The Haute Route Pyrenees is a high level 900km coast to coast trail on the waistline between France and Spain. It begins as it ends - in humid, sleepy seaside resorts, but between these two points the only constant is change. Hugging the border ridge as closely as possible, our route moves through the lush heart of the Basque country along tracks used by Hannibal and Roland, past icy lakes and through valleys of wild flowers, salamanders, snakes and frogs, carpenter bees and jersey moths. To the bleached white peaks of the central range where buzzards, eagles, kites and vultures fly patrol above marmots, deer and wild horses. The water is plentiful, mostly, and clean, nearly always. The weather is wild and changeable. There is peace and there is quiet, and there is adventure and humility.

This is a confession, a catalogue of errors. I'm not proud of my part in it, though it taught me much. My friends and I gave each other these trail names at the time.

The tale of the night begins with the day, and continues through to the end of the next. It starts wet, drying out. We had camped in a wide sided valley down from Pombie after soup and a half sleep in a thunderstorm and waking up in two inches of water on the backside of the Pic du Midi d'Ossau. Thank heavens for bivy bags when the heavens open. An ascent of the Pic is impossible - water is still crashing down the sides, and with visibility no more than twenty metres at the Col de Suzon, there is no chance and no views - what for anyway? And so we're still sluggish and waterlogged as we pull up through woodland then a mist shrouded valley towards Arremoulit. The Fish isn't coping, his gears are grinding, until I take his tent and mat, a whopping four kilos. I move ahead, lugging the dead weight, sweating and furious. This has become a familiar pattern over the last week. It may not be his fault, but he is out of his depth, despite all that was said back home. I stopped feeling bad for him a day or so ago, now I just feel bad.

Two hours later, I sit just off the col in thick cloud and wait for the others. After a little bread and cheese, I realise I don't have the map and case, normally clipped into the caribiner at my shoulder. Providence. I'm ready to snap, and its got right in the way of the walk, concentrating on pride and anger instead of the safety of an inexperienced party I find myself leading by default. I must now be ready to eat my words, bite my tongue and, most importantly, find the map. But, I am lucky. A Basque couple have seen it lying on the path and passed it to the others. Little is said as my co walkers return it; we all know what’s afoot.

We are heading for the Passage d'Orteig, a vertiginous but chained short section of the route that I have done before, but is new to my friends. We hang right at the sign for the 'delicate passage' and line up for it, the Dog at the front and me behind. I have hyped this a lot as the Fish gets vertigo, and to his credit he wants to deal with this head on and doesn't flinch when he sees the drop. The Dog will do just fine. We start in on the narrow part before the ropes and I start talking. Distraction is the better part of valour. If you fall, fall to the right. Don't forget to breathe, or you'll die. And so on.

It's fine in the end, it was all a storm in a teacup right? All smiles. There's one part I still don't like, where the rock juts out and the Basque couple, looking concerned for both us and them, tie in, but we don't carry climbing gear (only because we don't know how to use it). Up and over past a line of beautifully constructed cairns made to guide us in to one of the best refuges on the HRP. Loitering at the refuge with soup and a catnap, tarp out to dry a little. Sadly, Pierre Jean, something of a legend in these parts, is no longer the guardian, but the painted eagles on the domed ceiling of the hut make it a much favoured and romantic place.

We leave for the Col de Palas. I have reservations which I share, but limply, not wanting to say we are moving too slowly, letting the others growing confidence after the Passage override. It is too early to stop. It’s not too far on the map, n'est pas? The cloud may clear further up. We move easier and refreshed up to the lakes above the refuge and onto the team's first snowfield. The approach to the Col is as good a first time experience of snow in high mountains as I could wish for my friends. Firm but not rock solid, crags atmospherically shrouded but not overtly threatening. Spooky but not scary - the mysteries of rocky strata beckon us on. I love this world above the brush and the tundra, it has become my reason for walking in the Pyrenees but it’s fickle up here. And it is too late to go up, in this weather and with this team. Judgment calls. I fail to answer.

A Spanish team passes us on their way down and seems in good spirits, we continue on, in denser cloud, on fields of boulders growing larger, until the chilly col is reached. We head east at the top cairn and contour around steeply on slippery red shale and scree, treachery draped in soggy mist, our movements slowing, grinding to a halt. Pace is required but not forthcoming, I should've called it then but there is no way the Fish is backtracking on this eroded mess, he's unnerved, the path has fallen away to nothing and its only our handholds that are holding his footholds in place.

Because of the mist and the slow progress and the wanting it to be so, we reach two cairns and assume it’s the Port de Lavedan. At first, then no joy. It looks like a col in five metres visibility and the map tells us nothing at all at 1.50K. Not happy. We get busy with map and compass, Goat on forays out and the Dog calling in for safety. This is The System, but there may as well be none. We are lost on granite nothingness, now here, no where, a vector labyrinth of snowfields, giant boulders and vast rock faces that loom out of the mist. We can reset the map all we want but if we don't know our position..? The backup GPS on my phone is not playing ball today, so a cheat is out. A little rain now and then, its getting cold and we're moving in ever decreasing circles.

With hindsight, I can tell you that the Port is set obliquely at an angle on the border ridge south of Palas. I would have at some point early on been only a few metres from the final approach, but it was concealed completely from me then by dense clag and its obscure angle. 7pm passes, forays down, then up to no avail. We retreat to the two cairns again, 8pm comes and goes. Shortly after, the cloud clears for a few seconds and the Dog correctly ID's two lakes far below us. I confirm them as the lakes on the Spanish side I walked last year, down from the Col de Arremoulit - the Ibones del Arriel. I know they are beautiful down there, but from up here they seem remote, removed.

We don't go down to the lakes. It would mean losing many hundreds of metres in exchange for a safe pitch. Why the hell wasn't I calling this in? I remember thinking that. The ID was good, my decision making not so. Instead, we head NE as instructed by our dutch guidebook, on a vague bearing, steeply around a large snowfield with more loose scree underfoot in ever thickening cloud and drizzle. North, then East to compensate, but we're too high. We reach a tiny climbers' bivy chiselled out on a crumbling bluff just off a windswept ridge down from Palas itself. Again, we see what we want to see. This is the port?! No. There is no way down the other side, it's not a col or a saddle, let alone a gash in the rock. Darkness descending, weather deteriorating. I wrestle with loosely formed options but it's synapse soup, any thoughts I have are pickled in the clinging cloud.