‘SO, it will be like a DofE “Camping expedition without any of my buddies?” The 15-year-old, laying on his bed in a stone gite at Lescun in a mountain village nestled beneath a cirque glacial, was not enthusiastic about our bivouac. The 15-year-old and his brother, aged 13, would have preferred to stay at the beach where we started our holiday.
Last time my husband and I hiked in the French Pyrenees with our kids, they were only five and three. They barely complained despite walking two days. Back then we had a secret weapon – a donkey called Lazou who carried our packs, and the youngest when he got tired, and proved a great distraction.
Gilles Bergeras will hopefully have the same effect on this trip. He doesn’t speak much English – good French conversation practice for school, I say, to a barrage of eye rolls – but he’s funny and expressive in a way that transcends language.
As he drove up to the starting point of our walk, he threw up his arms and said, “C’est quoi ce bordel!?What’s all this confusion !?”) ” (“What’s this chaos!?”) It’s not remotely busy – we pass six cars at most – but his exasperation with these tiny holiday crowds makes us laugh.
He also gets the measure of the boys quickly, letting the youngest choose our route – he opts for dramatic pointed peaks instead of rolling hills – and giving the eldest more to carry when we divvy up the tents and food supplies for our backpacks, sensing he needs to be slowed down.
The GR10 is a long distance trail that runs from the Mediterranean to Atlantic along the French Pyrenees. We followed the red and white striped markings through a dense forest of mossy boulders.
Next Canicule, or heatwave (increasingly common here due to the climate crisis) won’t hit for a few days, but the air still feels close, even though we’re at altitude – our start point was 1,439m – and we’re glad to be shaded from the sun.
Bivouacking, or overnight camping in the wilderness, is allowed in the Béarn Pyrenees, says Gilles, as long as you camp at least one hour’s hike from parking areas, leave no trace and head off early in the morning. Gilles advises that in high summer, finding water can be difficult. So, he suggests camping near a sheepherd’s hut which has a spring nearby where you can fill your bottles.
Gilles receives a warm welcome from the young shepherds who are grazing sheep here for three month in the summer. We fuss over their friendly dogs. The shepherds let us store our backpacks while we climb a nearby peak.
It is much easier to hike without a pack, because the trail becomes steeper quickly. Pic d’Anie is our goal, a 2,507m (8.225ft), perfect pyramidal peak that resembles the mountain a child would draw. The grass soon gives way to loose slates, angular rocks and spiky rock formations. Only the odd patch with bright violet thistles, and dark purple, remains. Ancolie (columbine) flowers.
Gilles cautions us in certain areas to be cautious. gouffres, Like crevasses on a glacier, chasms or chasms can extend hundreds of meters below the surface. The boys, who are less fit than their parents, have been following him closely all day. They treat the hike as an endurance race and do not pace themselves. Gilles’ suggestion that we stop for lunch is a sign they are starting to lose energy. They will not admit it but I know.
Gilles points out to us two izards (a local goat-antelope species) on a steep ridge. We watch them stop and then make their way down. After four hours of climbing, we are all exhausted when we reach the summit. Haribo is brought out and we enjoy the breathtaking views across the Spanish border to the Atlantic coast.
The descent begins with an upbeat attitude, but when we reach the hut and quench our thirst at the natural spring, the view is breathtaking.
This area has been called the Dolomites of the Pyrenees and it is easy to see why. To our left we see a ridge of rock rising vertically above a forest. To our right are slopes that are rounded with the same mixture of rock and grass as the valley below. The Pic d’Anie is visible in the distance.
We set up our tents, while Gilles gets dinner together – a circular bread, which we tear off in greedy chunks, mountain cheese and ham, followed by a beef stew from a tin for the meat eaters, and lentils and couscous for the veggies.
The night before, we had met a French family who lived near the Alps and always came to the Pyrenees in summer to hike with their 10-year old son. The dad explained to me that it was more wild than the Alps, with fewer tourists. I understand now. This vast valley is all ours, save for the shepherds who are there and the French couple we didn’t see until morning. As Gilles pours the local red wine and golden light floods into our makeshift camping, even the boys look awestruck.
Gilles sings in the morning to waken up the teenagers, or “les ados anglaisAfter a quick breakfast, we pack the tents up and head out. We choose a different path back. This time we cross a series small rivers and rock garden that spread out over the hillside. We eventually rejoin the GR10 where our hike began.
To get a tired teenager to acknowledge that they’ve enjoyed something can be as difficult as getting them smile in pictures. I thought it was a success that my daughter not only wanted lots of pictures, but looked happy in them.
When I asked my eldest son how this compared to his Duke of Edinburgh Expedition, he replied:It is a fact that the simplest way to understand something is by putting it into words. the landscapes were better; my DofE was in East Grinstead … ” But the youngest perhaps best summed up their experience when he said: “At times it felt like homework, but at the end it was like we’d handed it in, and we felt happy and proud.”
An overnight bivouac hike with Gilles Bergeras in the Béarn Pyrenees is €400 A family of four will need to budget approximately $4,000 rando-bike.fr/randonnée. The tours are available all year round, but in the winter you can use snowshoes or touring skis. Sam Haddad is the writer of this newsletter Climate & Board Sports
