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About the Author

From bicycle touring to backpacking, watercolour painting to clay modelling, the exploration journal captures my journey through many different interests and travel adventures.

I love to find those out of the way places that whisk you away from the concerns of everyday life. Whether this is by wading through an overgrown river or trying new paint techniques is up to you!

Walking the GR10: Laruns to Cauterets

Walking the GR10: Laruns to Cauterets
A slight detour due to misfortune

After walking up the Aspe valley and over Col du Moine in my last post, we dropped down into the valley to shelter from thunderstorms. The tops of the mountains were quickly shrouded in cloud and so we thought it would be a good opportunity to buy some fresh food and relax.

The following day a local informed us that there was a landslide further along the GR10 route, and so the town on the other side of the landslip was closed for business. This wouldn’t matter other than it would mean carrying five days of food as we were relying on it for buying food.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing and debating how to get on to the next stage of the walk. In the afternoon I walked to the nearby Cascade de Seris.

 

I’ve had an obsession with waterfalls for years and I’m always on the lookout for one to go swimming in. Today was the day I found one! The water was freezing as it’s flowing from snow patches high up in the mountains.

I went in twice, the first time I coped for an entire 30 seconds. The second time I managed to swim around for a few minutes. The secret is to wait until you’re absolutely freezing and then wait a bit more, you go numb and it starts to feel less cold, which also means it time to get out!

We decided to leave the high mountains and walk into the foothills around the landslide. There was a lack of campsites on our route so we stayed in a beautiful rural hotel.

 

It rained heavily all evening and we woke up to a sunny clear day. There wasn’t a cloud in sight so we decided to walk up the next valley to Cauterets. We then have a huge climb of 1718m up to the Ossoue Glacier.

The backpacking trip tour so far:
French Pyrenees – Up the Aspe Valley
French Pyrenees- In the Pyrenean foothills

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