Scenic route: Simon Calder gets lost in the Pyrenees

Golf, it is said, is a good walk spoiled. But should you want a good walk comprehensively wrecked, I suggest an easier option: go with my friend Mick. However dazzlingly clear the air may be at 6,000ft; no matter how magnificent the perforations of ancient rock against sky appear; regardless of the fascinating flora and fauna you can encounter on a trek through the French Pyrenees – when adventure degenerates into misadventure, you need someone to blame. And that's where Mick comes in.

We started walking in the mountains together a decade ago, initially to make some radio programmes in places like Panama and Peru. (I have subsequently deduced that I picked up the dubious honour only because, as a hired hand, I was deemed cheap and expendable.)

Now, usually as a consequence of one pint too many on drizzly evenings in south London pubs, we go hiking out of a misplaced sense of fun. On paper (a sheet bearing the faint rings of spilt beer), our latest trip, to the mountains south of Toulouse, looked like the perfect long weekend. In practice, it began badly and went downhill – in an uphill sort of way – thereafter. No prizes for guessing who I hold culpable.

Our starting point was Luchon, a spa town in the Pyrenean foothills. We had last visited the place five years ago, when we began a westbound stretch of the GR10. To make this pedestrian superhighway sound more alluring than the M25, you need to spell it out: Grande Randonnée Dix. France's long-distance walking trail No. 10 is by far the most satisfying of the nation's repertoire, meandering from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. It combines farm tracks, ancient pilgrimage trails, village lanes and even a Napoleonic-era ledge hewn from a cliff face to create arguably the best long walk in Europe, company permitting.

The Alps may score higher in the altitude stakes than the range that separates Spain from France, but the Pyrenees has a winning touch: you can start and end most days in a small town or village that meets most Brits' idealised version of France. Luchon fits that bill. As a spa town it fell on hard times, but is now rejuvenated thanks to the hiking industry. It is an ideal overnight stop, with a boulangerie, a restaurant devoted to good local food and drink, and a cheerful one-star hotel.

La Petite Auberge is a château in miniature, whose façade bursts with colour thanks to a profusion of scarlet geraniums. Unfortunately, we could not discover this until the following morning. British Airways' inability to get from Gatwick to Toulouse on time, combined with a long delay at the hands of French Railways, meant Luchon (and, in particular, the restaurant where we had planned a pre-hike dinner) was slumbering by the time we arrived.

The hotel's patron welcomed us despite the late hour, and after breakfast the following morning presented us with an entertainingly minimalist bill: €60 (£42), all in. Perhaps he felt sorry for me having to share a room with Mick.

A couple of coffees provided the liquid surge we needed for a solid start on Day One. The GR10 is marked for its entire 500-mile course by horizontal bars, white above red, in a precise size and style specified by the French equivalent of the Ramblers' Association. All along the track, individuals are assigned the task of painting these symbols on trees, rocks or telegraph poles – and maintaining them. Evidently, some are more diligent than others. The constant hazard, from Hendaye on the Atlantic to Banyuls on the Med, is that the waymarking is missing from some crucial stretches. So we had brought a map, and Mick had even remembered the compass. Indeed, this small instrument comprised a good part of his luggage: while I struggled beneath a backpack of 20kg – a quarter of my body-mass – Mick's luggage had approximately the volume and weight of a lady's handbag.

The blame game needs at least two players; Mick constantly mocked my insistence on carting un ordinateur – my ancient laptop, plus associated electrical paraphernalia – across the Pyrenees.

Luchon is the end of the railway line, and the start of the hard work. We bickered from the outset, initially about which way to turn upon leaving La Petite Auberge: "0825 depart; 0830 first dead end," reads my log. Both our guesses turned out to be wrong, but the third way put us on course for the day's task: to climb a mile, and descend the same distance to the village of Melles, where we were booked into a chambre d'hôte, the French version of B&B.

We soon eluded the slightly tawdry fringes of Luchon and, half an hour after starting, spotted our first GR10 sign. We strode up the steep zigs and gentler zags of a track. A road made the same journey, but with less appetite for gradient. Our flinty path cut through hawthorns and oaks and ash, and also cut through the lacets (literally "stitches", but meaning hairpin bends), at a good enough pace to overtake a lady cyclist making the climb by road.

