i recently got back from my first through hike i did the gr11 it's a 500 mile hike
across spain from the atlantic to the mediterranean but in this video i'm
answering some questions that came through to me on instagram just general things you
need to know if you're thinking about doing the gr11 or similar through hikes let's get into it
so the first question was did you go through the hrp as well or did you only stick to the gr11 well
for those who don't know the hort root pyrenees the hrp is another thru hike that goes along
the same lines from the mediterranean but it's the hort route meaning that it stays quite high
through the mountains the difference with that is the gr11 goes down into every single valley and
then over a high pass so it's a lot of down and a lot of up there is certain sections where the hrp
and the jira 11 combined so obviously i did those and i really had a solid think about
skipping over to the hrp just to avoid a couple of those big deep valleys but i ended up staying on
the gr11 the whole time what frustrated you most about the trail design easily the most frustrating
thing about the trail design is that it goes from the very bottom of the valley to the higher cold
every single day i'm knowing that you're at the high pass and that you've got to go straight back
down to the bottom of the belly again it plays on you after you know doing that 20 or 30 times you
start to get very mentally tired but i knew that going into this trip i knew it was going to be
difficult in terms of the scent and descent but because i was mentally prepared for that i think
it was okay the next question was a cliche one best moments and worst moments i think the best
moment for me was the first day like getting down to the atlantic having the whole trip ahead of me
not really knowing what's coming that that sense of excitement that i felt
and just the joy that i had in that moment that i had i've got like a month to just walk that was
the best moment for me apart from that i really enjoyed camping at refugio goris on top of this
beautiful kind of plateau sitting above odessa canyon and watching the sunset and cooking dinner
that was probably one of the best moments as well in terms of the worst moments there were very few
i guess i'd just have to say that david just rained a lot incessantly and i got quite wet
that wasn't too enjoyable that was also a really really tough long day i think that
was like a 40 kilometer a day or something so that one was pretty rough but outside of that
very few bad moments i had a question from colin who asks when do aches and pains become caused to
stop on such a through height i'm not sure if he means stop permanently or just stop for a short
amount of time that's a tough question to ask but i think the important thing to understand there
is the the line which is often very fine between discomfort and pain
and that is why training helps training helps you understand that discomfort pain line a little bit
more information around this would be you know sharp piercing pain if you're
experiencing that in the bottom of your feet you've probably got plantar fasciitis
you need to manage that along the way and i've got the mountain proof ankles routine
i think you should definitely check that out if you're worried about plantar fasciitis and
understanding how to treat that it's something that can be very common if you have pain in your
knees more than likely you'll need to again do some trial maintenance and i've got a whole video
where i actually helped my buddy kareem he had some pretty severe knee pain and we managed to fix
that on trail so again go and check that video out i'll put it in the link in the description when
it's done and the final thing i'll say about this is if the pain is cumulatively getting worse like
day after day after day and then it's you haven't found a way to manage that or get around that pain
and you're constantly like dosing yourself with more and more painkillers like kareem was then
i think that that's a good time to to really weigh up your options and consider the pros and cons and
make the decision from there but i guess that's a tough question and it's going to be different for
each situation and every person but i hope that helps colin tracy asks are you stiff and sore
after your hike if so what exercises did you do yeah towards the end of the those 30 days i was
starting to get pretty sore if you think about a through hike like a standard training month i like
to structure my training months or my training phases up to six weeks and after that six weeks
i would have a deload week or a rest week so that is your chance for the body to actually recover
to rebuild that uh broken muscle to rebuild your system and to make you stronger again now i did
30 days in a row which were all pretty demanding i had no zero days and so i had no real chance
for my body to to adapt and recover so towards the end of the trip my body was
i guess really starting to suffer a little bit because it needed that deload week it needed
that chance to rebuild that it wasn't getting and i filmed my stretching routine which you can check
out i'll link it here when it's published this was my my trail maintenance is what i did to just keep
my body as fresh and as supple as i possibly could along the way so some of those exercises included
stretching the bottom of my feet my plantar fascia stretching my glute me and my hamstrings
and just staying as as loose and as supple as i could in my body i would sit in those positions
and stretch while whilst i was cooking and whilst i was journaling at night just to give my body the
opportunity to loosen up at the end of the day and i'm really really happy that i was able to do that
and i think that's part of what kept me being able to do pretty decent miles most days and
be able to continue to do that for the time that i did haiku loaf asks any
issues camping at night uh animals or farmers no not for me i mean there's a general rule in
