Advice on Walking in the Pyrenees

We love the Pyrenees, especially around Cauterets. Get a couple of kilometres out of town and you're properly in the mountains. It's why we returned this year, armed with plans for walk we wanted to do.

And here's where the blog post starts...

Advice online is rubbish, and the signposting is worse. Take, for instance, the walk we did on Friday 22 July. The website says it's 10.71km, taking 2 hours out the outward leg, and 1.5 hours on the return, with an altitude gain of 430 metres with a "bon sentier facile d'access".

I tracked us on a Garmin GPS watch as we did the walk. For starters. the watch recorded a return trip of 11.82km. It took us three hours and 33 minutes to get to the far end, and about the same on the return. We gained 463 metres in altitude, and the path...

Yes, those rocks you can see in the photo below are the path. Every step has to be observed, and woe betide if you're not using walking sticks, because the rocks aren't secure - they all move underfoot. Except for the boulders, which are so big an earthquake couldn't shift them. But they can be quite slippery, so there's no gain.

Then there is the climbing. The photo below is by no means the worst of it. There is no photo of the worst of it because no-one stops, they just keep slogging. Maximum slope my watch recorded was 46%.

You can see by the desirelines in the photo below what most people think of the path. I can understand laying down rocks to save the path from erosion, but when you lay down rocks so rough the only option is to NOT use the path you're rather defeating the purpose.

But you can also see the view that makes it all worthwhile.

I suppose the times given by the website are accurate - if you don't stop to look at the view, take photos, observe the wildlife, take caution not to have to be rescued by helicopter and have trained all your life to be a fell runner. But I do wonder how old the advice on the path is, because it's definitely NOT an easy going path.

Would we do it again?  In a shot! But we would allow twice the time, carry proper walking poles in each hand, and wear boots with excellent ankle support. We would disregard the signposts (most of which point in a vaguely wrong direction) because they only give time to destination, not distance. We would carry snacks, and we would lower our expectations of being back in time for an afternoon beer or catching the last chairlift home.