The Pyrenees Articles

Wallcreeper - Tichodroma muraria

Spotlight on the wallcreeper: bird of the year 2025

The wallcreeper, with its bright scarlet wing patches, is one of the Pyrenees most famous birds and prized sighting for ornithologists. It’s being celebrated as the ‘Bird of 2025’ by SEO/Birdlife to highlight the dangers it faces and why this small bird is so special.

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The Bath Boys Hike the Pyrenees

Thanks to Len, Phil, Julian, Peter, Alan and Trevor - our first guests of the summer. They walked  a new village to village itinerary staying each night in different villages in the Valle de Tena. Hope you had a great week guys. Bit unseasonly cold at the beginning of...

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Blacks nature guides

I find Blacks Nature Guides really useful. Good mix of an identification fieldguide with interesting information about each species too. Wild Flowers of Britain and Europe covers most of the species we find here in the Pyrenees although misses some of the Pyrenean...

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Gentians and Orchids – the Pyrenees spring to life

The mountains of the Valle de Tena are looking beautiful and bursting into life. Spring gentians, trumpet gentians and elder flowered orchids are covering the sunnier meadows around Ibon de Piedrafita and above the village of Sandinies.   Elder flowered orchids...

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Emperor Moth

Saw this beautiful, huge moth on the pavement right outside our front door the other morning. Found out it was an Emperor moth. Really large - about 5cm across  and fantastic colour around the eye spots and the bright red flashes near the wingtips. He kindly stayed...

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Egyptian vulture & Northern wheatears

Saw my first Egyptian vulture of the year while out walking near the village of Piedrafita today. There very distictive with their black and white wings, yellow head a diamond shaped tail. These vultures migrate from northern Africa and the Middle East at the...

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New Pyrenees weather forecast

Update: visit our new Pyrenees weather forecast page for up to date forecasts and information on the most accurate forecasts for the Pyrenees I find  snow-forecast.com an excellent site with very reliable forecasts for the Pyrenees. They've just launched a sister...

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The Dolmen of Santa Elena

The other day I took a walk from Biescas up to Santa Elena and was pleased to see that they've put up some boards with information about the dolmen. The upper Gallego has one of the greatest concentration of megaliths in the Pyrenees.  The dolmen at Santa Elena is a...

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Formigal article in Adventure Travel magazine

The Jan/Feb issue of Adventure Travel has a good article on skiing in Formigal. The same issue also features a hike in the Ordesa National Park following a simal route to the Hike Pyrenees GR11walking holiday. Read about it then come and join us in the Pyrenees to try...

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Winter arrives to Biescas

  The lovely autumn weather we´ve been having here in the Pyrenees came to an abrupt end last weekend when we had about 30cm of snow in Biescas. Anna and I hiked up to Ermita Santa Elena which looked lovely in the snow. 

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