the pyrenees that if you're above a certain height like 1800 meters or 2000 meters you can basically
camp wherever you want having said that there was definitely times where i can't below that level
but i didn't experience any issues i remember one time in particular where i jumped the fence
into a into a probably farming private property and i set up my tent but i did that basically at
sunset and i was gone at sunrise so i cleaned up i left the place better than i found it so
that's kind of the main thing animals no issues at all uh i guess that's part and parcel of you know
people living in the pyrenees since medieval times that animals are just either non-existent or
pretty used to humans and not bothered by it there was one really special moment where i came across
a herd of deer right towards the end of the trip around nuria really beautiful to see these
wild deer kind of enjoying the mountains and just grazing and hanging out in the high mountains that
was a really nice moment i had a question from jose wondering about the places you stopped to
sleep i spent almost every single night wild camping when i wasn't wild camping i was in
an actual paid campground and usually you would pay 10 euros and you put up your tent and it's
totally worth it you have hot showers you've got kitchen facilities so i really needed those
campgrounds every sort of four to five days outside of that there is refugees or refuge
cabins where you'll pay from 30 to 40 a night often breakfast and dinner was included in that
and that was again another opportunity to have a shower sleep in a in a bed and rest up and
move on the next day but for the most part i was wild camping or using campgrounds down in
town so i had a question about daily routine so when i would start when i would end what breaks
i would have and campsite selection that's a big question so we'll break it down i usually would
get up at about seven o'clock sometimes 6 30 and i would spend about an hour just kind of chilling
making breakfast slowly packing my gear up not really being in too much of a rush
towards the end of the trip when i was doing much bigger miles
that was basically just like wake up at six start walking as early as possible
hike often until sunset and then setting up my tent and having very little opportunity
for rest throughout the day and the last part of that question in terms of campsite selection
i made purposefully made one really risky campsite and that's because i wanted to get
what i thought would be a pretty amazing photo in in this location here and uh that
was a very exposed campsite it was at about 2800 metres basically right on the top of the coal
and i knew i was going to have a rough windy night and i didn't get a lot of sleep so at the tops of
the mountains where it tends to be very exposed that's where you want to avoid but you also want
to avoid the bottom of the valley or anywhere near lakes or rivers you're going to wake up with
probably a wet tent and condensation on the inside so i would try to generally camp halfway
between the bottom of the valley and the top of the mountain and find somewhere sheltered whether
it's a rock wall or some kind of cave or a forest somewhere that's going to be offering me a little
bit extra protection i had a couple of questions about guides and navigation along the way in terms
of what i used i ended up using locus maps which is free you can download it if you have an android
it's not on iphone unfortunately and outside of that i used the cicerone guide for the gr11
written by brian johnson that was super valuable i wouldn't do the trial without that guidebook
i think that it would just make things unnecessarily difficult you can just get it
on on your phone as like an e-book and that was really handy as well next question i had was about
food curious about food what did you take with you and how much how do you make sure that you
top up your supplies along the way basically along the gr11 you'll pass through a town
almost every single day there are certain sections where you don't pass a town for maybe
three or four days so before you do those sections you've just got to think out the head a little bit
and plan what you're going to bring during that time so for me most of the food that i
ate was pasta dishes lentils i did try a ramen bomb but yeah a lot of like simple basic food
and i would generally make sure that i had three days worth of food with me just like an emergency
supply and i would always have you know loads of trail mix i would have muesli bars in terms
of breakfast i have the same thing every day oats mixed with chia seeds chocolate cacao powder that
i mixed in with that some dried fruit nuts and i would just add water to that either in the morning
or sometimes the night before cold soaking second breakfast i would stop and have a coffee and
usually you cannot buy like a croissant or something for breakfast kind of luxury so whilst i
would love to tell you that i survived exclusively on a diet of lentils nuts and seeds and fruit
that is not the case i was snacking like a [ __ ] it was not healthy at all so sadly a
lot of the time i ended up eating uh total junk which is definitely not something i recommend
but something you sometimes have to do because of limited access to food but also because you need
calories of calories and calories and calories i mean definitely towards the end i probably would
have been tipping the scales toward 4 000 calories one bad thing about being on the trail is that i
there was a lot of comments that i just couldn't get around to so if i haven't answered your
question i am sorry i wonder hopefully we'll get into it if you do enjoy my content please like the
video that really helps i don't have a patreon or anything like that i guess my version of patreon
is just like buying elements it's a 10 program and that really that gets you on my mailing list
and that helps so that's about it for this video guys thanks for watching i appreciate you
and get out there keep hiking keep climbing i'll see you on the summit