Tag Archives: Corinne Gourgeonnet

A new update of my main website: www.grpdesbf.nl

See for the update-details: https://www.grpdesbf.nl/esfr-html-miscellania-updatelog.html

It has been once again challenging and interesting trips in april and september 2023. Among others: with Corinne Gourgeonnet searching for the Croix de Malafrenor and the Bidaubus-crosses, 3-days of backpacking in the increasingly dry Eastern Pyrenees and with Carlos & Conchita Roca their first wild camping experience. Also digesting some sad news: my beloved old-fashioned-for-ever Hôtel d’Annécy in Lourdes – so much part of my Lourdes-vibe – has closed in autumn 2023.

Read, watch and enjoy. In september 2024 I will return to the Pyrenees.

Another new kid on the block: Jean Marc Dumont

A tip from Corinne Gourgeonnet: Jean Marc Dumont, a young man of 64 who is also aspiring to do all esfr-markers. He once started as a co-walker along the bordermarkers and now continues on his own with impressive trips on his MTB or by foot.


As a former air traffic controller, he retired at an early age (the ultimate dream of every Frenchman, so it seems) and never regretted that a single moment.
Now he has covered 74% of all esfr-bm’s (using the “parfait” excel-sheet on this page) and he expects to finish next year. That implies that he can well be the first to complete the esfr-bordermarkers after Corinne in 2021 and before Carlos & Conchita Roca, Sébastien Marc and Jérôme Loubière.
So far, only bm425 has given serious problems, getting in rough terrain and in fact in danger.

Special notice: he has his own mini-camper for his bm-outings: the MarKomobile which made me instantaneously jealous.

No blog, no website but you can still follow his adventures and progress on Strava. Good luck Jean Marc and let us know when you are approaching the finish.

I did all esfr-bordermarkers (twice!)

Today I swam to bm602, the last of the esfr-bordermarkers in a cave on the Mediterranean coast. Accessible only by boat or by swimming.

I trained this summer in open water swimming and after a failed trial a few days ago, I succeeded today in good weather and a calm sea. And thanks to the directions of Corinne Gourgeonnet who made the trip twice with her son Arthur.

With bm602 doing for the second time (first time by boat on 21-5-2011), I have completed my ‘quest’ to do all esfr-bordermarkers twice with at least one year interval. I guess I am the first person on the planet earth who has done this. You might ask: why? I always respond with: ‘why not’. But now it’s enough.

I will return to the Pyrenees nevertheless, there is always a reason to come back to these marvelous mountains and revisit bordermarkers, just for the fun of it.

Bm420bis decapitated

This marker is relatively young. It was placed in 1997 after a Spanish engineer had discovered that the borderline between bm420 and 421 was presented wrongly on the maps and didn’t follow the real watershed. See this page for the whole story.

At my first visit in 2011, bm420bis was still in perfect health after 14 years:

But only 2 years later, the upper half was broken off by brute force. See this blog-post

In 2018 Corinne Gourgeonnet visited bm420bis and found both parts neatly against each other:

Now we are four years later. Corinne Gourgeonnet completed her full range of esfr-bordermarkers last year but can’t forget the esfr-bordermarkers. While walking the 5-days cross-border Pass’Aran-trail , she couldn’t help to revisit bm420bis.

And as you see: the upper half has now disappeared, probably tossed down the mountainside.

A famous quote from a famous dutch poet: anything of value is vulnerable.

New update GRPdesBF-site

Pleased to announce a new update of my main site, covering the 11 day trips I did in September 2021. See for the details this page.

A lot of information and pictures, it might be a bit too much. If I may suggest two picks:

– 6 September: my longest day trip ever in terms of time (13 hours)

– 11 September: Corinne Gourgeonnet visiting her very last bordermarker, no. 311

Champagne at the border: Corinne’s final bordermarker

Saturday 11 September 2021: a very special day for Corinne Gourgeonnet. After 6 years, she completed her quest to find and photograph each and every bordermarker along the French-Spanish border.

The last one to do was well chosen: bm311 at Col de Sobe. A touristic train

brought her to Lac d’Artouste which left 2 hours of climbing to bm311. She was however not alone: she brought her son Arthur (see http://blog.grpdesbf.nl/?s=arthur) ánd Michel Molia (see: http://blog.grpdesbf.nl/?s=molia), the famous discoverer of the 408III-IV-submarkers. I joined them halfway on their climb and together we reached bm311.

At the spot we celebrated the event, Corinne opening a large bottle of champagne

and together we toasted to Corinne’s achievement.

