Gavarnie – France 2010

The aire at Gavarnie is just north of the town (about 1.5 miles) and is a cracking location. It’s also free with all facilities. If you are lucky enough to wake up there on a clear morning then you will be blessed with amazing views in all directions:

After breakfast, we went down into Gavarnie and took the popular walk up to the Cirque du Gavarnie, a waterfall surrounded by a natural rock amphitheatre, according to our guide book. It isn’t the most impressive waterfall I’ve seen, but the scenery generally is fantastic and it’s a pleasant walk. The walk is about an hour (up to the Cirque) and can be made into a much longer circular route, if you wish and if conditions permit – the path was still blocked with snow past the Cirque, so we had no choice but to turn around and come back the same way.

On that note, I saw, for the first time, the path left by a (small) avalanche. I suppose it isn’t impressive if you’ve seen bigger ones, but I was a little awed by it, especially as high up the mountain, while we were walking back, a couple of mini avalanches took place and I heard the unmistakeable thunderous rumbling noise that they make – here’s a video of one we saw: