Ascent: 800m
Descent: 800m.
‘Une canicule’ the French call it, and it is all the talk in the Pyrenees. In other words a heat wave. Temperatures into the 40s are to continue this week. As a Swiss couple said to me: “You can’t carry 9 litres of water with you”.
The day started well with stunning vistas as the trail steadily climbed various mountain ridges, my fitness vastly improved. A delicious lunch of fresh mountain trout panfried with butter, garlic and unknown wild herbs. Up another mountain ridge after lunch.
Then the “fun” started with a 700m near vertical drop, this was mountaineering not hiking, 3 points of contact whenever possible. Total concentration, technical, traversing not 1 but 3 recent rockfalls, one slip or trip and it would have been all over red rover. 5 hours in 40 degree heat it took.
This was not pleasant at all. Those who know me well know I suffer anxiety, and I had a panic attack part way down. A sedative was out of the question so I had to sit for 30 minutes and put a lid on it. Character building stuff, perhaps.
And so, broken, I limped into Biddaray after 14 hours of hiking, pitched my tent (sort of) and went to bed with a Valium and an anti inflammatory for dinner.
This will take a day or 2 to recover from.
