Having never heard of it prior to our arrival here, the Cirque du Gavarnie seems to be the main event for visiting tourists. Purely by luck, we've had fantastic views of it as we've been rock climbing in the area over the last week.
Even during yesterday's low cloud, we had great views from above the height of the main waterfall.
However, before we leave this valley, we thought that we ought to hike it like the normal folk do to get the full experience. It only takes about an hour to walk into the base of the Cirque, so decided to have a look in before driving away.
Even though it was cloudy, it was still impressive to be stood below the 1000m high cliffs and watch the waterfalls. There's no doubt though that we both felt we'd had better views while climbing, although this might just be due to the fact that the overall feeling is different when you are sharing it with crowds of tourists.
We got some teasing glimpses of the mountains at the top of the trail. It might have been mid-week and cloudy, but there was still a steady stream of tourists coming to have a look and take a photo.
At the end of the trail is the very old 'Hotel du Cirque'. We decided to embrace the tourist vibe and nestled ourselves into a table on the end of the terrace and treated our selves to tea and an omelette while watching the view.
We spent the night in the quirky little town of Pierrefitte-Nestalas, which is lower down the valley as the weather closed in at the end of the day. A last minute deal got us into the very grand 'Hotel du France' where we watched a bit of Le Tour du France on a TV, before Clare did some Masters work online. It was opened in 1903 and the woodwork was all original and superb - they don't make 'em like that anymore do they Dad!
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