Le Pont de Montvert to Mt Mars

Another shortcut. Although some of today's one is an official variant at least. After le Pont de Montvert we climbed a steep track out of the valley and up into the forest before using GR72 to shave some more time off. Lunch was in the forest near a giant ant hill and then down to a village in the valley. All the villages are terraced here and I haven't really been able to figure out why people live here. It must be diabolical in winter.

After the village we took another variant along an old train track that took us up along the river and then up the side of Mt Mars to Col de Lupe before we started looking for a decent camp site again. Both of us were tired and initially we set up camp right on the track as we hadn't been able to find anything better but after some dinner we had another look around and Angelynn found a much better spot up a ridge line.

And it was a much better spot. We were off trail, there was a great view down in the valleys and the weather was good. Except maybe we should have checked the weather because around midnight a thunderstorm started. At first is was just generally around us in the mountains which was loud enough but eventually there was no time between the flash and the thunder and although we were largely sheltered from the wind a gust moved one of our pegs (actually it was a log I had found as we were short of tent pegs) and the water began poring into the tent. It started looking like it was going to be a long wet night if we didn't get struck by lightning but then the wind must have died back a bit and the log decided to stay in place.