The Pyrenees

We're glad we visited the Ebro valley, but after a few days in the area around Zaragoza we were starting to get a bit downhearted.  It's intensely cultivated countryside with very little to see in autumn apart from stubble and sad patches of wilting vegetables.  It's also dry and grey, and the industrial hinterland of Zaragoza sprawls for miles beyond the city.  Central Zaragoza was interesting for a few hours' visit, but most of the features that are more than about thirty years old seem to be associated with the most alien and alienating strand of Spanish Catholicism.

So our hearts were lifted when we headed northwards and upwards into the green space, pure air and clear skies of the Pyrenees.

We've had a good snoop around, trying to see as much as we can before the weather gets too cold or snow closes the passes.  We've had a look at the Ordessa Y Monte Perdido National Park, shopped in crazy Andorra, taken a quick loop through the western edge of Catalonia , over the mountains into Ariege in France, then to Gavarnie in Midi Pyrenees where we've seen the north face of Mont Perdu (the same Monte Perdido that we were admiring from the south a couple of weeks ago).

Our impressions:

	Blimey they're big.  No surprise really, I knew they were big, but they still made an impression.  Mount Snowdon is a little over 1,000 metres tall, and the parks authority can barely keep a rack railway and a cafe operating on the barren summit.  At 1,000 metres here, there are tables on the terrace with views of the peaks looming over you.  If the road goes up over 2,000 metres you might want to check it's not closed by snow.  It's only the 3,000 metre peaks that people really dress up for.
	They're very steep. Exploring the mountains is much easier with walking poles, but there is still a definite tendency towards sore thigh and calf muscles the day after a long hike. Fortunately the views from the top always make the climb worthwhile. I'm so glad that neither of us suffer from vertigo or we would have missed some amazing views.
	They're very obviously growing.  The Iberian peninsular is drifting into the rest of Europe, and the resulting crunch is throwing up this wrinkle of land that is the Pyrenees.  It's happening very quickly, a few centimetres a year (Yawn!).  OK it doesn't sound like much, but it's really obvious that it's happening.  There's a sense of mountains bursting through the earth like mushrooms, with dirt falling off them as they expand.  Stuff is falling  off everywhere; craggy frost shattered peaks are shedding scree, river gorges are choked with boulders and mountain roads have traffic lights that turn red when avalanches cross the road.
	People are much slower than dogs at running up hills – four legs are better than two.
	Snow makes everything look gorgeous and in the Pyrenees is it particularly bright, shiny and clean. It's hard to stop taking photos of snow topped mountains with the sun shining brightly in a clear blue sky (it's even harder to stop when you've located the 'snow' setting on the camera and start getting some decent shots!)
	When we go high up they make a big fuss about the view.  Views are boring.  What's the point in looking at a thing if you can't smell it?
	They're culturally diverse.  For most of human history it's been so hard to get around in this terrain that pockets of distinct culture have been able to survive (most obviously Basque and Catalan).  Every valley has its own cheese of course.  At Gavarnie I knew that Spain was less than 5 kilometres away, but looking up at Mont Perdu it seemed obvious why these folk spoke French and their neighbours spoke Spanish; there was no way they were going to be socialising across that barrier.  Then a national park interpretation  board gave another perspective; until the nineteenth century there was no road from Gavarnie to France either, and people here may well have spoken Spanish and met their Spanish neighbours as often (rarely) as they did people from the rest of France.
	Snow's brilliant for thirty minutes. It's almost as good as the beach; you can dig in it and you can pretend to lose your toy in it and you can put your nose in it.  After thirty minutes it makes hard bits on the fur between your pads and you have to go and stand somewhere where there's no snow like under a tree or like on top of a person.
	Leaving footprints in deep, pure white snow always gives me a thrill, and finding places where the snow is powdery, fresh and nearly comes up to my knees is very exciting. I loved finding animal tracks in the snow too and trying to decide what they were – I'm sure we saw Izard tracks at the Cirque de Gavarnie which was very exciting; wish we'd seen the actual animal though. Basically, snow is fantastic when you don't have to try and drive to work in it!
	It's biologically diverse.  Many of the places we've visited have a broadly familiar looking vegetation; oak, beech, birch etc, but half the obvious plants look completely unfamiliar.  The sky is full of raptors, the woods are full of weird and wonderful mammals (in spite of the efforts of the hunters).  There are various reasons for this; the extreme variations in altitude provide a wider range of habitats, being part of mainland Europe means more species can reach the area.  I knew this, it's not a surprise, but it still made an impression.
	In the snow things hide under the snow.  You can smell them and you can hear them and you can  pounce on them but you can not see them.
	We may have, by chance, picked the very best time to explore the Pyrenees. Any warmer and the uphill climbs would have been unbearable, any colder and we'd have had trouble with the roads and stopping the water in the van's tanks from freezing. We were also completely out of tourist season; too late for the summer visitors and too early for the skiers. That could have been a problem if we'd needed hotels and restaurants, but with a quick stop at a supermarket before heading off to the isolated spots, we had everything we needed in the van. On some days we walked for hours and barely saw another person. Some of the villages were almost completely closed, with rows of gift shops, cafés and even food shops shut up while the owners presumably have a rest before the winter season starts in mid December. Thankfully it also meant we could 'free park' overnight without anyone minding.
	When we go up high I need an extra sleeping bag inside my usual sleeping bag.  It's a good idea that I had that they should buy that for me.
	It's a great place to visit but I don't think I'm tough enough to live there.