First step: get to the Pyrenees. From Trier, Germany it was 12 hours driving plus stops, so a total of 13 hours of travel. We left at 7:30 am after a good breakfast; French toast with apple, raisins and cinnamon.
The drive began in the rain, which isn’t too bad, better rain on the drive than rain on the trail.
Covid restrictions are rather strict in France, you are required to have a digital proof of vaccination or a recent covid test to dine in anywhere or do many indoors things. I applied for the digital pass two weeks ago, but haven’t gotten proof of my vaccination yet, the American cards are not accepted (although they are for international travel).
We stopped at a rest stop on the highway (they aren’t kidding when they say toll highway btw, it cost over €110 just in tolls in France!) and gave me trouble trying to get food, they eventually let me get take away. As i was waiting for take away I decided to check my email and by sheer luck I happened to have an email from France with a link to my digital authorization… phew!
As we got close to Lourdes, we drove into a crazy thunderstorm… it was fun. We arrived at 8:30 and everything was closing… I assume covid related, but everything was closed, so we ate a couple things out of our packs and had a wine at the hotel bar before bed, it was a long day.
Day 2: still getting there. We woke up in Lourdes which is near our target end point in Cauterets, France. We drove up to Cauterets and checked out the parking, it looks like there’s parking at the bus station, but there also appeared to be a bus stop right by where the trail actually ended, which was another 15 minutes up the road, so we drove up there… and I mean up – tons of switchbacks. We got to a parking lot and asked the lady at the counter for the ski lift where the bus back to Cauterets was and she said it left from out front at 11 am. 11 was too late and we would have missed our connecting bus, so we drove back to Cauterets and parked there.
From Cauterets we took the 10:45 bus back to Lourdes, which arrived at about 11:45. We bought our train ticket and found a place for a nice sit down lunch, then got the train to St Gaudens at 1:15.
The train got in a little late (2:25 ish), we walked outside and didn’t see a bus stop so we walked back in and asked the lady working at the train station if she knew where to catch the bus to Les. She was confused and suggested we take the train back to Lourdes… which confused us and made us worry that we messed something up. Finally she realized we meant the bus not the train and pulled out a bus schedule and told us the next bus was at 6 something, but I saw on the schedule another one saying 2:35, so I asked about that and while she was thinking I looked outside and there was a bus… We suddenly realized that was our bus (the 2:35) and ran out and caught it just in time.
The bus got to Les on time and we walked around town in about 15 min, so we sat down and had a wine/coffee and looked for hotels in Vielha.
We thought about hiking, but it started raining and the bus to Vielha got there around 5:30, and by the time we got a taxi to the trail it would be at least 6, probably later, and we don’t know how far we have to go before we can camp. So we decided to find a hotel in Vielha. We found a fancy cheese shop and got a small wheel of sheep’s milk cheese, then bought some fruit, wine, a baguette and some fancy Spanish ham from the supermarket and had a picnic. Tomorrow we have a cab picking us up and taking us to the trail at 8:45, and we will finally begin the hike.
