George & Mostyn - Walking the GR10

Monday, 9th June 2008

George:We left to collect Mostyn at 8:30 and, despite delays due to road works in Bédarieux, arrived in Béziers in time to catch the train to Toulouse.

To pass the time between trains, we had a coffee then a meal followed by a beer in Toulouse. We caught the train to Bayonne, which arrived more or less on time. The weather deteriorated a little as we went west and it was cloudy with a few spots of rain when we got to Bayonne. A coach had replaced the train to Bidderay but we arrived safely and walked up the hill to the Hotel Barberaenea where we had our evening meal.

Mostyn:Departed Boubals at 9.35 am and encountered first setback in Bedarieux, where there was an unexpected diversion which delayed the journey to Beziers. We arrived at the station with 5 minutes to spare. Second setback was when we discovered that the seats we had booked on the TGV were occupied, so we found two spare seats and, because they were not our seats, we were moved a couple of times.

When we arrived in Toulouse we had a snack at an Indian Restaurant before catching our train to Bayonne. At Bayonne we took a bus to Bidarray. It stopped at every small railway station en route to pick up more passengers. At Bidarray we had our first climb - 100m to the Hotel. Despite my finely tuned "kit list" I discovered that I had forgotten my false teeth. I guessed that I would just have to sharpen my gums and get on with it.

Tuesday, 10th June 2008

George:We had breakfast at the hotel before leaving for the day's walk. We bought some snacks at the small shop in Bidarray then began the long climb to the ridge and the Pic d'Iparla. The skies were cloudy with cloud covering the tops of the hills. It was also very humid which made the climb a sweaty toil but it wasn't too difficult. However, the walk along the ridge was quite hard with many ups and downs and stony underfoot conditions alternating with greasy, peaty footing. I stumbled and fell at one point suffering a few grazes and banging my chest.

We took a lunch stop at Pic de Toutoulie watching vultures flying below us. The views, when the cloud parted, were superb.

After walking down to the col d'Arietta we decided to take the alternative path down to Urdos as the cloud was still covering the ridge. The walk down was long and tedious and we were unable to find the path shown on the map so walked through the village. We stopped for a beer at a hotel/bar and while there, it began to rain heavily with thunder. We put on our wet weather gear but the rain stopped quite soon. The rest of the journey to St-Etienne de Baigorry was along roads.

The Gîte was clean and comfortable with good showers. We walked into the village for our evening meal and had an "Assiette Randonneur" in a Brasserie. Bacon, egg, tomato, peppers, chips and Basque cheese - excellent!

Mostyn:Had breakfast at the hotel, after which we bought bread, cheese and apples at the local grocery store.. The ascent to Pic d'Iparla was very steep and took 3.5 hours. The weather was very cloudy and at the summit we were walking in the clouds so we had little opportunity to catch sight of the magnificent views from the ridge, from which there was a vertical drop on one side. The path followed the edge of the ridge.

As this was our first day we decided to set a regime of regular stops for water because even walking on the flat our 17 kg rucksacks caused a considerable amount of perspiration.

We stopped at an assay point for our lunch, after which we started the long descent, which was easy at first, but then became much steeper. When we reached Col d'Harrieta there was so much cloud that it seemed pointless climbing up to the Pic Buztanzelhay (200 m) so we decided to take the path to Urdos. This was reasonable at first, but we were unable to find the path to Saint Etienne, which meant that we had to take the main road for 3.5 km.

We found the Gite d'Etape easily and payed a young man who came to the door. He told us that the weather forecast for the next few days was rain, rain and more rain.

At the gite we had a shower, washed our socks and changed into our dry clothes. The nearest place to eat was 1km away. When we arrived in the main square there were a number of cafes/restaurants. We chose one, ordered a drink and started looking at the menu, only to be told that they were not serving meals that day.

We sat drinking our beers and watching football on the TV. A little later a waiter came to us and said that they would serve us a meal. During the next hour 6 or 8 other people came in and had meals.

Back at the gite we met a fellow walker, called Wofgang. I think he was on the Compostella trail. We went to bed at 9.00 pm ready for an early morning start.