Backpacks, Boots and Baguettes

I have just finished reading “Backpacks, Boots and Baguettes – Walking in the Pyrenees” by Simon Calder and Mick Webb.  Interesting to read their impressions of the Pyrenees and the little bits of history and culture they add in to their narrative.

They obviously had fun doing the walking and I admire their non-purist philosophy of hitch-hiking or catching taxis and buses when needed in order to get to a better bit of walking. This is definitely what the Pyrenees are all about for me – every hidden part of the mountains and valleys  are in fact inhabited with shepherds, hunters, mushroom and blueberry pickers and interaction with all these various groups is a particular pleasure of hiking in the Pyrenees. What did strike me at the end of the book was the amount of rain that they’d managed to encounter (mainly, I think, because they seemed often to be hiking in May) and it made me think that the “standard” way of tackling the GR10, from Atlantic to Mediterranean, does not make much sense given the prevailing weather at either end of the chain. It rains a lot near the Atlantic, and more in spring than in autumn, and it is dryer near the Mediterranean meaning that at the end of summer the countryside is particularly dry and less attractive. It therefore seems to make more sense to start at the Mediterranean as it is warm enough to swim earlier in the season and you will have a chance of seeing flowers and nice green countryside. You then arrive at the Atlantic later in the season when it is drier over that side and, by the time you arrive it will have warmed up enough to have a swim at Hendaye at the end of your walk. If I ever get the chance to do it I think I’d tackle the eastern end in May-June and the western end in Sept-Oct and leave July-August to the tourists! But if you are doing it in one go I think I’d start in July in Banyuls and finish in August in Hendaye. Then you have a chance of getting the best of everything.