Second Pyrenean Blog

'The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast', I quip to my friends Rob and Barbara as we sit on the terrace at their house in Rasquera, Catalunya.

It's day zero. My adventure's about to start. I'm to take the train to Irun on the West Coast, and then to get to Hendaye and the start of the walk. The High Route from the Atlantic to the Med. The tarantulas are larging it again. We drive to the train station. Rob offers me helpful advice about what to do if caught in a thunderstorm up there in the hills. 'Don't shelter in a crevice in the rock', he says, 'It can act like a spark plug'. I swallow, but don't pursue the metaphor. They put me on the local train to Barcelona, where I'm to catch the train to Irun. We have a jubilant parting.  And now I'm alone. It's just me and the 55 litre back pack. The Barcelona-Irun train is full. The guy behind the glass is profoundly helpful, books me a ticket via an obscure route, with a change in the middle. He's smiling all the while. I photo the departure board, to ensure I get off at the right place.

The train is slick, powerful, air conditioned. We speed across seeming desert under bruising skies for hours. I consider the distance. I distract myself with 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles' on   the kindle. I have an hour and a halfs wait at Castel Jon Del Ebro. It's a station in the middle of nowhere. There's no cafe, no bar, no departure board, just a bewildering amount of track and platform. The guy behind the glass this time is profoundly unhelpful. Curses me for not understanding Spanish. I wonder off, I sit on the platform, imagine myself in a spaghetti western. I'm Lee Van Cleef. I walk back into the booth, pull the cheroot from between my lips menace the guy as I assure him that the Irun train will stop here. I can't imagine missing this train in this no horse town. Another employee turns up, with a smile as wide as summer. He asks me where I want to go and escourts me across the track to an obscure line, waits with me until the train arrives. We communicate with smiles. I settle back into the kindle, arrive in Irun, after more spaghetti landscape and brooding skies. I wonder why I thought it'd be fun to do this trip alone. I find a pension, buy a couple of beers and a sandwich, wonder about the reality of  Tumbleweed, my imaginary footloose persona. I awake to the sound of trains passing the window. I'm surprised to see that one has 'Hendaye' illuminated in orange on its side. I feel as if the Gods are giving me chances. I'm confident enough to put marmalade on chocolate croissants, against the waiter's better judgement. I tell him that this is how I like them. 'Me gusto esta', I say, presumably fairly incoherently. I shuffle toward the subway train, there's a dusty white van parked opposite. The first three letters of the registration plate are HRP. Now this has to stand for the Haute Route Pyrenees in anyone's lexicon. The happenstance of coincidence and omen accelerate my progress toward the now imminent fulfillment of a dream. I'm in Hendaye. I shuffle around this tourist town in full kit, feeling a little foolish. I follow the guide book to the letter, become almost immediately lost. I ask a guy selling vegetables if he knows the way to an obscure railway underpass toward the outskirts of town. Rather miraculously he understands my worse than school boy French, points me in the right direction. He looks at my bag. We smile. I show im the front cover of the book, 'The High Route, Pyrenees', we look at each other, smile again. I set off, chuckling.

I cross under the M10, have a can of sardines. I look toward the Atlantic, and the big ships nestled against the safety of harbour. I wonder about the next couple of months of my life, alternating between exultation and funk. I follow well marked paths, pour water over my head to cool down, meet a charming guy from Holland, intent on listening to the football match between Spain and Holland in a Spanish bar. I hike on, digressing from the GR11 toward the HRP, as dictated in the bible. The path trickles out, I'm thrashing around in the mist and prickle bushes. Precipitous, edgy, ugly conglomerate looms around me. I curse myself for a fool. The mist clears monentarily, I regain the obvious school boy ridge, with its safe passage down the mountain, shuffle down to the closed hotel that is the first nights stop. I'm  surprised to find my new friend from Holland already there, relaxed against a tree with headphones and a beatific smile. We're delighted to see each other. I settle into a routine over the next few days.

The bleak dirt tracks full of hunters jeeps and quad bikes changes character, slowly transmogrifying via a Christo like sculpture above Pamplona into my imagined heather hollows.

I gain my first glimpse of the high hills themselves around a squat and snowless ski resort at Iratty. A days marching and now I'm amongst them. I'm atop the first 2000 metre peak of the trail, The Pic De Orchy, a pointy mountain writ large like that from a child's picture book. It's as if I'm up with the Gods, looking down on mortality. The world seems to fall away, and I take care where to place the accoutrements of domesticity as I make a cup of mint tea, with extra sugar and exultation.

As scarey as a bagful of Tarantulas

The last few months of my life have seen a steady diminution of my material possessions.

All my lendable stuff has been lent, my stashable stuff stashed, the flat sold.

I'm down to one 55 litre back pack.

I'm staying with friends, on a small olive and apricot farm near Rasquera, Catalunya, Spain.

I'm making the final preparations for the trek.

Tommorow I'll catch the Barcelona train 

to Irun, and from there I'll make my way to Hendaye, the border town between France and Spain on the Atlantic Coast.

From here I'm set to walk the High Route across the Pyrenees.

500 miles from the Atlantic to the Med. The route stays roughly on the central spine of  mountains that separate France and Spain.

There're mountain refuges along the way, and there's also a couple of remote sections, where you have to rely on your wits.

I wonder how I'll cope with the solitude, the navigation, the physicality of it all.

I have a bag of essentials and very few luxuries.

About a week ago, on the way down from the UK, I'd crossed the Pyrenees around Andorra and Ax les Therms in the car. As I reached the top of the pass the mountains wrapped themselves in a vicious storm, and became as scarey as a bagful of tarantulas.

It rattled me at the time,  and last night I dreamt that my bagful of high tech survival kit had turned into the metaphorical tarantulas, gibbering up at me as I attempted to make camp for the night.

I grimace, steel myself, make a final check through the bag.

It's compartmentalized in dry bags. I have 'wardrobe' for sox and a spare T-shirt. I have 'office' for maps, and the luxury kindle, 'hardware' for the Sat nav and solar charger. There's a 'larder' too, a first aid kit, an ultra light weight tent the size of a bottle of coke, a tiny stove, crampons for the higher sections .... And not a tarantula in sight.

It doesn't seem much for 500 miles but it weighs over 15 kg.

But it's ready. I'm ready. I hope I'm ready enough. And if not. Well. I'm coming anyway, like we used to say as kids, when we played 'hide and seek'.

 'Coming, ready or not'.

Writing this, I realise that I've the same overwhelming mixture of sensations, now, as I had then, squashed in the airing cupboard or wherever, and they're taking short cuts between my mind and stomach.

Anticipation, delight, excitment and fear.

A heady combination.

I think back a couple of days. Barbara, my friend from Rasquera and I had been on the coast for lunch, and we'd spotted this sculpture at l'Ametlla de Mar.

Now then, I wonder, if I had legs s long as this, what would I be feeling now?

To be able to walk like the Gods, amongst the Heather Hollows of High Hills, and to take one's rests, with such elegance.

To tackle the mountains with style. That's what I'd like to do. Even if my legs are pint sized, human, and 53 years old to boot.

To tackle the mountIns with style. As my favourite poet, Charles Bukowski might have said; 'That is what I call art'.