I went on a holiday to Andorra once, and saw the GR11 that runs across the Pyrenees mainly through Spain, and I dreamed.  And one day, that dream came true – and it looked like this.

Theoretically I was going to follow the HRP, the Pyrenean high route, but having been delayed until October due to an IT band injury, bad weather led me to divert sometimes onto the GR10, GR11 and a random route of my own at one point.

It was a fantastic trip, over 36 days, which included perpetual raincoat failures, an ice apocalypse, being buried in snow, being mocked for being short by the French, failing to speak the right language, four times over and across three different countries, and getting 75% of my calories from Milka chocolate.

I was lucky to be granted temporary release from hospital administration to do this trail – I went as fast as I could, haunted by the knowledge that every minute I was away was a minute I could have been intangibly benefiting patients through the manipulation of spreadsheets.