Lescun

After gathering some provisions for the road, we checked out from Hotel Mur and blew out of Jaca around noon and headed for the border just 20 km north. The actual border is crossed on the midst of a many-kilometer long tunnel of recent construction. Goodness only knows the perilous drive it would be over the pass.

The terrain on either side of us could only be described as steep. On either side if the road rose the walls of the valley high and steep above us. The rock is primarily sedimentary, but in the process of being raised up as mountains, a lot of it got turned sideways. As a result, many of the slopes are sliced with fins and ridges of slightly more resilient stuff. The slopes are alternately covered with sturdy and tall trees broken up with grassy meadow: except it all seems to be at improbably steep angles.

We drove up the very twisty and steep side road up to Lescun, France: our base of operations for the next week. This is a tiny village nestled in a crook of the valley, surrounded on all sides by the mountains, except for those sides hemmed in by the precipitous drop!

It was too early to check into our rental house, so after a quick look around at the verdant hillsides in the lovely sunlight, we headed on to Oloron Ste. Marie, the next sizable town. The purpose of this trip was to hit a grocery store for provisions for the next few days: most everywhere will be closed tomorrow.

Then, as the rain began to fall and the cloud deck descend, we returned to Lescun and unloaded into our rental house. This is the view from the kitchen window:

After a quick walk back into town to get some TP for the house, Mark and I continued up the road, to where it turns into the French trans-Pyrenean hiking trail - the GR10 - and on for a few hundred yards, from where you can get this view if the town: