GR11 - How we did it; tips&tricks

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Our first and biggest piece of advice for completing the GR11 and to still be smiling at the end is to: REST! We know not everyone has the luxury of time, but if you can, take days off the walking / walk shorter days. If you consider these extra days when planning, it also gives you some buffer time for things to go wrong, from injury&sickness to trail section closures and storms.

You’ll need time for general trail life such as shopping, washing and repairing/replacing items, but try to make sure you get some actual chill time in too. On this note, we’ve made a list of some of our favourite rest day excursions which, if you like a bit of history / something different then you might enjoy knowing :

1. Candanchu - a ghost town during the summer, but there is a chair lift that goes up to some lakes if you wanted a more relaxed walk. The city of Jaca is also near by, accessible by bus, which has a museum of military miniatures which was really well presented and interesting. It’s also worth stopping to see Canfranc station if you do go that way, just for its huge presence and design.
2. Puen de San Chaime - the town of Benasque is just a 3km riverside walk away and worth a visit. Only small it has the older Spanish vibe with its medieval street but also many good outdoor shops; a perfect spot for replacing broken shoes and walking poles!
3. Tavascan - a pretty town to stop in, there is a Hydroelectric plant there which looked great to go and see as it is all underground BUT YOU NEED TO BOOK! so unfortunately we did not get to go, but have heard good things about it.
4. Encamp - not the best town being busy and loud, but as we ended up here for three days we did find some nice spots. There are a couple of great cafes here the other side of the river and the path running alongside the river was nice and pretty with all the flowers. There is also a car museum here which was small but interesting to look around.
5. Nuria - check out the ski museum demonstrating the evolution of skies throughout the years.
6. Setcases - a small but quaint town to be. They have numbered street plaques with information on them about the history of the area which were interesting to find and read; in English too! There’s also many walks that start and end here not that we were looking for that. And there is a Michelin Star restaurant here! Surprised us too but unfortunately no veggie options for us; looked popular though.
7. La Jonquera - an ugly trucker stop place really, with a slightly dodgy vibe, but the old street area is nice and where you can find an amazing museum (MUME) about the excile of thousands of people during the civi war and into the world war. There’s also a really cool and quirky cafe that does fab smoothies.
8. Cadaques - such a pretty, though we can imagine busy in main summer, place with lots of quirky shops and a maze of streets and cobble steps. A great place to rest at the end of the trail, accessible from Cap de Creus by bus, and has amazing veggie friendly food! The best we had over the whole trail. Also has Dali’s house museum which is worth a visit; an interesting and weird place to wonder around.

Anyways, back to life on the actual trail and more advice on how we managed it:

STRETCH!
It can be quick and just a few simple stretches or a longer session but doing something each day really really helped us!

BE SAVVY
- Take the extra sugar sachet from your coffee or salt&pepper sachet from lunch to keep back for your camping fine dining.
- Hand gel bottles can be topped up with squeezable hand gels in places.
- Take some extra toilet roll sheets from places when you can as you need it.
- Little hotel soaps are great to keep on you as needed.
- Most places don’t mind you charging items whilst you’re having a drink/eating, just ask.
- Breakfast served too late? Ask and they often offer a picnic the evening before instead.

BE SAFE
- Have a way of messaging people. With little signal in the mountains, having the Garmin inreach mini device meant we could still send a preset message everyday to the parents so they knew we were ok, as well as knowing we had a way to get help if we needed it. We also had the route on this app so we could use it as a very basic navigation tool if our phones died and we lost the waymarks (thankfully didn’t happen).
- Filter water! Goes without saying really.
- Leave no trace; a lightweight trowel and portable bidet really helped with this when it came to using natures toilet. The plastic bags you get when buying fruit were also handy binbags to carry all our waste out.

VEGGIE FOOD
Is hard to come by and pretty impossible if you’re vegan. Be prepared for a lot of tomato on bread, patatas bravas, tortillas, crisps and cheese sandwiches. Be aware salad often automatically comes with tuna, olives can often be stuffed with fish, and even a margarita pizza or a plate of green beans can come with ham.

