Luz - Siers - Gîte de Saint-Justin
- Distance: 8km
- Duration: (with breaks): 3h 00min
- Elevation gain/loss: 750m/210m
After a dramatic third day, I slept like a baby. Gavarnie and its drama were left behind, today I woke up in Luz, a nearby mountain village, buzzing with summer visitors. If I followed GR10 from Refuge des Granges de Holle, this would be my place to sleep anyway, so I guess I was meant to hike GR10 after all.
Today I’m having an easy day. I need to recover from a few long days in the high Pyrenees and mentally I feel drained. According to the GR10 itinerary, my destination is Bareges village, which is only 12km away. Nice!
As there’s not that much hiking today, I was also extra lazy and left the campsite only around 10:00. Low clouds covered the mountains, maybe there won’t be that much to see either. As I walked through the busy local markets of Luz, looking for the trail, I met another GR10 hiker, who stayed at Refuge des Granges de Holle the same night I did. Apparently, he’s hiking the same way I do, so maybe we’ll see each other later on the trail.
Just before leaving Luz, I noticed some signs in French with such words as ferme, terrain. Interesting… 😄 Soon my beloved red-white trail markings were replaced by yellow markings as if someone meticulously painted over the signs to indicate it’s not GR5 anymore. I continued climbing on this trail for a while but did not feel that confident about what was waiting ahead. As long as I’m not very high, there are many ways of how to get to Bareges anyway. Since the red-white signs did not reappear, I decided to descend to Esterre and from there follow a variante of GR10, a lower valley route to Bareges.
There was a section of road walking, which I would have gladly skipped, as I raced through an unpaved side of a road with cars driving at a speed of at least 70km/h. Not ideal, but hey, it was only 200m. Once on the other side, I climbed up the valley and passed a few villages. In one of them, Sers, I finally saw what the french signs meant – a huge landslide on the other side of the valley. Apparently, it happened last year and it was so strong that numerous buildings in the villages around got seriously damaged. I passed a few of them in Sers.
From Sers, I had a short climb to a viewpoint of the day. Since the clouds lingered, I knew that the views will be limited to the valley. At the viewpoint, I noticed a restaurant and a gîte just below. What caught my attention was a sign that it is possible to camp next to the gîte. It was a beautiful location overlooking the valley and Bareges down below, so why not? Although I planned to camp in Bareges, sleeping with a view sounded very tempting.
Using a fun mix of English-French-body language with the owner of the gîte, I settled my tent in the early afternoon. Although there were more tents, their owners were nowhere to be found, so I spent a leisurely afternoon having the whole terrain to myself. I did some sink laundry, charged all my electronics, and read, read, read. Day 4 – peace & quiet, lovely.
Day 4 tip
- Double-check if the official section between Luz and Bareges is actually available because of the landslide. I spoke to fellow hikers who walked on the side of the landslide and they said that, besides being very steep, the trail seemed to be fine, so maybe the trail was spared. But double-check. My variant is not steep at all, in case you’re looking for a leisurely day.