Into the wilderness
Although today is Friday, there’s an undeniably Sunday-eveningish feel to it at the moment. After three days feeling pretty relaxed, it’s back to work tomorrow. We’ve managed a few hours by the pool today, but the time has come to start getting stuff ready for the next 10 days.
Most of the preparations have gone well, but there’s been the odd minor irritation. For example, I wouldn’t say €1.65 is a lot of money, but it’s a frustrating amount to have to pay for four fragranced pink toilet rolls, when you’d be quite happy with a single unfragranced white roll. Once again, I can’t help thinking these villages could cater better for walkers.
A few weeks back I was walking with a French guy who lived in the Alps. He told me that, although the Alps are bigger, the Pyrenees are much more of a wilderness - there are fewer trails, fewer villages and fewer people.
The fourth section of the HRP is titled “Eight days through a mountain wilderness” in my guidebook, which rates it as the toughest section. It’s by far the most remote of them, so it may well be that the next blog post is several days away - please don’t assume I’ve been eaten by bears if nothing appears for ten days. Having said that, we do pass the odd hamlet and the Spanish networks have been amazingly good in the mountains, so it may not be too much of a problem, assuming I can convince the iPhone to survive long enough.
I parcelled up my ice-axe and crampons this morning and shipped them back to the UK, so I’m hoping the snow is less of an issue from here on. The theory is that the passes are a few hundred metres lower, we’re nearer the Med, and the snow has had ever more sun, so hopefully we’ll be OK. At the very least I’ll be over 1.5kg lighter, so should be able to skip across any snow like Legolas.
By the way, a brief update for anyone worried about the marmottes after my switch to using shower gel: it turns out that Sanex Zero % is specifically designed to be biodegradeable and environmentally friendly, so the wildlife should be OK. Which is nice.