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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very useful for Pyrenees virgins planning a trek, 12 Jan 2006
I'm planning to walk over the Pyrenees from Catalonia to the Midi this summer, and was looking for a good resource to give me a well-informed idea of possible starting points, finishes, distances and the natural obstacles involved. Although the Rough Guide was slagged off somewhat by previous reviewers for being a) too big to be properly useful as a hiking guide, and b) too useful specifically for hikers (there's no pleasing some people!), I'm glad to say that it's perfect for me - I'm not going to take it on the trip, but I'll be siphoning every little bit of information from it while planning. And there's a lot of information. For instance, all the telephone numbers for refuges are there - indispensable if you're planning to use them, because you have to book ahead of time. The guide is divided into chapters according to the valleys specific region of the Pyrenees - this allows you to get straight to only those parts which you're going to walk or visit. And like all Rough Guides, the general knowledge (history, wildlife, etc.) sections really add some colour to the subject. In summary, I am definitely going to take the Trailblazer "Trekking in the Pyrenees" book with me - it's lighter, smaller, more specific and seems comprehensive - but this Rough Guide was an invaluable starting point.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A little disappointing for a Rough Guide, 19 July 2010
A Rough Guide has always been an obligatory part of my luggage when exploring an area I don't know. Armed with this book (amongst others), we explored, mainly though not exclusively, the western French side of the Pyrenees by car. I agree with other comments about the Guide's focus on walking, and no doubt it is a very useful tool for walkers. In other respects I found it less thorough than other Rough Guides and inclined to be somewhat patchy in the area we covered. Sometimes the definition of what constituted the Pyrenees area seemed a little arbitrary. In the western Pyrenees, for example, the map on the inside of the cover implied a slightly wider coverage, than the reality when you got to section 5.
With the dearth of good general guide books about the area, I would suggest particularly for non-walkers, you take a range of other guides, which though more superficial about some aspects of the area or with a substantially different brief, may fill in any gaps, e.g. the Eyewitness Guide on Dordogne, Bordeaux and the South West Coast.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
More like a michelin guide, 1 Jan 2010
A disappointing rough guide. For me, reading the guide is part of the fun of the holiday, but this one was just a chore. It lacked both charm and enthusiasm. I was using it to look for a pretty village that would be suitable base for a two week summer holiday, from where we could do a mix of walking and culture, and found the guide to be far too obsessed with bus and train connections and where you can stay overnight - a trekkers equivalent of a michelin guide. It was hard to get a strong mental picture of the difference between the countryside of the different valleys, what the villages would be like, and what facilities they had - bakeries being especially important for me! I also would have liked to know to what extent each of the valleys was affected by ski paraphenalia, and what other cultural delights were on offer (why are french guides always so obsessed with churches?) I shall be following some of the recommended walks though. Maybe Rough Guides should do two guides to the pyrenees - one for trekkers doing the GR10 and one for general tourists?
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