At Hendaye on the Atlantic. Did I know what I was getting into…? I’m back at my desk after hiking the length of the Pyrenees, from Atlantic to Mediterranean: just under 800 km, with 51,000 metres of elevation gain and descent, in 35 days. I wanted to do this high traverse as a sort of farewell-to-Europe after 15 years living on the continent, six of them in Malta and the rest in...
Mt. Canigou (2,785 metres) It was time to leave coastal Leucate for a new base on a hill above the town of Prades in the Pyrénées-Orientales. The looming presence of Mt. Canigou (2,785 metres) doesn’t just dominate the landscape of this region. It is the most celebrated mountain in the Catalan Pyrenees thanks to a poem by Jacint Verdaguer, the melancholy Catholic priest who walked these...
Matthew Carr The Pyrenees is one of the great European landscapes. It cuts across the mouth of the Iberian peninsula, forming the border between France and Spain. It’s been a place of beauty and of terror; a passage for refugees, dissidents and resistance fighters; and the cradle of both religious heresy and religious pilgrimage. This fascinating region is too often overshadowed by the...