ountain villages, a solid day's walk apart, serve as ideal resting places.
This past October two friends and I ventured a traverse of about 50 miles in 5 days of the Mediterranean end of the range, in the Pyrenees Orientales. Ceded by Spain in the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659, the Pyrenees Orientales region of France stretches from the hill-bound hamlet-state of Andorra to Perpignan and the flatlands of France's Mediterranean coast.
Comparatively unvisited, the mountain villages of this Catalan country are where the tricky mother-tongue is spoken, cafes fill with shepherds and farmers and a folk-dance called the sardana is danced. Above these villages are grand aeries equal to, if fewer than, the better-known summits of the central Pyrenees. Yet the region boasts some of the range's best weather and beautiful valleys that shelter such towns as Ceret, headquarters for some of the Cubist contemporaries of Picasso, and Vernet, a languid spa beloved of Kipling.
Our weeklong hike had certain constraints. We did not want to camp or carry heavy packs. We did not want to eat beans cooked on a camp stove. We expected three courses, if not three stars. Yet we proposed a self-guided tour into rough country. Our plan was to follow the eastward course of G.R. 10 through southern France (the trail and its high altitude variants closely track the French-Spanish border). We wanted to attain the region's two highest summits (Carlit and Canigou), cross the fertile valleys of the Cerdagne and explore the French fortresses commanding the approach routes from Spain. Most of all, we wanted to observe the travel dictum of Walt Whitman: ''I loaf and invite my soul.''
With such indulgent expectations and modest packs containing only clean clothes, bad weather gear, first aid kits, a precautionary sleeping bag and other lightweight items, we set off by slow local train from Barcelona. As we entered the Pyrenees through the gentle valleys of the Spanish Cerdagne (Cerdana in Spanish), the dry, hardscrabble country yielded to umber mountains, deep forests, tilled fields and well-kept villages, their Romanesque bell towers framed in the golden corona of a late-afternoon sun.
The train crossed from Spain into France and made its final stop at Latour-de-Carol, close by the foot of the Carol torrent and the looming Carlit massif (according to legend, all named after Charlemagne). In the creeping twilight, the distant peaks appeared only as layered gray shadows. But after taking another train up into the Carol valley, and walking a few miles in the darkness, we discovered - notwithstanding a guidebook's promise of a good small hotel in the town of Porte - only drawn shutters, the dull clang of bells and lowing. As we approached, our flashlights and footsteps startled both shepherds and sheep and caused a spontaneous exodus from a large sheep trailer. We left the village in haste, and in the low esteem of the Porte shepherds.
Back in Latour, the proprietor of the railroad station's small hotel instructed us on climbing routes, trail markings, weather and the availability of lodgings.