Tonight I christen my new birthday sleeping mat from Sally The tent is safely pitched in the garden of Yann Cornic at his gite in Saint Lizier gite in Saint Lizier
Last night I was sharing a room with Michael and Cherie? In the slightly hippy gite at Esbints learning about sheep dogs and farming in the mountains from it’s young owners ( who were about to disappear for the night salsa dancing) whilst his father was stuck, on his own, in a mountain cabin for 90 days looking after the sheep!
I left M&C at 8am to Walk the Tour du Val du Garbet to here, imagine my surprise to bump into them walking into Seix (pronounced Sex). Yep I had nearly walked a circle 🙁 I continued into Seix with them and then found the correct walk! Some shortcut, twas another difficult day.
An even bigger surprise was when trying to negotiate the final bend I was to discover them behind me again 🙂 two pressions later they returned to Seix, by taxi, for the Tour de France tomorrow and I continued my walking here!
Tomorrow I will journey on to Aulus or even Bassies.
Today I recommence my GR10 walk from the Atlantic to The Mediterrean along The Pyrenees. I stopped halfway in Luchon 4 years ago in freezing cloud & very wet! Today is not looking so good either. It should be 11 hours to get to Fos reaching 2193metres above Luchon (650metres).
Now for breakfast….
Evening update!
I arrived in Fos at La Gentilhommiere hotel (run by English folks) at 17.47 having walked 18.2 miles in 7hr 21min plus 3hr 6min of stopped time. Must have done at least 2000m ascent & descent 🙂
Drank all my 2 litres of water!
On Pic de Cabanere (2193m) I managed to glimpse above the clouds the Pyrenees only glacier! Otherwise visibility was horrific – thank goodness the balisage were plentiful on the tops.
One of my dreams has been to live in the winter sun, I really hate to be burning up money just to try and keep myself warm! It seems a lot more economical to live in a climate where the sun keeps you warm! However, I couldn’t live in really hot countries like Dubai etc where you equally have to waste money on AC.
So the challenge is to find somewhere that is sunny but still cool!, reasonably economic to live and with walking and snowboarding close by 🙂
So here I am in Madeira. 32 degrees North of the Equator surrounded by the cool Atlantic ocean, so warm but not hot! Currently its around 20ºC in the sun but cooler in the light wind. As a mega bonus the walking is superb, I’ve spent the last 7 days walking over very varied terrain and still haven’t seen but a fraction of the island.
My return flight from Stansted on Easyjet was £57.93 I’m now staying at the very central (behind The Cathedral) Residencial queimada de baixo which is run by the Chafariz Hotel, the rate I’m paying is €500 for a month (Equivalent to 14 days at their €35 day rate). Which I think is very reasonable; it includes breakfast and a daily clean too. For the 10 days Sally is here they are charging me €50 more 🙂 My evening meal at Cafe do Teatro is about €17 for beer, main, dessert & coffee. Coffee’s in town are about €1and the cakes are delicious.
The hotel has no internet but the municipality have installed wifi points around town so you can get free internet OK. (T-mobile are charging £10 for 50MB on their roaming tariff).
Walking is a dream 🙂 Buses (SAM, Horarios do Funchal & Rodoeste ) to the the walk starts are between €2 and €3. I’m using the Rother walking guide to Madeira. In the past week I’ve completed walks 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 17, 19 & 35 so still 41 more to do in that book! Although some will need taxi’s to get to the starts and a couple I’m probably not capable of doing due to my vertigo 🙁
All my walks I’ve done this last week are on Everytrail with pictures on Picasa.
Two very useful iPhone apps (both based on the Open Street Map project) are OffMaps which stores the OSM map locally on your iPhone and the slightly buggy Mobile City Maps on Madeira by dubbele.com. The OSM map so far has had all the Levadas and walks beautifully mapped and its great to know exactly where you are and in what direction you are facing! Thank goodness for the dxpower WT-1700B power pack on the iPhone.
So far I’ve only found one outdoor shop, O Bordao on Rue Carreira 171 run by the very helpful Joao who sold me a cheap trekking pole! Very useful since Easyjet won’t allow my lovely Leki’s on the plane 🙁
After my last independent trek here in Nepal, I decided to try a trek with a guide especially one who I had just created a website for 🙂
We took of from Pokhara in Buddhi’s brothers taxi to Naudader to start walking the Panchasse Circuit. Buddhi had planned it would take 2 nights and three days.
We set of downhill to start with but soon started our 2500 feet climb to the village at Panchasse village. It was interesting talking to Buddhi especially to contrast relationships 🙂 At 25 his parents decided he should be married. So a young lady was found in another village. Buddhi played no role in this ! He met his future wife only a few days before the wedding and then only for a hour or so. Buddhi in turn was shocked that I had been married and divorced twice !!! What a contrast.
We then started talking about the caste system over here in Nepal, which IMHO cripples mobility and stigmatises people I was appalled that your caste is shown on your government ID so basically its state approved racism. Also if you marry a person of lower caste, then you and your children assume that castes lower status, also certain jobs are reserved for certain castes. What a way to cripple a persons chance in life!
We eventually reached Panchasse after many more discussions on starting & running businesses etc etc all very interesting given the huge difference in costs and rewards eg they pay £25 a month for each childs education. Quite a lot here but nothing compared to The Perse’s £1,000a month!
The ‘Happy Heart hotel’ in Panchasse was truly amazing! Red mud flloors in the bedroom (swept daily so they shine) and a kitchen out of date by a few hundred years (the village has no electric)! All the cooking (and we had a delicious Dal Bhat) is cooked on an open wood fire with no chimney! It was very interesting to see the sisters control the temperature by pulling the sticks in and out of the fire plus an occasional puff down a pipe to get it to flare again. Even more interesting was watching the sisters clean the pans by mixing the wood ash with a little water to make a paste to wipe the pans with!
The next day we were up at 5am to do the trek to see the sunrise on top of Panchasse Hill a nice brisk 1500 foot climb before breakfast. After breakfast we descended steeply down to catch the rickety old bus from Pame back to Pokhara.
A memorable trip (especially meeting one of the founders of Auroville, which is top of my list of places to visit in India -after 40 years in Auroville he has now married one of the sisters) and many thanks to Buddhi my ace Nepalese guide!
PS: We only took 2 days as we are both quite quick walkers 🙂 It’s OK he can go slower he was telling me about a customer he guided for 60days as the guy could only walk an hour or two each day!
The post header is THe Annapurna Range from Panchasse Hill
Here is the walk on Everytrail:- Panchasse trek at EveryTrail
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