The village of Sode – full of tin roofs and patched-up stone – spreads north from one of the hairpins. The GR10, with us on board, abandons the road and took a delicious (ie flat) and grassy arc around a contour of a terraced hill. Poppies bloomed, butterflies fluttered, birds heckled. As we approached the village of Artigue, the random birdsong was augmented by the regimented two-tone tolling of bells calling the faithful to prayer at the tiny church.

A signpost offered at least four ways to leave the village, none of them mentioning the GR10. But enough of the population had congregated for them to reach a majority verdict on our dispute about where we needed to head next: eastward and upward was the prevailing view.

When the administrators of the GR10 are feeling particularly well-disposed, they come up with the odd sign providing more than the reassurance that you are on the right track (though, in our case, possibly heading in the wrong direction). As the bells chimed 11am, the scale of the task ahead confronted us. "Pic de Burat [nearly 7,000ft high] 4H30, Fos 8H30" – with a picture of a set of scales to indicate a shop could be found there. Melles lay an hour beyond even the place where we were predicted to arrive at 7.30pm, assuming all went well. Which, with Mick, is rare indeed. While a humble bumble bee, weight less than one gram, has an amazing sense of direction, Mick and I (combined weight 160kg, not counting my backpack and his handbag) have almost none.

Nevertheless the caffeine was still pumping, and the landscape looked lovely in an almost English way. We sauntered along a chalky farm track that gently climbs through a meadow of daisies, dandelions and clover. White, yellow and mauve competed for spectral domination: no artificial ingredients in this field.

One rare point of agreement was over the need for frequent stops for snacks: Mick, because of his innate lethargy; me, because I seemed to be the one carrying the supplies, and would gladly have done anything to lighten the burden. I produced an apple each.

As Mick started chomping, I dropped my pomme – and watched it accelerate down the chalky track. I gave chase but it eluded me and disappeared. The moral: don't bother following a Golden Delicious down a hill; just hope that someone else appreciates their windfall. Mick duly appointed me con du jour, an honorary title that is awarded daily and approximates to "fool of the day".

We both deserved the title 20 minutes later. Wandering off-piste, we convinced each other that a short-cut uphill would cut off a long loop of track. Instead, it trapped us in a tangle of branches and roots. In addition to the gravity and inertia that usually hold me back, some vicious trees joined in to hamper my progress, snagging the oversized load I was carrying.

When you start ascribing vindictiveness to inanimate objects, it's time to take another look at the map. It made scary reading: besides interesting villages called Ox, His and Alas, there was a mountain location called Hospice de France and a water feature named Cascade d'Enfer ("Falls of Hell"). But after five minutes trying to locate the compass, and the same again seeking to work out where we were, we eventually regained the track.

A simple equation prevails in the Pyrenees: the higher you go, the thinner the vegetation and the more spectacular the views. We climbed through the skeletons of trees felled by strong winds, the panorama expanding with every 3 7 step. Just after 1pm, we reached the top of a 7,200ft mountain – or at least thought we had. Half an hour of trudging beyond the false summit, we reached the real Pic de la Bacanère and stepped into Spain.

For much of its length, the Franco-Spanish border is defined by the highest point along the Pyrenees ridge. The Pic de la Bacanère qualifies. A succession of stone pillars rather than a fence marks the international frontier; the one here is engraved F399E, indicating it is almost the 400th column from the Atlantic.

The morning's privations vanished into the Spanish haze that furled around the distant ridges of rock. This was more than a line on the map: it felt a natural frontier, with Spain stern and formidable, France soft yet mysterious.

High-altitude hiking has plenty of appeal. At the top of the range, gradients tend to be gentler, and views even more rewarding. Being above the tree line is also advantageous because there are no trees to impede the view, your legs or your navigation. At marker post F404E we narrowly – and unusually, correctly – concurred on the right path to take, thereby avoiding an international deviation into Spain.

A few minutes later a gigantic bird with a gold-coloured throat flew directly overhead. A golden eagle, ventured Mick; I like to think it was a lammergeier, the rare bearded vulture that haunts the high Pyrenees. If it was a vulture, it came close to an extra feed. Navigating the flinty frontier felt just like walking on rusty razor blades – appropriate for a knife-edge ridge with a deathly drop to the south. Mick has strong opinions on many things, but apparently not on self-preservation, as he skipped blithely ahead while I crept and cowered.

I survived the straddle along the border, but when the trail started to descend, my legs went into decline in both senses; they seemed even heavier than on the ascent. The path was narrow, steep and twisting, with shrubs constantly nibbling at my ankles, as Mick embarked on yet another fantastical prediction about Crystal Palace's chances in the new season.

