GR107, Chemin des Bonhommes, France/Spain (7 days) - September/October 2012
7 days in the footsteps of the Cathars. This was part 2 of the trail, I had hiked the first part in 2004.
Just like the trekking in Sweden of last year, this was a trip with some sharp edges.
The challenge started right away on the first day. According to 'topoguide' book the 1000m climb and 500m descent should take less than 4 hours.
It took us 8 hours, which meant we weren't able to reach our planned campsite that day.
Which also meant that we couldn't reach our planned destinations the following days either. My guidebook was too old anyway, the route had changed a lot and the few available campsites were closed, except for one.
So we had to improvise from the start. We added an extra day in the beginning, mostly camped in the wild and resigned to the fact that we wouldn't make it all the way to Berga. (but I had already estimated that chance so low that I had left the car at the starting point in Porta instead in Berga).
We didn't see anybody for the first 4 days, and we didn't spend a single euro. Wild camping and free mountain refuges. After that it changed... dramatically...
On day 5 we plunged into the overcrowded town of Baga during a bizarre coincidence of a yearly race and freak weather hitting Spain.
Somebody died of hypothermia on the mountain that we just came down from, and the weather was so bad that we tried to find a hotel. But all 4 hotels in town were booked full because of the race, and we had to camp.
And thank all the gods, Baga had the only open campground that we came across during our entire hike.
But it rained so hard that the tent just gave up. Ironically, if we would have been camping in the wild as the days before, it wouldn't have been such a problem, because then I would have noticed the first leak at once.
But instead, we were enjoying our first hot shower of the week, and we didn't see the water pouring through the roof and overflowing our sleeping mats, clothes and much of our gear.
With everything soaked it was irresponsible to continue, and with a prediction of 4 more days of rain we decided to give up and try to return to the car... but.. the next morning was clear and sunny and our stuff dried quickly. We hauled our packs on our backs again and continued for 2 more glorious days.
Getting back to the car was an adventure in itself. Public transportation is almost non existent and very unreliable. We hitchhiked back, but a problem was that there was hardly any traffic at all in the backcountry.
In the end it took us 2 days to get back, 4 rides, and one short 10 minute train ride across the border back into France.
But the people who gave us those rides went out of their way to help us. Calling people for information, dropping us up at the Baga campsite, Puigcerda train station and the last guy, a tough looking tattood french youngster, gave up part of us lunch break to bring us all the way back to our car.
Stuff like that also happened during the hike. On the sixth day we were given a free meal, and during the torrential rains a woman sponteneously offered to bring us to another town where we could find a hotel.
Perhaps a small glimmer of hope in a sometimes darkish world, there are a lot of nice people out there.