The ‘supermarkets’ are usually just small shops, and seem to supply pretty much the exact same stuff no matter where we were. The menus also stayed impressively similar through the entire journey; even for meat eaters we think most people may be craving something different to eat by the end.

We’d say it was harder for the first half most definitely, with Andorra having a few more ‘veggie’ labelled foods (cafe 360 in Arinsal has a whole veggie menu and in Encamp we discovered the Andorra app with food delivery services available) and saw a slight variation in products in shops after Andorra (started to see humous more often). Fresh fruit was usually pretty good throughout.

Then to mention Cadaques again, we really did enjoy our chill days at the end there. It was so good to have different types of food to eat, with so many places there having great veggie options and ‘CoCo’ being completely vegan and so amazing!

Drinks wise, filtered water with a ‘TANG’ sachet (found 4flavours!) felt very fancy whilst camping and gave a good change from just water. We also used electrolyte tablets, particularly at the beginning when we sweated constantly. Then, really, we survived on coffee, coke and beer!

WAYMARKING
Considering how long this trail is, we were amazed at the awesome and frequent way marks. You could do the trail, apart from maybe a few sections, easily just following the way marks (but wouldn’t recommend as it just takes bad weather to stop this being safe). Some of the sections in the book suggest poor markings, but often they are better then it suggests where the trail has been updated and maintained (this is also true of the amount of road walking; it is clear some of the differing parts to the book are where the have changed the trail to be more off road). The worst sections for markings were after Andorra and did result in us going off trail briefly a few times; either no markings at all, just plain confusing, or just not where you actually need them. This is where having a map (and plotted route) is really helpful.

MAPS & APPS
With no paper book or paper maps we relied on our phones; with two of us and so two phones, as well as two charger packs, we figured that was a good enough back up.
- We used the paper guidebook at home to plan and plot our own sections on an electronic mapping app called FatMaps. This worked well for us as not only did it give us an idea and feel of what to expect as we planned and plotted, but also gave us a much better understanding of distances, elevation changes and times for what we hoped to do each day.
- FatMaps also shows it in 3D to really see what you’re climbing, has a general view showing other public trails and also has a great feature of highlighting ‘flat’ ground; really helpful for scoping camp spots.
- We then just had the electronic guidebook to read again as we went, so no book weight.
- Mapy.cz is another good app, we used mostly for when in towns and wanting to find the waterpoints. Just search for ‘Drinking Water’
- Google maps was also used a lot for checking shops and campsites times and info etc more reliably.
- GR11 app; yes an actual app for this trail giving up to date info on what is on the trail. We mostly used this to check water sources (strong or weak) and find camp spots, and we’re really happy with how accurate it was. Just to note, you can go to settings and change it to ‘light mode’ to make it easier to use.

