It reins. And there is a snow up in the mountains. We leave Cauterets at 9am by foot and go to Lac d’Ilheou. We go up by the hillside through the woods then by the pasture. Then by the old road up to the lake. We are there just after the 12pm. Cold wind blows – we got wet and we freeze (me in particular because I wear shorts) thus we go back down. The sun shows up occasionally but mostly it rains. Still the snow is all around.
We had the lesson that our clothes are not warm enough for the sudden winter (the locals tell that it snows rarelly in September in Pyrenees – but this does not make the weather warmer. We hurry to buy warmer clothes.
It’s foggy. We take the track from Cauterets to Lac d’Estom. The track goes up the hillside. It’s dump and cloudy. We go by the mountain stream Gave de Loutor and pass some cows and horses. We are up at the lake about the noon – the lake is almost invisible, it is covered by the fog.
We have a snack on the top. The fog goes away meantime and we can see both the lake and the mountains around. When descending we see that the couple of cows and goats we have seen when ascending are in fact a part of a large herds. We proceed down to the Loutor waterfall and Raillerre. The clouds accumulate again.
We buy hiking boots for Ilze. The sales-woman is an ex professional sky-runner – she shows how to tie up the boots (put on the boots, knock-knock heelpiece two times against the floor, then tighten the ropes that way and this way). Sales-woman says that tomorrow the snow will be at the height of 1500m. The same we heard on the news in the evening. So – in Pyrenees the snow falls at the certain height 🙂
We get up at seven and take a look through the studio window at the mountains – no clouds, sunny. Means – this should be a perfect day for Breche de Roland. We drive to the Gavernie village, then forward to the pass Col de Tentes. At 9:40am we start our track to Breche de Roland. The track follows an old unused (scattered by of rocks) road. Then the path starts that goes by the hillside to the Refuge de Roland. There we see a marmot – he does not object much that we take some shots. Later on the tracks goes steeply up by the torrent – chains ar installed and have to be used.
When reaching the refuge we can see already a giant gap in the mountains. The legend tells that the gap is cut out by the knight Roland. The gap is 100m deep and 40m wide! We proceed to the gap over the glacier and then up by the rocky track. We are there at 12:20. France behind, Spain ahead, high cliffs left and right, the sun above. Stunning!
Next stop is Gavernie. When inside the town we see a lonely donkey by the road side. I stop the car and go out to socialize with it. When coming back I hear a donkey shout. The donkey follows me with apparent intention to punish me for not treating him. I am not inclined to discuss this with him so I close the doors and we drive on.
We go through the village to the famous Cirque de Gavarnie. The mountain ridge forms something similar to circus indeed. There is a waterfall that starts from the very top of the circus and apart from that the water falls from the top by the numerous tiny streams across all of the circus. While we proceed to the giant wall dark clouds accumulate above the circus. Now it has walls and a roof as well. Looks really impressive – Ilze hurries to take shots.
Today we go to the pass Col d’Ilheu. It’s foggy. No sightseeing 🙁 When back to the car we settle down to the table near parking place to have a lunch. It appears though that we are not the only ones desiring to snack. The local horse comes to the table and grabs our lunch with an obvious intention to eat it. After a short struggle our lunch is ours again – but we decide to be on the safe side and to retreat.
We drive to the pass Col d’Aubisque. It is foggy – as higher we drive as fog is getting thicker. We park a car on the pass and move on to the summit Soum de Grum. We follow the path – the fog is so thick we can see only a couple of meters ahead. Suddenly the horse appears from the fog – scary. We get through to the summit but one can see a little around. We have to retreat to our car. Downhill I drive mostly on the second gear and with fog lights on. Fog is so thick that the only thing one can see is the white stripe on the middle of the road. I follow the line and very slowly we manage to get down and out of the fog.
Next we drive through Cauterets to a nearby Raillere village. There a beautiful track starts – Chemin de Cascades or Waterfall track. It is an hour and a half hike uphill by the torrent full of small waterfalls. Some of them really nice. The weather becomes damper – something it feels like raining, sometimes not 🙂 The clothes get wet nevertheless. The track leads us to the famous Pont d’Espagne or Spanish bridge. There is a parking place for 1200 cars – tells about the popularity of this place. We look around and take some photos, then get back to our car.
We drive further to Cauterets – a town situated 9000m above see level. here we stay in a studio. It costs Euro190 per week, very friendly offer indeed. When settled in we go out to see the town. It rains a little but still we see that Cauterets is pretty and clean (as everything we have seen in Pyrenees).
