ragout eaters as well is lost in translation. We share. More cheese is brought (there is always room for more cheese at least).

It’s not that anyone is immune to making the odd cultural stereotype. The French refuse to accept that lardons are not vegetables, but laughed at my joke, only made in French, that the lovely German group I was tagging had ‘put their towels down first’ in all the gîtes I had wanted to stay in meaning I was forced to stay elsewhere. And how do you know when you’re in a town with middle class English tourists? There’s no hummus left in the supermarket.

The Germans are loud and chatty over dinner (always getting their beer before finding their beds, while I’m always finding my bed and showering before even thinking of a beer) but share their vegetarian food with me and are in bed and asleep by 9pm. However, they also get up at 6.30am and, resplendent in undies and overhanging beer belly, turn on the main light, deciding everyone else in the room is getting up then as well. The French are not impressed. Viva la difference.

Navigating our differences can be exhausting, alienating, destabilising, using up precious reserves of cognitive and physical energy to manage the dissonance of someone else’s arrangement of consonants, values and comportment. And yes I understand I will make a twat out of myself by getting verbs and pronouns and tenses confused and yes there will be times when I will avoid all contact with another different human being because I just can’t consciously think about what I need to do to be understood anymore. But it will pass, and I will remember the joy of comprehending what someone else is saying, and I will give thanks for a stranger’s patience in trying to understand me. 

Things I would not be without in the mountains

• Voltarol and tea tree oil (no self respecting Australian travels without the latter and my knees no longer respect me and require the former).
• Wool clothing, from bra to socks (even in a heatwave and even though you will need to mortgage your London home in order to buy it).
• A can of tuna, crackers, cheese, and trail mix (NEVER leave home without emergency rations).
• Knitting (for those short days when your gîte is in the middle of a cow field you will thank me that you learned to knit).
• A book (NEVER equate sacrificing a book with saving weight – there are much less important things you can lose instead).
• Floss and toothbrush cover (while all other forms of hygiene practices may become questionable, NEVER forget to clean your teeth).
• Tupperware lunch box (for all sorts of purposes you haven’t even thought of yet).
• Craghopper towel (worth ignoring its obvious alien origins in return for its enormous lightweight hydrophilic capacity).
• Batons/poles (you cannot carry 12-18kg of extra weight up and, more importantly, down mountains without looking after your knees – it will save you on voltarol in the long run).
• Eyebrown tweezers, nail scissors and file (there is no excuse for becoming completely feral).
• Gusseted trek pants: 

Now I may have fallen fashion victim in the purchase of my latest trek pants. They have no gusset (and let’s not even mention the muffin top they create). I have always just assumed that every trek pant ever made had a gusset so I didn’t check when I bought them. I mean, why, North Face, would you make trek pants without a gusset!?! Surely the makers of trek pants understand for what purposes their pants are going to be put, even by a woman. Or perhaps, sadly, they do just assume that a woman will put her trek pants on for a wander to the park and back.

The stretchy fabric of modern tech pants may be more flattering around the butt but if it doesn’t come with a gusset leave it alone. Those of us with hips and gluts know that no matter how stretchy, if you’re taking a big step in any direction without a gusset the crotch is just going to ride up and you may very well find yourself having to delicately adjust your knickers while balancing on a rocky descent, poles in one hand, other hand manoeuvring under the backpack, and hoping no-one else is about to appear on the trail any time soon because you’re going to have to keep doing this until you get to some level ground which is the only type of ground that gusset-less trek pants are good for. ALWAYS buy trek pants with a gusset.

Reflections on time, Tour du Pic du Midi d'Ossau, 21 August 2016

In my picnic bag today I discovered a piece of Madaleine cake. Now it could be considered pretentious at this point to use it as a segue into reflections on time but I have to note that I can now spend hours doing nothing when just a few days ago I had no time to spare.

This can have serious consequences, for example, falling asleep in the sun beside a mountain lake with bare legs that soon crisp nicely, adding blisters to the welts gained from whatever bug I was sharing a bed with last night. But overall life doesn’t get any better than having nothing to do: sitting on a shaded terrace on a hot afternoon, reading a book with a cup of tea interspersed with listening to cow bells and crickets, waiting for my gîte host to arrive and freshly prepare my dinner (she left a nice note saying to ‘install yourself’ until her arrival). Perhaps lashing out with some knitting or playing with the local dog, but returning to the deck chair eventually to do nothing but watch light play on clouds, adjusting the green of the lake or the blue of the mountain range as it folds in on itself.

I have always wondered how the bergers fare being up in their huts with no-one but their dogs and sheep or cows for six months of the year.  But I suspect I could be a good shepherd.

On losing big things and the importance of the small

Pic du Midi d’Ossau is rather large at 2884m in height, isolated from the rest of the range and at times visible from Pau, some 55km away.  So you’d think it would be a difficult thing to lose. Similarly, Lac Gentau, the size of a couple of football pitches that tucks in front of the Pic, and Refuge d’Ayous on its shoreline, the size of a Victorian terrace. Difficult to lose you’d think.

But in a Pyrenéen cloud all landmarks further than a few metres distance disappear into the grey mist and I spent an hour walking in rain soaked circles trying to locate them. I find two other lost French souls and we finally stumbled on the refuge when it loomed within spitting distance.

It is eerie, not to mention difficult, to navigate when walking in the clouds. Occasionally a person emerges from the gloom but otherwise all is silence apart from a cow-bell, a peeping bird, or water moving somewhere in the distance.

A mountain, a lake, and a refuge are not the only things I am capable of losing when out walking.  I lose the desire to speak: following in the words of Borges, ‘don’t talk unless you can improve on silence’, I see no point in vocalising small talk in a mighty landscape.

But while this may appear to border on the misanthropic on my part, small acts of grace and kindness can still always be received. Half an hour to the top of Hourquette d’Arre (2465m), in 30 + degrees of heat, after five hours with no shade and a massive ascent traversing a slope where the trail had been removed by a landslide leaving me with nothing but trust in my boots not to slide in the same direction on an incline of ‘I’m not looking down’ proportions, hitting the last litre of water in celebration as the lacets start to level out but finding a final ascent of scree is required, with legs starting to buckle, I find a single piece of nougat left in the remnants of my picnic bag. All I needed to get me home. Bless you Madame Vignau ...