June in the Pyrenees is as close to perfection as I ever expect to get

Canigou is more than a mountain. They speak of the Pic de Canigou, Mont Canigou and the Massif de Canigou. A landmark for more than 50 miles around and visible from much of south-west France, from the Spanish Costa Brava and from far out to sea, the mountain soars up from the plains to dominate the range. Canigou is a symbol of the eastern Pyrenees: a beacon over Languedoc and Roussillon in France, and over all of northeastern Catalunya in Spain.

And the funny thing is that, like some of the best mountains, it isn’t exceptionally high. At about 9,000 feet Canigou is quickly surpassed as the Pyrenees march westward to the Atlantic. But it is by far the biggest thing at the Mediterranean end: the last great peak before the range tumbles down towards the sea.

My family has lived in Catalunya for over 30 years without my ever having climbed this famous mountain, and last weekend, as Saturday dawned bright and clear, was the time to remedy this. So a friend and I rose at 6 a.m. and set out in my brother-in-law’s old Toyota pick-up truck, carrying with us just a bottle of water and a couple of fleeces in case the weather turned.

Those who come from the Spanish side to climb Canigou are the lucky ones, and much the minority. Though the mountain is just inside France, only one forgotten little French valley to the south separates it from Spain; so the obvious way for the French to approach is from the north. That way you can drive quite high, and the walk is only a couple of hours.

Few ever come the other way, but you can, and though it takes six hours each way, the walk is stunning.

There is a seemingly forgotten pass over the mountains from Spanish to French Catalunya, a lonely road from Mollò on the Spanish side to Prats de Mollò in France. They don’t even bother to man the borderpost now, though God knows how many tens of thousands must have fled one way (as Cathar refugees escaped their persecutors in the Middle Ages) or the other (as Republican refugees fled Franco’s victorious Nationalists after the Spanish Civil War) over this pass.

Prats de Mollò is a pretty little town, so we stopped for coffee at 8 a.m., then drove up an empty valley to La Preste. From here a mountain road climbs some 11 miles, entering a nature reserve green with early June birch and beech; then along a rocky track out into open mountain pasture, until you can drive no more. We left the Toyota by a big boulder and started out along the long ridge which reaches toward Canigou.

Already we could see the jagged peak but we had another of almost equal height (Puig Roja) to scale first. We were the only walkers and had the whole wide ridge to ourselves, with magnificent views out in both directions. Larks rose from the coarse grass, in ecstatic morning song. Small flowers of intense blue pricked the green at our feet. Yellow vetch and lovely clumps of tiny mauve blossom, almost cactus-like, were strewn about like rounded stones. Wind, cloud and sun chased each other across the ridge.

After about an hour we reached the foot of Puig Roja. Not far away was a mountain refuge, a stone hut. Now came a 1,500-foot climb, stern but not too cruel. The way was marked with small cairns.

There is something distinctive about the open country of the high Pyrenees. The Alps — majestic as they are — have a sort of tightness, a Gothic quality: they enclose, they tower, they intimidate. The Pyrenees have more in common with the Rockies. They draw you on. Think space, think light, think long ridges, wiry grass, gentle slopes, sudden outcrops, fingers of rock; think the glistening quartz and light, tawny browns of crumbling granite. These mountains say, ‘This is easy why, you could walk all the way to the Atlantic in a few weeks, or down to France this way, or down to Spain that way; you’re on the roof.’ From Puig Roja it was a dreadful scramble down into the bowl at the foot of Canigou itself, but a beautiful place to reach: patches of snow melting into a little lake, the warning shriek (just like a bird’s cry) of beaver-like marmots by a tumbling stream, small clumps of pine, and the call of cuckoos echoing in glades below.

But now we had to regain the 1,500 feet we had just lost. We zigzagged up the scree until we were beneath the rocky towers of the peak itself. I looked up. Descending a sort of gully above us were a middle-aged French couple, trying to carry their small dog, which had lost its nerve. The route up (for them, down) is a chimney of jagged rock, seemingly almost vertical but with plenty of footholds and handholds.

A little breathless with altitude, we made it without trouble. It was nearly four o’clock. We had forgotten to bring food. But we gulped our water and sat by the beacon on top, watching cloud blow around. Then we clambered back down to the lake, where our return path diverged from the way we had come.

We plunged into one of the most beautiful valleys I have walked. June is when the broom and the azaleas blossom in the Pyrenees. We were in a deepening ravine whose sides were carpeted with both. The native azalea of the region is a low creeping plant with small dark leaves and pinky-red flowers, spreading across hillsides. The broom was exuberant, a yellow explosion across thousands of acres. The perfume — of chocolate — made the whole mountain smell like a sweet-shop. Poppies of the palest yellow were everywhere; and where the soil was less acid, banks of cowslips waved in the breeze. Silver birch and mountain ash had just come into leaf, and at the bottom of the valley a stream splashed and hissed across rocks.

Two hours’ walk down this gorge in the evening sunshine was as close to perfection as I ever expect to approach. The two-hour trudge back uphill — 2,000 feet up to the ridge and the Toyota — was just one of those debts you have to honour.

It was 10 p.m. and dark by the time we drove out of La Preste, weak with hunger and happy as skylarks. Round a bend and in the middle of nowhere was a pool of light: a roadside restaurant. The proprietor was at the door. We slowed to a stop, hardly hopeful, for the French are sniffy about serving supper at a decent hour.

He welcomed us in. There was steak and wine. Such was our contentment that for the two hours’ drive home neither of us spoke.