Angel Orus

We awoke to a familiar feeling, aching limbs. Susana had not slept well. Today we planned to leave Benasque, heading for a small village nearby, Eristes.

From here we would drive to a parking spot ready for our climb of Posets tomorrow. But first; check the weather and reconfirm the route at the tourist office and find a free Wi-Fi. I had accidently published the wrong post and needed to delete it quickly, unfortunately we had already used all our internet allowance for the day.

The tourist office said the weather was looking good, no problem with the route and Wi-Fi was available in the square outside.

We found one of the few open bars for a coffee. Did they also have a Wi-Fi? The waiter was grumpy. ‘It is very slow’, he said. Not sure he fancied us using all his bandwidth for the price of two coffees. Didn’t see many other customers teched up to the eyeballs and ready to blog though!

With all our IT spread across the small table, I removed the post. The Wi-Fi was fast. In an instant we had connected two mobiles and two laptops. Podcasts were being downloaded onto Susana’s iPhone, I was updating my operating system, windows updates were downloading on my laptop and Susana was surfing the web. Now, if that isn’t taking advantage I don’t know what is. We made the coffee last forty-five minutes, also abused the toilet facilities and with refreshed IT, we left.

We left to top up Dora with fuel and water, at the local garage. Susana’s brother, Roberto, says the average cost of diesel in Spain is €1.35, we think he pays too much! We have yet to pay more than €1.25. Maybe the fact that we are so close to France ensures the local garages compete with the French prices. We headed off to Eristes.

After a bit of searching we found a sign pointing out the way to the Angel Orus refugio. The parking should be along this route. We ventured up the road. It was very narrow. It was very steep. Dora was having trouble. Then in places the tarmac was badly potholed. She bounced around. We continued on tentatively.

At the next corner her tires were slipping, a burning rubber smell wafted into the cab. We still continued. We got to a small mirador, a viewpoint overlooking the valley, the road had now disappeared with just an unpaved track left in its place. This was no good for Dora, we would have to retreat and rethink. We undertook a three point turn which ended up being  a thirty-three point turn and went back to the village. It was particularly annoying because the tourist office had said it was quite negotiable. Half way down and we stopped to look over the village, perhaps an alternative road wound its way up the valley. It looked promising.

We went to ask advise from the owner of the local bar and restaurant. Like the owner of the garage she was South American, really amiable and helpful. ‘No, it was a terrible road’, she told us ‘Often the farmer has to rescue the cars with his tractor’. She could not understand why the office had sent us up this track. We were quite discouraged.

What to do. We had set our hearts on the three highest peaks, now it was slipping away from us. it was three o’clock. Half way through lunch and we started discussing a late afternoon, early evening walk to the refugio. We had wanted to sleep at the car park to prevent another restless sleep in the hut. A quick call to the refuge: did they have space, yes. How long did it take from the village, three hours. Could you find the way by torchlight, yes. The plan was back on.

Dora has never been prepared so quickly, lunch cleaned away, blinds down, secured and locked. The blog posts we were writing would have to wait another day to be finished.

We were off, it was four o’clock and we would be walking in darkness for an hour. The village was very much like Guisando.

And it even had its usual centennial aged woman lurking the streets. She nearly didn’t make 101 as to her shock, we swept past, poles clacking along the cobbles.

The valley road glanced from above turned out to be a small path winding its way up along the river.

We were quickly high above the village, once again heading into the mountains. Although we were lower down the valley, the hut was at a higher altitude, so the push to the summit should be easier, or so we hoped. We hadn’t anticipated this walk from the village to the refuge, instead expecting a full days rest after our exertions on Pico Aneto. Oh well, our legs were holding up surprisingly well.

The walk was mainly through a mixed forest and in a fairly deep valley. We began to lose light earlier than expected.

Occasionally, however, the trees opened up, displaying their lovely autumn colour. The path we were on joined the road where we had abandoned our attempt to get to the car park with Dora. We continued up on foot, we were right, she wouldn’t have made it.

The steepening valley gave rise to numerous waterfalls thundering through the rocks below.

We felt like we were making good time, we hoped to improve on the three hours. When we got to the car park after 45 minutes we were pleased but then got differing information from two signs; one saying one and a half hours to Refugio Angel Orus, the other two hours. They were two meters apart, very confusing.

You would think the eurocrats at the EU could do something useful and come up with an European standard for times it takes to walk up a mountain. I think it should be a range;  to take in the fastest and the slowest. You would then learn where you were on the scale and it wouldn’t matter whether it was flat or steep, all you would have to do would be to vary your time to take into account conditions.

We were expecting to slow down as it started to get dark, but was it 1.5 or 2 hours away?

But while we had light we remained enthralled by the river and the trees.

Just above the car park and we encountered a large waterfall, well beyond the scale of anything we had found in the Brecon Beacons! The UK is a different scale, much smaller.

Was it the fading light that made the colours even more vivid?

If Dulux or Titanlux could put that in a tin!

It is amazing how the eyes can adjust to ever lower light levels. All the time we were not slipping about on the rocks we kept our torches in our pockets. Gradually colour left us as the dusky gloom descended. A fork in the path, we saw a marker and followed it. We had second thoughts, the torch showed us it was a cross rather than an arrow. Nearly a costly mistake in the dark. It was time to illuminated the path! We put on our head torches.

Soon the dim lights of the refugio could be seen above us. Typical, we could see our objective, but the markers had disappeared. We searched around in the gloom eventually finding our way our of the forest. We climbed up onto the mountainside where the refuge sat.

It was a shock to enter Angel Orus, the tranquillity of the forest being replaced by the loud chatter of excited Spanish walkers. We had forgotten that it was Friday. Many had left work early to try for the summit tomorrow. The refuge was busy. These walkers do not do cooking, preferring to rely on the food of the refuge. We had bought our own, so settled in to make cous cous by Ainsley Harriet, one of the remnants left over from the UK. We also had some Hake. It was gonna be a good meal.

GDR