Crystal-clear water is rare at these altitudes. Sometimes you happen upon a fresh spring, but the only source we could find was fed from an old pipe; unsurprisingly, it tasted disagreeably metallic. At 3pm we caught our first sight of Fos to the north-east, and beyond it Melles, looking far away and involving what appeared to be a dismayingly steep drop. I diverted my attention to admire the serrated skyline to the south-east, which included a rock formation looking akin to Stephenson's Rocket.

We were performing more like soggy squibs – mainly because we found ourselves in the unusual position of walking down into the clouds. Over the next five hours, a plod regressed to a trudge as we experienced what felt like a prolonged immersion in an Evian spray: great for the complexion, dampening on the spirits. By the time we reached Fos, our hosts – a shepherd and shepherdess – were regarding us as lost sheep. They rescued us, took us home to Melles, fed and sheltered us and even gave us a ride to the end of the track next morning.

For all you need to know about Day Two, I advise you to go to the Hayward Gallery on London's South Bank with someone you don't much like and spend the day inside Antony Gormley's Blind Light cloud installation. The end of what may, from a distance, have resembled a rainbow was at the mining village of Eylie, where the only place to stay for miles was a rudimentary refuge. The good news: Mick had booked us in. The bad news: he had booked for the previous evening. They squeezed us into the cramped sleeping quarters between Parisian lovers and British hikers, and Mick won the con du voyage award outright.

The final day looked soft by comparison, but what was intended to be a robust but relaxed hike degenerated into something much more challenging. Mick and I managed to get even more comprehensively lost than ever, and ended up half stumbling and half sliding through centuries-old mulch down a hillside towards goodness knew what, each cursing the other. Imagine a warm-weather version of Scott's ill-fated Antarctic expedition and you get the idea. Our ordeal turned only when I suggested that we both study the map and independently work out where we were. For once, we agreed, and spent the next hour hauling ourselves out of the mire, having run out of water and realising we had absolutely no back-up plan if one of us had an accident.

By the time we reached a village, Mick was cursing his blisters as well as me. He disappeared into a pharmacy, while I stuck out my thumb to try to hitch a ride to St Girons, the nearest town. When transport eventually arrived in the form of a dilapidated van, the driver communicated forcefully that he had room for only one. Mick appeared, climbed in, and they both drove off. I made do with a good walk.

Traveller's guide

Getting there

Simon Calder and Mick Webb flew from Gatwick to Toulouse on British Airways (0870 850 9850; www.ba. com); easyJet (0871 244 2366; www. easyJet. com) also flies the same route. Toulouse is well served from other UK airports, including Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds/Bradford and Manchester.

From Toulouse to Luchon takes around two hours by rail (slightly longer when the last stretch is by bus, which is likely at most times of day), for a one-way fare of €19.20 (£13.50).

Staying there

La Petite Auberge, Luchon: 00 33 5 61 79 62 00.

Chez Pascale, Melles: 00 33 5 61 79 76 33; if the proprietor is tending to her flock of sheep, try her on the mobile: 00 33 6 23 82 27 80.

Gite d'Etape d'Eylie: 00 33 5 61 96 14 00.

Organised trips

Exodus (0870 240 5550; www.exodus.co.uk) offers a seven-night "Walking in the French Pyrenees" trip, based in La Fenière in the central Pyrenees, from £560 per person. This includes return flights from Gatwick to Toulouse, chalet accommodation with breakfast, meals and transfers. A local payment of €130 (£93) is extra. The trip runs from May to October.

Inntravel (01653 617929; www.inntravel.co.uk) offers a seven-night " Pyrenees to Atlantic" trip from £635. The price includes B&B accommodation, meals and transfers, but not flights. The trip runs until 11 October.

Explore Worldwide (0870 333 4002; www.explore.co.uk) operates a seven-night "On Foot in the Pyrenees" trip which costs from £529, with a local payment of €125 (£89). The price includes B&Bs, transfers and flights from Heathrow to Barcelona. The trip operates from May to September.

More information

Trekking in the Pyrenees by Douglas Streatfeild-James (Trailblazer, £11.99) is an excellent guide. Also, buy a good 1:25,000 map, such as IGN sheet 1947 OT (€9.50/£6.60; www.ign.fr). Be sure to take a compass. And a friend with a sense of direction.

Compare Travel Insurance - 5 day Euro cover from £4.33 and Annual worldwide policies from just £43.08