A long and wet day today – but it could have been worse..

The trail climbed out of Nuria and headed towards the French border and the first of three big cols today.

The tops were in the clouds as we climbed so we were hoping the sun would break through but it went the other way and by the time we reached the top, it was pretty thick.

The first col is actually the highest point of the whole GR11 so a good milestone, although it’s certainly not simply down hill from here to the Mediterranean.

(Not many times does the trail actually follow a ridge line so bit annoying to not see anything, it was more like a day out in the highlands..)

Worse to come as the mist turned to rain / hail and then full on storms which were worrying at times, counting between the lightning and thunder as we were still very high with no shelter available. And the thunder rolled around us from all sides.

We made it down to a Refuge, absolutely dripping wet and waited an hour to rest / dry a little. According to the guy there, it was still another 3 hours to go and the prospect of trudging in the rain wasn’t great – but luckily Neil, king of the road hitched us a lift – so we can dry out a bit and regroup for tomorrow, (oh and have a cheeky birthday beer perhaps!)