Pyrenees

The Pyrenees runs for 400km stretching from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean coast and offers some of Europe's finest wild environments with immense appeal to walkers seeking an alternative to the Alps. However, this is not the Alps and it would be a mistake to attempt comparisons. These mountains with summits over 3000m are accessible to most hillwalkers with experience in the Lake District or Snowdonia and offer startling contrasts.

On the French side, the mountains fall steeply to the plains; whilst on the Spanish side, the landscape is confused by a series of successive ridges - or sierras, which run in random away from the main crest to subside in the badlands of the Ebro basin. To the west the Basque country receives heavy, moisture-laden winds from the Atlantic, whilst in the eastern sector there is a Mediterranean climate with low rainfall in winter and hot dry summers.

This diverse landscape offers tremendous variety of features with forests of beech, pine and oak in the west contrasting with vineyards and orchards that abound on the sun-baked plateaux of Catalonia. Our Pyrenees holidays are based between these two extremes, in the High Pyrenees, which offer all the features of an alpine lanscape with jagged snow-capped peaks, glaciers, deep trench-like canyons and hundreds of glistening mountain tarns.

Bordered by Pic d'Anie (2504m) in the west and the Carlit massif north east of Andorra, the High Pyrenees contains three National Parks (one in France / two in Spain), two large nature reserves - one on either side of the border, and 129 principal 3000m peaks, 67 secondary summits and 82 ridge projections. For the walker wishing to visit the principal peaks, the three highest are all on the Spanish side: Pico de Aneto (3404m), Pico de Posets (3375m) and Monte Perdido (3355m).