Across the Pyrenees on red wine and ibuprofen

w3w : ///deepen.punctuating.drumbeat

So we have had a great couple of days with Mike, Isobel, Anuik and Tess – off route from the GR11 at their small holding in Ortafa, just over the French border. (We can thoroughly recommend their Gites if anyone is interested!)

Really good to do something a bit different from walking !

We celebrated Neil’s birthday in style as well – pizzas and apple pie. (Just for the record and not complaining obviously 🙄 but my birthday a few days earlier was spent in rain, thunder and lightning….)

We’re now at the Bassagoda park camping grounds and we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. Annoyingly, the route still seems to be finding lots of ups and downs – we have another 1200m ascent tomorrow, although at least not in one go.

But we are getting close now – the girls are travelling out on Wednesday and all being well, we will finish on Friday so at least we can now see the end in sight, even if we can’t yet see the Mediterranean…

We’ve had a detour into France to see Martin’s mate Mike, his wife Isobel and daughters Anuik and Tess who live just over the border in Ortafa. They have a small holding with goats, chickens, a horse and a fabulous border collie called Malli. The detour enabled us to avoid an unmanned refuge with no water and no food which was welcome. We had a lovely time with them herding the goats and playing with Malli whose energy was boundless. Mike and the girls brought us back into Spain today to Albanya and we set off in the morning to Macanet de Cabrenys.

w3w : ///pinhole.flunking.heathen

What a difference a day makes…

We walked over to Beget today and the countryside has changed dramatically from mountains to more rolling hills.

And the sun is back out again 😎 Very welcome after the bad weather from yesterday – I carried a whole load of still soggy and stinky clothes with me today, we need some laundry doing quick – or at least before the girls come out next week !

So rest day tomorrow – it is beautiful here – and then on Saturday we are deviating off route and going to France to stay with Mike (old school friend) and family for the night.

We rejoin the trail on Sunday for the final push next week – our plan is still to finish on Friday at Cap de Creus…🤞

After yesterday’s horrible day we managed to get everything dry (except my boots) and this morning we set off in beautiful sunshine to Beget. We managed to engineer a short cut which left us with a 4 hour walk (instead of Bryan’s 6 hours 30 min) which was through rolling hills, meadows and woodland. We could have been in a national park at home. I think we have definitely left the mountains behind now and we are looking forward to the final milestone of the Mediterranean in a weeks time. Beget is a picture postcard mountain village with an hotel and a top class restaurant, well worth a visit.

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!)

We were looking forward to the highest point on the GR11 today on our way to Setcases from Nuria. We took the funicular back up to Nuria this morning and set off up the mountain arriving at the Col de Noucreus 2800m at 12:00. Only thing was, we couldn’t see a thing as the cloud had descended and even worse it started to rain and then followed with a full weight rain, hail, thunder and lightning storm. We got absolutely wet through and had to call in at a refuge to warm up and dry off. We still had 3 hours to walk to Setcases but fortunately the path coincided with a road down from a ski centre. I must be the best hitch hiker ever as the first car to pass us stopped and gave us a lift. 👍👍😁😁. This was a blessing because as soon as we got into Setcases the heavens opened again. Pretty grim really!!

w3w ///consented.bedbugs.bliss

Yesterday, we made our way to Planoles from Puigcerdà – which would have been a very boring 8 hour slog along roads and forest tracks, so we followed the very helpful advice from Carla (at the hotel), and took the bus round instead… In part this is also as we have some big ‘Brian’ days in the next set so we need to conserve our energy, particularly for Wednesday.

So today we walked up into the Nuria Gorge and onto Nuria itself. The gorge and the ‘tourist’ path up is all very impressive – but not sure all tourists would enjoy some of the exposed walkways, it took just about 3 hours to climb – and at times felt like walking into Middle Earth !

The clever part of this is our hotel is back here in Queralbs which is at the start of the gorge. Due to a masterpiece of planning (!?), we were able to leave our rucsacs at the hotel and then climb without – still a long way up and still hard – but sooooo much easier !

There is a funicular train that runs up the gorge too so we could catch that down this afternoon and then tomorrow morning, we will take it back up to start our long day from Nuria.

Nuria itself is rather strange – it is mainly a large church based around a statue of Mary, supposedly from 700AD which was lost and then found again after a prophecy. Anyway, it’s a grand set up including big hotel in the middle of nowhere, with no road access and also now a (very) small ski resort.

Today we have found our way to Queralbs and then walked up the mountain to Nuria, which is a bizarre place. Set up by St Giles in 700AD and then added to and rebuilt over the centuries becoming a monastery and ultimately a ski resort (although 2 greens and. a blue hardly constitutes a ski resort unless you are Karen). Messed up with the hotel as it is in Queralbs and not Nuria, but all ends well as a mountain railway meant that we left our packs at the Hostal, walked up and got the train back down. In the morning we are getting the train up to continue onto Setcases where we reach the highest point on the GR11 (2800m)

Great rest day yesterday – expertly planned (!), to coincide with the Festival of the Lake. We don’t really understand the history but it involves throwing an old lady in the lake… ?!

Procession started at 10.30 = 11 ish! – including carnival floats, dancers, bands etc – massive crowds all around as it trailed up to town and the lake.

And then after a siesta, they kind of did it all again – some serious partying going on. We didn’t quite make it to the fireworks which were supposed to start around 11pm (!), as it would be too late and we are now conditioned athletes 😉

Would definitely come back here again though – it’s been a real bonus to see these Fiestas and this was the best yet, (so far anyway!)

w3w ///swig.moistens.ballooned

Supposedly an easy descent stage into Puigcerdà today – and it wasn’t too hard – but it was made a lot more difficult by the lack of any decent waymarkers on the plateau.

There is a whole network of footpaths and cattle tracks around here and instances of 5 path crossings but only 3 being marked gave us a problem – Neil has drafted a letter to the authorities in disgust..

Anyway, we made it here – even if the last 6k was along a main road and the surprising and good news is…. the Fiesta here in town starts tonight !

We are thinking we might even have a beer tonight 🍺🍺😉