Welcome to our St Lary page, where we give detail on the resort and the walks we did on our holiday.

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Guide to St Lary

OH Our holiday SV St Lary village and amenities TR Transport WA Walking OW Our walks

Walk Photos

If you have any questions or suggestions to improve information given, please e-mail D and J.

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Our holiday

St Lary was our summer holiday destination in 2002.

This holiday was organised by the UK based specialist holiday company HF Holidays. HF own a number of walking centres in the UK, and also organise walking holidays in Europe and the rest of the world. The holiday cost included the flights from the UK to Toulouse, coach transfer to the hotel, half board accomodation and the services of walk leaders. Unlike most companies HF actually provide two leaders, one will lead a 'harder' programme of walks and one will lead an 'easier' programme of walks. The HF brochure has a graph which shows a comparison of the various centres, accordng to the walking difficulty.

HF send out information on confirmation of the holiday, this includes a booklet which describes the walking programme. Individual walks may be changed by the leaders, but mainly they will be as described in the booklet. In some resorts such as St Lary, HF operate a two week programme of walks, and the booklet will note which walks are done on which week. So if there is a particular walk you would like to do, but can only go for one week, then you can pick the right week.

The leaders will lead a programme of 5 walks in a week, with Wednesday normally being the day off. This gives you the opportunity to do your own thing. On this holiday a sightseeing trip to Ainsa and the Ordessa Gorge in Spain was arranged. The cost of local transport and any sightseeing trips is extra, and the brochure will indicate the maximum cost that you will have to pay for the local transport. Costs for sightseeing trips will be given when the bookings are made as it will be governed by the number of people going.

The walks were very well organised. After the evening meal, a briefing session was held for the leaders to describe the next day's walks, and also to pass on information such as the weather forecast. You are then asked to sign up for one of the walks, although this can be changed in the morning before the walks commence.

In our first week, the group consisted of 11 people from the UK, and 17 from the USA (members of the Orinda Hiking Club in the San Francisco Bay Area). For the first week our leaders were Maggie and Ian. We were surprised that we were the only guests booked for two weeks.

The second week the guests were all from the UK, save for a couple from Canada. As regards the leaders, Maggie was still with us, but Ian had been exchanged for Stewart. It took us a while to places Stewart - he was an member of the our ramblers group back home, though not a frequent walker with the group.

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St Lary Village and Ameneties.

St Lary lies in the Aure Valley in the Haute Pyrenees region of France. It lies within the Pyrenees National Park. It is a very pleasant setting, surrounded by mountains. St Lary is the last main village in the valley running south towards the Bielsa tunnel and the Spanish border. The valley north of the village runs down to the plain and Lannemezan.

St Lary is one of the larger villages in the valley. It is more famous as a ski resort and for its thermal baths, rather than a walking resort. Most of the shops are situated alongside the road that runs through the village. There is a park alongside the river which contains the Thermal Baths. There are a few bakeries and a small supermarket where you can buy provisions for your lunches. Unfortunately, when we were there, the supermarket did not always open at the advertised times, so it is advisable to buy your provisions the night before. You can always buy fresh bread in the morning as most of the bakers are open from around 7.30 or 8.00 am including Sunday. As well as the usual shops, cafes, banks and post office, St Lary has a Tourist Information Centre and a Pyrenees National Park Information Centre.Some shops sell outdoor equipment and walking maps of the local areas. There was a small internet cafe near to the hotel, but it was closed during our stay.

We stayed at the Hotel Mercure Coralia which is close to the Thermal Baths, and about 5 to 10 minutes walk from the village shops. This was a very good hotel with excellent food and very comfortable bedrooms. There is a large public area with a bar, and an outside area where you can have drinks in nice weather. The breakfast is buffet style, with a large selection of cereals, breads, fruit, yoghurts, meat and cheeses. Croissants are baked on the premises, and fought(!) over when in short supply. The evening meals are three course meals, with the menu being posted on the HF noticeboard each morning. There are two or three choices for starter and main course, with the dessert being buffet style. One of the choices will be vegetarian, and there is also normally a fish dish. For our holiday the hotel also supplied the HF group with jugs of red, white and rose wine which were frequently refilled. The main focus of the evening was the meal, which was taken at a leisurely pace. One disappointment for us was that the second weeek's menu was a repeat of the first.

As mentioned above our holiday was with HF. You can book the holiday without the air travel and transfer. (Although if your flight times fit in then you can use the transfer bus.) This would require flying to Toulouse Airport, and catching an airport bus to Toulouse railway station. The train would be to Lannemezan, and from there you would catch a bus to St Lary. The train and bus from Toulouse to St Lary Soulan would take a couple of hours and is operated by SNCF regional. For St Lary we would definately recommend going on a holiday where transport is arranged for you, unless you plan to hire a car.

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Transport

There is no railway line to St Lary, access is via road only. There are buses which run down the valley to Lannemezan, but very few if any, bus services that run up the valley where the best walking can be found. This means that St Lary is not a very good centre for a walking holiday unless you have your own transport, or go with a company that organises transport for you. All the transport we used on the holiday was private transport.

The one bus that could be useful if you took your own car is the shuttle bus that runs in the Neouvielle Nature Reserve, connecting the lower lake with the upper lakes.

There is a cable car from St Lary to the Ski Station on top of Pla D'Adet above the village. The cable car only runs until the end of August, and none of the walks organised by HF make use of it. The road up to Pla D'Adet is popular with cyclists as it has been used on stages of the Tour de France.

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Walking

St Lary is a good centre for walking in the surrounding area. There are a few walks that are possible from the village, but to reach the startpoint for the better walks you will require your own transport. The scenery in the area is very pleasant and impressive. The mountains range from 2000m to over 3000m towards the Spanish Border. In September there was no snow around, and there are only a few permanent glaciers on the highest of the peaks. There are a number of side valleys that run off from the main Aure valley. Probably the best walking area which is about 1 hours drive away, is the Neouvielle Nature Reserve. This is a beautiful high mountain area containing many lakes and the highest mountain pine forests in Europe. It is also possible to drive through the Bielsa Tunnel into Spain to walk in the Pineta Valley. The GR1O long distance path runs through the area.

The best map for walking in the St Lary area is the TOP 25 1748ET "NEOUVIELLE" produced by the French national mapping agency IGN. This is at a scale of 1:25000, and is very detailed with signed walking paths being marked in red. This map and those of surrounding areas (including Spain) are available in a number of shops in St Lary.

Most of the paths in the area are well marked using paint markings. Some local paths were not too well marked, and some paths shown on the map did not line up with those on the ground. Unlike Austria and Switzerland there are only a few refuges or huts in the area, so it is best to take food with you for your walk.

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Walks we did from St Lary.

The walks described below are those that we did on the HF walking holiday. All apart from a couple of short walks on days off were led walks. All walks are on the IGN TOP 25 1748ET "Neeouvielle" map unless stated otherwise.

The walks have been described in chronological order.

Flickr set can be found here.

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This page was last updated on 14th March 2009.

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