Upcoming Pyrenees Pilgrimage event on Thursday, May 12, 2010 – http://www.takeaclass.org/store/index.php?main_page=product_class_info&products_id=493
This adult education center is near Dupont Circle in downtown Washington DC. There will be Basque food, wine tasting and discussion. Meet other travelers!
Cauterets
Anne Lister, a self-assured 19th century English woman with relentless energy and an inheritance, made mountaineering history here. In 1838, she was the first non-local person to climb Vignemale, the second highest peak in the Pyrénées. Lister inherited the income from her family’s farms in England and could afford to hire guides to organize expeditions. Of course the local guides had scaled these mountains regularly and probably their daughters, sisters and wives with them.
Vignemale in the Pyrenees Mts.
Anne Lister decided to try mountain climbing after a walking vacation in Switzerland in 1827. By 1830, she had climbed a few peaks in the Pyrénées Mountains and in 1838, returned to the Southwest for more mountaineering. She was hoping to tackle a mountain not yet conquered by an amateur climber.
Local shepherds and hunters regularly hiked these mountains, and once the foreigners with heavy purses arrived looking for mountain adventures, the shepherds were scouting new routes up the daunting peaks. One guide, whom Anne had hired during previous journeys in the Pyrénées, told her about a route up Vignemale, the crown of the Pyrénées rising behind Cauterets.
Local mountain guides, Henri Cazaux and Bernard Guillembet climbed the 3,298 meters of Grand Vignemale in 1837 via the Ossoue Glacier. They fell in a large crevasse, found their way across a glacier for a free-form descent into the Rio Ara side of the mountain. This circuitous southern route was used by Anne Lister to make the first ascent by a visiting amateur climber.
Though it was August, Anne prepared for cold weather, always wise in high altitudes. Like me, she wore layers of clothing. Unlike me, her garments were capes and petticoats, not pants and fleece jackets. The guides brought along crampons for crossing ice. With her guides, Lister left Cauterets before dawn on August 7, 1838 and pausing only for brief rest stops, the group reached the summit of Vignemale by 1 p.m. They wrote their names on paper enclosed in a bottle left at the summit. That should have been undisputable proof of the accomplishment.
But the next day, Lister’s lead guide escorted Joseph Napoleon Ney, known as the 2nd Prince de La Moskowa and the eldest son of Napoleon’s trusted military general Marshal Michel Ney who was given the title Prince de La Moskowa for leadership during the Napoleonic Wars, to Vignemale’s summit. The guide let the Prince think he was the first amateur climber to reach the top. When Anne discovered the guide’s deception, she refused to pay him until he rectified the matter. The guide admitted to Joseph Ney that he’d lied and signed a certificate asserting Anne had conquered Vignemale first. The proof was the bottle with the signatures and statements by the other guides.
Climbing Vignemale was a point of honor for Anne, but her achievement faded from public notice. Nearly a century later, when women mountaineers were looking for role models, Anne’s diaries were published, revealing the details of her intriguing and adventurous life. I don’t exactly consider her a role model because she had an independent income while I work to support myself. Lister spent a great deal of her time pursuing high-level social contacts, again, not my modus operandi. But I liked the idea that the first recorded non-local to summit Vignemale was made by a woman. And that was one reason for staying near Vignemale; another was the breathtaking scenery and the opportunity to make my own much more modest hikes.
Pilgrimage Paths in the Pyrenees, 1648
In 1648 the Camino Francés de Santiano de Compostela was an extensive web of paths across France through the Pyrenees and westward along northern Spain to Santiago. I’ve walked the southern French path which passes through St Jean Pied de Port, Ostabat, Oloron, St Bertrand de Comminges and other outposts.
This excerpt from Pyrenees Pilgrimage describes entering Ostabat at dusk with no place to stay.
~~~
Steady on my way, onward through darkening twilight, I found the pilgrim church at Ostabat. There was a time, back in 1350 when twenty or more hostels provided shelter for pilgrims. Visitors would first stop by the church, give thanks for their safe passage and seek a place to bed down for the night. But Ostabat’s chapel doors were locked. A group of men smoked and drank a pastis on a nearby bar terrace. I asked them about the route to the farm at Arhansus where I’d arranged a room for the night. Smirking slightly –how could they not, confronted by a sweating middle-aged American women stooped under a pack, so alien from their gender divided culture: women toiling at home, men relaxing in public — they waved me further along the GR-65 path, toward the two -lane paved road heading south.
Ostabat behind me, I soldiered onward towards the farm, which Madam of the farmstead had told me during our phone call lay a couple of kilometers past the village of Arhansus. Suddenly, I was aware of a car trolling behind me. A grizzled guy in a white work-van rolled down the window and asked if I wanted a lift. “Arhansus is ten kilometers more.” Then, he pointed to the ridge in the distance, saying, “That’s the farm you’re looking for, way over there. You’ll never get there by nightfall.” Was he taunting me, I wondered? “No, thanks, I don’t need a ride,” I told him and hitched my pack higher on my shoulders. He wasn’t really menacing, I decided, as he drove off and I walked onward. Surely, he was just trying to be helpful.
