Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

This wasn't quite the high mountains run I'd originally envisaged, partly through the timing not working out quite as I'd planned, but still not a bad setting for a run, an out-and-back on a quiet back road from the small town of Benabarre, in the Pyrenees foothills at about 800 metres. As is often the way for runs in mountain country, this was almost all uphill for the first half (although never steep after the first couple of minutes), and almost all down in the second half. The setting was nice but the run was a bit of a struggle, particularly on a steeper climb near the turnaround point, then a somewhat indulgent hotel breakfast caught up with me a bit in a form of a stitch on the downhills. Improved in the last 10 minutes. Brilliantly sunny in a Canberra-in-July way (and with a similar temperature).

It was as well that I hadn't planned to do today's run in the high mountains. Although the carpark (beyond which private vehicles can't go) was at about 1400 metres, at least 800 metres below the snowline, the bottom of the valley is in permanent shade at this time of year and had accumulated enough ice from overnight frosts that it would have been unrunnable without spikes - several times I only just stayed upright on a walk up the valley. Beautiful country though, and quite a diverse mountain range, with rounded Australian-style peaks in places and more classically alpine country in others. This excursion into the national park also provided me with two important bits of information which led to a change of Sunday plans - the walk I'd tentatively considered was higher than I thought it was (2200-2400 metres, and on the snowier north side of the range), and the last few kilometres of the route to get there - the bit that shuttle buses do in summer - was a rough track. Having learned a few things in my early years of driving about the capabilities (or lack thereof) of Fiats on any surface more challenging than the Turin-Rome autostrada, I didn't think the hire company would appreciate that.

My destination at the end of the day was the Val d'Aran, something of a geographic oddity in that it's a valley which drains into France - until a tunnel was built, it was inaccessible from the rest of Spain for several months during winter. As an isolated valley it's also kept its own language (which I believe is related to ancient French, although any linguists reading are welcome to correct this). I didn't expect a lot of English to be spoken in a place where English is the fifth language after Aranese, Catalan, Spanish and French, but managed to get by. It wasn't as much of a backwater as I was expecting an out-of-season-ski-town to be - in fact it was quite lively, although they must do things earlier in the mountains because it was a bit of a novelty to enter a restaurant in Spain which wasn't deserted at 8.30. (That said, I get the impression Tortosa's restaurants aren't heavily patronised at any time of the day or night). If you weren't on the ball on the way here you could get very confused; the valley's main town is Vielha in Aranese, Viella in Catalan and Spanish, but (being a bit more sensitive to linguistic minorities) the Catalans use the Aranese name on their road signs - and at one point the road goes in and out of Catalonia three times in as many kilometres.

While on the subject of language, my red-and-black hat (which I didn't end up using) would have caused even more cross-cultural confusion in the Pyrenees than I suggested a few days ago, because in these parts the fire brigade are responsible for mountain rescue.