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Great day today (Monday) – a full on, proper day in the mountains. We left the Refugio and Stinky Pete at around 8am and headed up into the fresh mountain air.

After an hour or so, we rounded the corrie and far away still, could see the first glinting of the Refugio Balau. This is an iconic milestone along the GR11 – a fantastic location for a Bothy. It still took an hour or so to reach it though – and then time for our second breakfast. (Need to keep those boys fed !)

Then down first before a steep (very) climb up to the col – loose scree slopes and boulder fields – which is where we crossed over the border into Andorra. (Another big milestone 😎)

At this point, the boys were quite excited as they had got a 4G signal (!), so we left them up there for a few minutes on the basis they would soon catch us up on the descent. This traversed along the side of the mountain initially over big boulder fields and quite tricky in places.

Views were spectacular all day and no thunderstorms forming so clear and fine – the boys don’t even believe this is a regular thing here in the Pyrenees..!

Unbeknown to us at this point, we had taken the GR11.1 variant – so only when we got to near the bottom did we realise when the expected Refugi de Compedrosa turned out to be the Refugi del Pla de l’Estany😉. (All tracks lead down to Arinsal from here so no worries and we made it down to the hotel in about 7.5 hours.)

And another good thing – this is the first (and probably last), time we walked further than Brian suggests in the guide book ! All tired and sore though this evening – the 1800m descent at the end of the long day finished us off.