Corinne was moved and that is understandable. She has enjoyed so much all her adventures along the border, mostly done as solo-trips which has been an experience in itself. And now it is all finished, as if you have reached the destination of a long, long pilgrimage…

For Michel, it was also a final trip. He is eighty years old and it’s been enough for mountain walking. In a way, he celebrated his own farewell trip with the same champagne.

By completing all esfr-bordermarkers, Corinne enters the Gallery of Honor of men and women who have done them all. She is the third woman who has accomplished this and the first one to do them solo. The list is now:

1. Javier and María-Jesús Sancho-Esnaola
2. Charles and Josette Darrieu
3. Jacques Koleck
4. Myself
5. Michel Molia
6. Alain Gillodes
7. Corinne Gourgeonnet

Was this Corinne’s farewell to the bordermarkers? Well, she confided to me in secret that she thinks of doing a multi-day stretch of my GRPdesBF-trail next year. And Arthur stated casually that he will start ‘doing’ bordermarkers when he is grown up. We will hold him to it 🙂

Daredevil Jean-Marc climbs to bm436

The bordercross 436 is a remarkable one: it is almost invisible, engraved high above the ground on this fierce rock.

Without paint or chalk, it’s very hard to distinguish cross and number on the rockface. You have to know where to look. I was very lucky in 2010 that cross and number were painted black at that time, faded away in later years.

Corinne Gourgeonnet visited recently this area in her quest to ‘do’ all esfr-markers – her project soon to be finished – and had her own luck. Her companion Jean-Marc dared to do some rock-climbing to chalk cross and number for her.

As you can see, the numeral 4 has been engraved in mirror writing, I have seen that more.

The Bis of 330bis painted

A recent discovery of Corinne Gourgeonnet: besides the bordercross of 330(-bis) a large ‘Bis’ has been painted in recent years.

A ‘Bis’ because there are 2 crosses 330:
– one at its original location ± 4km west of this one on another border pass (engraved in the 19th century)
– and this one at Port de Clarabide, engraved in 2003. The original cross was considered to be lost or unfindable around 2000 and so a new one was engraved at Port de Clarabide.

But the original 330 still existed at the Port d’Aygues Tortes which was called Port de Clarabide on old maps. And that’s where the Treaty prescribed the engraving of bm330. But the toponyms of both passes changed on the maps in later years. And that explains the confusion.

See also this post and this webpage.

So the new 330 is in fact a second 330-bordercross and should be referred to as 330bis. That’s why the ‘Bis’ has been painted. But who is responsible for the painting? We think it is Jean-Paul Laborie – commissioner of the Pyrenean border committee – who talked about it on our joint trip to the new ADR-bordermarkers in 2019: see this post.

And indeed, it was Jean-Paul Laborie who did the job, I guess in 2020. He wrote me that he took a chisel and red paint to the Port. But his chisel proved not to be sufficient for this type of hard granite. He could only engrave the “bis” rudimentarily and paint it red. He was glad to see on Corinne’s picture that it is still in good shape. He sent me this picture with the ironical subtitle “the engraver of the peaks in his works”:

 

Another fire on the border

In February 2021, Javier Martinez Ruiz reported a devastating fire on the borderline near the Atlantic Ocean (see this post: The Basque-border on fire).

The same situation occurred on the 31st of July on the very other side of the border: at the Mediterranean coast, live witnessed by Corinne Gourgeonnet:

Not long after, she went – together with her son Arthur – to the scene to see if the bordermarkers were damaged or not. Well, they survived pretty well:

Arthur is the youngest one in our band of brothers (& sisters) of the border. He made a splendid introduction by swimming, together with his mother, in 2018 to the cave with bm602. See this post: Corinne & Arthur: swimming to bm602!

The new ADFR-bordermarkers visited

Today I visited the recently installed bordermarkers between Andorra and France, see also the previous post. I checked the gps-readings as provided by the Andorra Cartography Department and they can be downloaded as a gpx or kml.

I was in a splendid company: with Corinne Gourgeonnet, Michel Molia and Jean-Paul Laborie. The last one is a member of the Pyrenean border commission and was highly involved in in the negotiations which led to the new borderline and new bordermarkers. The latest news is that the official inauguration is planned on september 6th.

Jean-Paul guided us along the new bordermarkers, telling about the choices made, his work in general and his relationship with his predecessor Jean Sermet which he admires for his writings and the esteem he had in Spain. Michel had a discussion with him on the decision on the new borderline between bm408 and 409 which he (Jean-Paul) labeled as a political compromise with little chances of reversal (see this post for my opinion on this subject). By and large, we had a very pleasant outing, crowned by a picnic provided by Corinne.