CHANGES FROM THE GUIDEBOOK
Check shops, campsites and other places, opening times! You have to consider siesta times when planning shopping and to be mindful their ‘supermarkets’ are often just little side shops.
The guidebook is great, generally pretty accurate but understandably out of date.
A couple of points where we noted the book is now wrong (as of summer 2022):
- Stage 8: Zuriza campsite shop has been shut for a long time (never open!). Also the campsite here is bad. It’s the only one around so use if you need it but you could just camp further up the valley more peacefully.
- Stage 10: La Mina to Candanchu can still be done as one section relatively easily following green&yellow markers (some old red&whites still there); it’s more technical then the two day route but no harder then other days.
- Stage 12: Anayet ski complex to Sallent de Gállego is now mostly off road, following a fairly clear path through fields next to the road.
- Stage 14: (this pass was definitely the scariest bit of the whole trail for me). If you do not need the town of Baños de Panticosa, then there is a really cool alternative route from Refugio Bachimaña, we heard known as the pipeline way. Would recommend this route which is pretty clear on most maps. Great campspot area just ahead as the it rejoins the office trail.
- Stage 21: the bus Brian mentions still runs! You can flag it from outside the campsite and skip a long dirt road climb to Puen del Corones.
- Stage 23: Refugi de Conangles is not always open, we arrived to it being shut. We’ve also heard bad stories from others about here so may be one to be wary of.
- Stage 25: Espot is a great place with two small but fab shops; maybe the best ones on trail.
- Stage 26: Nou Camping at La Guingueta d’Àneu has a great swimming pool but the ‘reserved’ area for GR11 walkers is basically their hardest smallest pitch. Their shop is also very expensive; do not top up your suncream here!
- Stage 29: shop in Areu really isn’t much of a shop and hardly open.
- Stage 31: the demanding crossing into Andorra really was demanding! I don’t think Brian stressed how much of a near vertical, sliding scree ascent the pass is. Doable but just so you are not as surprised as us and others we met.
- Stage 33: whilst the official trail veers left back up into the hills at La Cortinada golf course, we’d recommend going straight on and following the pretty well maintained board walk along the river to Ordino, where you can then head up and easily rejoin the trail.
- Stage 33: Encamp campsite no longer exists. There is no campsite there.
- Stage 34: the two unmanned bothys in this stage are in great condition, with Fortverd even having a compost loo out back!
- Stage 36: the ‘bothy’ at La Feixa is now a fully manned refugio; it’s tiny but so cute and cool.
- Stage 37: waterpoint in the park in Vilallobent is not working. With the stream ahead pretty dry as Brian says (we managed to get some water from it) it’s worth topping up in Age. The ‘seemingly reliable stream by Border Stone 501-VI’ was good. After the col, we felt this stage was THE WORST for waymarking. Do not go down to camping can fosses unless you are using it, as you can stay higher on the trail to prevent a down and up.
- Stage 38: Queralbs is a nice spot to have a break. You can also catch a mountain train from here up to Nuria…if you need to. (You still see the gorge as you go).
- Stage 41: from what we could tell, the free bothy bit at Talaixa looked good, and was simply the lower room of the same building as the paid area (which was not open when we arrived). There is lots of good camping spots around the bothy too. And some of the best views! Sant Aniol d’Aguja refugio is still very much not built.
- Stage 46: a relaxed hippie vibe campsite (Mas Puig) just outside of Rabos was good.
- Stage 47: stop in port de La selva, it’s nice. ‘Camping Port de la Selva’ is a good 15min road walk inland but a good site. There is also then a footpath that shortcuts up (save walking back into the centre and around) and over to rejoin the GR11. Good trail but steep.
- Stage 47: THE END! Really is poorly waymarked from lighthouse down the rocks, with a tiny red&white splash of paint. The climb back up to the lighthouse feels mean. The bus to Cadaques does exist! The little shuttle runs regularly (every 20mins) from ‘cap de Creus’ to ‘parking for Cadaques’ which is actually at Port Lligat. From here it’s about 20mins more walking into Cadaques. BUT 6 of those buses a day, actually go further and all the way into Cadaques (saving you that 20min walk). It’s unnecessarily confusing but the tourist info has one little leaflet left with the times.

Our final piece of advice is to:
CHEAT if you need to!
Well, we’d argue there is no cheating, it’s just you and the trail and so many different ways of doing it. Find out what works for you and listen to your body; feeling good? Keep going! Feeling rubbish? Rest. Feeling prepared? Camp. Feeling manky? Take a hotel room. Running out of time or simply energy? Take the bus. Just do whatever you need to do, to be able to keep walking and enjoying the trail.

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Comments

[Hev]

Congratulations!
You did it! Well done you absolute superstars ☺️ I did it too - finally got to the end, even though you’ve already started the next trip! Better late than never. Enjoyed reading it, particularly liked the summary and tips at the end. Photos (especially captions) were really good too, brought the descriptions to life. Promise to read the next one more quickly - will stop looking at BBC news website on the commute as your blog is much more interesting. Well done again and lots of love. Hev 😘