During dinner at Etchegoyhen farm, the other guests, a quartet of conservative middle class travelers on a driving tour, launched a quasi-fascist commentary on what was wrong with France (the immigrants) and how to fix France (kick the immigrants out). The host egged them on and if the stuffed heads of wild animals that adorned the walls were any indication, he was a card carrying member of the French equivalent of the National Rifle Association.
~~~
Excerpt from chapter 3, Pyrenees Pilgrimage by L Peat O’Neil, ©2010
Prospecting in the Pyrenees? Here’s the geology map to plot your search.
If you are planning on hiking in France, the best topo maps are from IGN.
The book, Pyrenees Pilgrimage, illustrated with sketches and watercolors from the journey is now available through Amazon.com.
~~~
Excerpt from Pyrenees Pilgrimage….
This particular Sunday was a day of patrimony in France and many historic buildings would be open to the public without charge. My promenade to St. Etienne de Baigorry followed an orange blazed trail down hill from Urdos. Waiting for the chateau to open, I sketched the mountains with a lead pencil, my mental voice repeating instructions culled from Corcoran art classes. Dark recedes, light advances,” Leslie Exton would say. She was the head of the painting and drawing department and over the years, I took many classes with her. “Shade gradually, blend the tones. Remember your distinct tone values.” It was working. My drawing ability had improved.
Basque surfin’ safari. Plan your vacation at this friendly travel site Read more about other Basque surfing opportunities
Try this Basque recipe for fava beans. Preparing favas is labor intensive, but the taste of these beans is worth the effort. To the left, shelled parboiled fava beans (the yellow beans in the glass bowl) are ready for cooking. The brown husks in the stainless steel bowl are ready for composting.
The Corbières is a large wine appellation in France, so the region is apportioned into 11 smaller units, called terroirs.
Read more about wine and food in the Pyrenees region in Pyrenees Pilgrimage.
Excursions focused on Cathar country have become a booming industry in South West France. When I first lived in Toulouse during 1982, travel brochures focused on the indigo growers rather than the heretics persecuted during the Pope’s Albigensian Crusade. Twenty years later, the roadsides bristle with brown historical markers pointing the way to the next Cathar castle. I was shocked to see brochures for Disneyland-style theme parks depicting the violence and brutality of the era.
I suppose the Cathars are a natural fit for the blood-lust culture of my own century. The Cathars did not die prettily. Those who remained after the inquisition, torture and imprisonment were burned alive en masse. Fire and mayhem ushered their demise and lit the way to their paradise. We’ve heard all the official excuses to murder people for their beliefs that government and religion can dish out. The 21st c. terrorists follow in a long tradition of imposing fundamentalist persecution through random bloody violence. The all time experts at terrorizing communities reside in the ignominious history of the Catholic Church.
Books about Walking
Written by an editor at Walking magazine, this comprehensive how to guide, takes you from inertia to regular walking. Exceptionally useful book aimed at the beginning walker or occasional exerciser.
An out of shape British advertising executive and his French wife hoist rucksacks and walk from Gruissan-Plage near Narbonne to Capbreton north of Bayonne, a distance of 553 km. Their route takes them mostly along country roads through farm villages. It’s hot, dusty but they slake their thirst with lots of wine.
A woman artist walks alone through the Pyrenees Piedmont from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and copes with a broken wrist and encounters with wild boars. Recipes and culinary lore included. Illustrated with maps, photos and drawings.
Account of a foot trek in rural Spain originally published in 1928. An adept prose stylist, the young Pritchett isn’t above accepting a lift now and then in his progress from Badajoz to Leon. He’s poor, but richer than the people he bunks down and eats with in a Spain still steeped in suspicion for outsiders.
The voyage is a paddling excursion along the Sambre and Oise Rivers in Belgium and Northern France. The travels are about walking with a donkey through central and southern France. His fragility and easy going voice make RLS an endearing companion.
Published in 1967, this account of a camping trek through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River involves prodigious logistics for food and water drops. Animals and Fletcher’s imagination are the only companions on this hike through geologic time.
A masochist, but a funny one, British adventurer Snow walked from the antipodes of South America through the continent northwards to cross the Panama Canal, his line of demarcation. Never accepting a ride, marching at a furious pace burdened by heavy gear and always low on water, Snow was lucky to survive. His mighty will drove him on. The photographs of his feet during the painful weeks of his non-stop walk will put you off hiking forever.
British traveler sets off to tour various regions of France on foot. He’s interested in people, customs and history and tells unusual lore in a cheerful voice. Most of the walks are suitable for long weekends.
The controversial American modernist poet toured France on foot during the 1920s in search of traces of the Troubadours.
Follow the Pyrenees Pilgrimage route (the black line) that I walked from Hendaye on the Atlantic to the Mediterranean just north of Perpignan, a city known for its photojournalism festival.
|
