If I were to describe mountains like those of a child’s imagination – a classic dragon’s-back of a range marching across a continent from sea to sea; a wall of peaks and ridges almost 300 miles (500km) long, yet hardly 19 miles wide; if I were to add that this range rises to more than 3,350m (11,000ft), with dozens of summits above 2,700m; if I were to report that even now, at the end of summer, there are patches of snow on the highest flanks and the higher slopes are an empty paradise of tarns, lakes, waterfalls and rushing streams; and if I were then to point out that in one day’s drive from Le Havre you could be there... then I suspect I would surprise many Britons.

“You don’t mean the Alps, do you?” people might ask.

No, I don’t. I mean Europe’s second range, and, along with the Alps, one of our planet’s major mountain systems, yet curiously overlooked by the British. I mean the Pyrenees: a range with which I doubt one in 20 of my countrymen is familiar, although the French side is easily accessible for a long weekend, and the Spanish side within a couple of hours’ drive of the Costa Brava.

Every year hundreds of thousands of us fly over the Pyrenees en route to Spain or Portugal, yet few ever visit.

And all you would need would be a budget flight to Bordeaux, Pau, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Perpignan, Girona, Barcelona, Zaragoza or Bilbao – and a hire car at the other end.

Of those readers who have visited the Pyrenees, most will have done so in winter for cut-price skiing. The skiing can be good, but serious skiers would describe the pistes as inferior to the Alps. Not so the summer walking. I have walked in both the Alps and the Pyrenees in summer, and as a hiker I would choose the Pyrenees every time. From May to October the snowline lifts, unlocking a wildflower garden of a landscape: so accessible to visitors that it’s a mystery you can so easily leave the crowds behind; with stable weather and 14-hour sunny days, offering an huge variety of walks, from short and sweet to long and sweet; from short and sharp to some all-day, wearying, dizzying hikes across what feels like the rooftop of southern Europe.

I was there last month, for five days’ walking. It was sublime. My partner and I booked nothing but a few mountain refuges. We sought no organised tour, and took nothing but sun-cream, Elastoplast, a good map, strong walking shoes, a water bottle, sleeping-bag, fleece, waterproof, toothbrush and clothes. You could fit what we took into day-packs.

The central two thirds of the range, from Mollò at the Mediterranean end to Canfranc and Navarre, is consistently high and majestic, full of lonely peaks and hidden valleys, and the stretch we know best. Last year we walked from the railhead at Canfranc to Baños de Pantacosa. This year we walked the next section to the east. I’ll sketch out what we did because, without necessarily copying the itinerary, you might find it useful to glance at a map to get a sense of what’s doable.

Having reserved beds, suppers, breakfasts and packed lunches in advance, we set out from the Costa Brava at dawn on day one; parked the car at Pont d’Espagne, past Cauterets on the French side, an hour uphill from Lourdes; and walked a few hours besides streams and waterfalls up a wide and lovely valley between granite peaks, to the wardened hostel of Wallon. Here there were even private bedrooms, but we risked the snorers (our only mistake). Otherwise we found this, like all the French and Spanish refuges, well-organised and comfortable, with home-cooked meals (and wine) and helpful young staff ready with advice on weather and routes, and happy to help booking or rebooking refuges ahead. There always seems to be someone who speaks better English than your French or Spanish.

On day two we walked over the ridge-top. Finding the going so easy underfoot, we diverted from the marked path and veered straight up a mountainside. Soon we were alone with only the sound of cow-bells for company, treading through fields of flowers, fording streams and clambering up a rocky slope to a sharp ridge we realised must be the Spanish border. You could see what looked like half of France, and all down the drier Spanish slopes to the plains. You could survey the line of peaks and ridges marching one way to the Atlantic, the other to the Mediterranean. We felt like eagles, and saw eagles.

The second night was spent (after a long, but glorious, walk down a valley into Spain, joining the well-marked GR11 route, and a dip in an icy turquoise lake) at a very jolly hostel, Bujaruelo, eating Spanish sausages and slaking our thirst with litres of beer. It had been sunny all day.

By lunch on the following day we had climbed back over the ridge into France, calling at the Refuge Brèche de Roland, perched by a glacier, enjoyed glasses of hot wine in the mist, and clambered down to the pretty French mountain resort of Garvanie, half-encircled by a magnificent amphitheatre of 1,000m black cliffs, and waterfalls reaching up into the clouds. Another good meal at another good hostel (Refuge Houle) – and day four followed, with one of the most beautiful walks I can remember, up a long green valley to the lake at its head, as the morning clouds lifted. From here a steep, but well-cut, path zigzagged up a couple of thousand feet to the highest wardened hostel in the French Pyrenees: the Refuge Bayssellance (2,651m). Here were views in every direction.

On our last day we left our packs and stormed up the nearby Petit Vignemale, an easy climb; then dropped into the valleys below. A morning’s walk down rivers, past waterfalls and lakes, and into forest, brought us back to Pont d’Espagne; and thence to the little Victorian spa of Cauterets, where I sampled my first snail pizza (tasty – honestly).

Such was our itinerary. You could devise any number. All the refuges are clean, welcoming and professionally run, but it is wise to book; and they cater for tents and bivouacs, too.

Such are the facts. But facts do not begin to convey the glory of this mountain range. The Alps, of course, are awesome. But, for a walker, their dark pine-forests and steep, narrow valleys can be strangely constricting. The mountains of Wales and Scotland are wonderful when it isn’t raining. But for the Pyrenees, think “open”. Think “rooftop”. Think warm sun, wind and light, streaks of snow and diamond-sparkling tarns. Think tawny; the browns and greys of crumbly granite; the whoosh of eagles’ wings and the high, thin, piping cry of the rock-and-stream-dwelling, beaver-like marmot.

On our way up to the Bayssellance refuge we passed two hand-hewn caverns into the mountainside. Here, during the 19th century, dwelt the Irish-British-French earl, Henry Russell. An obsessional mountaineer, he had so fallen in love with the Pyrenees that these slopes became the centre of his life. He entertained guests to dinner in his caves, in full evening dress. He explored the whole range. In gratitude and admiration, the French authorities gave him a 99-year lease on the whole mountainside.

Before you go walking in the Pyrenees you may dismiss Russell as mad. At the end of your walk, and however idly, you may be contemplating a cave of your own.

Walk this way
The Pyrenees are covered by a series of French and Spanish maps, available in Britain from Stanfords. Details for staffed mountain refuges are listed on the maps.

Reading: Walks and Climbs in the Pyrenees by Kev Reynolds (Cicerone Press, £15).

More information: Club Alpin Français (www.ffcam.fr).

Inspired by Matthew’s walk? Try these:
Inntravel (01653 617906, www.inntravel.co.uk) offers a week in the hills of Catalonia from £598pp, including most meals, but not flights.
Upland Escapes (01367 851111, www.uplandescapes.com) can arrange a long-weekend winter walk on Gran Canaria from £345pp, excluding flights.

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