An Alumni Adventure in the Pyrenees

September 2nd 2025

A group of four recent alumni, led by Hanna Sherwood-Rogers (Tyson’s 2022), completed the Carros de Foc, a week-long hike in the Catalonian Pyrenees this summer.

Generously supported and organised by John Gibbons (Tyson’s 1970) and his alumni waking group, The Randonneurs, they experienced stunning trails, refugio life, tough ascents, new friendships, and unforgettable mountain scenery.

The hike, which is now to become an annual event, was set up to inspire young alumni to experience and explore some of the wilder and most scenic areas of our planet. If you are a recent Alleyn’s alum, register your interest in taking part next year!

Here’s Hanna’s account of the hike:

As If we weren’t presented with enough opportunities at school, the alumni community at Alleyn’s only gets better.

This summer four of us recent leavers (circa 2022) got the opportunity to undertake an incredible week-long hike in the Catalonian Pyrenees facilitated by a grant from the incredible Alleyn’s alumni hiking group The Randonneurs, headed up by John Gibbons (Tyson’s 1970).

After a couple of months in the making of sorting travel arrangements, sending maps and other riveting admin, we set off for Barcelona on the 15th of July.

After task number one of successfully managing to locate each other in the airport, we hopped in a taxi for the 3 and a half hour transfer to the stunning mountain village of espot for some vital catch-up time and rest-bite before starting our hike the next day.

We wandered round town for the afternoon in the glorious sunshine, filled up on some heaving Catalan food and cultured ourselves with cervesas by the local community pool.

The next morning, we had a very civilised start at 9 am for breakfast. Heading off about 11 we had around a 2 and a half hour walk from the town of espot to the start of the Carros de foc trail at Refugio Mallafre; our accommodation for the night.

After hiking up a few hundred meters into the valley we reached the Refugio perfectly in time for lunch by a beautiful stream, neighbouring the refugio.

Archie, Will, and Fred were old hands at this hiking biz, all having undertaken multi day hikes before; with Archie having complete the Pennine Way only weeks before. With me being the only newbie and already at the disadvantage of being at least 7 inches shorter than the rest of them!

Not knowing what to expect from the refugio it was a whole new universe for all of us to explore. The concept of refugios is simple, a large mountain hut providing shelter, food and sleeping quarters for hikers in remote regions where you won't find any other accommodation and cannot access the area via any other way but by foot (or maybe helicopter if you're lucky enough).

The sleeping arrangement tended to be rooms of about 30-40 people depending on the size of the refugio, with two sides of long 10-15 man bunk beds (kind of crazy)

You are assigned a number when you check in where you’ll find your little section of the bunk bed with a pillow and a blanket. A bit like an adult summer camp, lights out is at 21:45/22:00 and then breakfast is served bright and early anytime from 6:30-7 usually.

Food is done family style at table you’re assigned to; bowls and plates etc are dropped at the tables, you dole out the plates and cutlery helping and meeting your fellow hikers in the process. There we families, to older couples, to young couples, to football tours to single Pringles. There is a typical menu of soup then salad, then a main dish followed by a dessert; very civil and pretty much the same in every refugio, which introduced a kind of nice normality of a routine and familiarity despite being in a completely new place every night. It was also nice to end up on the same path as some other walkers for some days in a row, as you get to know them and have a little laugh every day when you overtake them on the trail (haha!)

The second day was a 15.5 km route with 955m elevation, so a little tougher than the day before. We started the day off strong with an incredible walk around the lake we’d swam in with our afternoon off the day before, which ended in a 50m waterfall which we ascended next to, to get exit the valley. The rest of the day was filled with slightly sweatier but rewarding ascents up a number of passes and we even came across a man herding his cows through the mountains, filling the valley with ringing of cow bells. We broke up the afternoon with an ice-cold drink at the second refugio we passed that day, before making our gradual descent in the final valley where our refugio for the night sat on a vast reservoir.

The next day, it was a beautiful crisp morning and the sun rose steadily over the mirror still reservoir projecting the purples, blues and pinks of the morning sky. With the discovery of Nduja, and hummus being served at breakfast, we headed off fuelled and ready to take on our 3rd day.

With two choices of path on this particular day some of us took the longer and some of us the shorter route. Will headed straight to the Refugio arriving around midday and taking full advantage of a beautiful view across a valley lake bordered by grazing herd of very pristine Pyrenees cattle, whilst the rest of us decided to take the longer route, heading up and out of the valley where we left will, to then descend far down into the next valley where we stopped at a Refugio for lunch, swiftly followed by a very REFRESHING dip in one of the mountain lakes. Incredibly beautiful but boy did it wake you up.

After lunch we had a challenging hike ahead of us – around 8km and 800m elevation gain, after having already covered around 9Ks and 500m elevation in the first half of the day. The afternoon was basically all one big sweaty challenging ascent. The first hour of so was a steep grassy incline, climbing out of the valley we had descended into for lunch. After that it switched to a long section of bouldering/climbing, over the large rocks at the bottom of the steep sides of the valley; before a final scrambling ascent up scree slopes to make it over the final section of the pass. It was certainly a difficult afternoon, but with each other's encouragement we made it and were rewarded by a most incredible view. But what goes up must come down, so the remainder of the afternoon was us being unkind to our knees and making our way back down into the next valley before finding Will basking in the sun at the refugio just before dinner. The Refugio this day (after the entirety of the hike) was ranked our absolute favourite, due to an excellent view, lovely atmosphere, dinner to die for and an incredible breakfast even including guacamole!

Day 4 was reportedly the most challenging day of the Carros de Foc trail; as told to us by our new acquaintance Orr who we had become friendly with as he had walked the same route as us over the past few days.

After the long route the day before though, we were ready to tackle anything! The day started very cloudy; as the refugio was so high up and a small weather front had come in, meaning we were walking through the clouds for the best part of the morning, which actually felt quite magical. On the cards for the day was 9km and around 750m elevation gain. After a delightful start to the morning walk through a picturesque valley we hit our elevation gain for the day. Before we started climbing, we had a field of boulder to traverse; after a little time playing slightly dangerous adult hopscotch we reached the base of the pass. The boulders stayed just as big, but the gradient severely increased. The boulders felt slightly endless for a while, going up and up and up, and there was even a short section where we hiked up a remainder of the winter snow/ice. It was tough going, and really got all our heart rates up, but my goodness was it worth it when we got to the top, greeted by an incredible view across the valleys and a well-deserved sit down and snack break! The descent was no easier, somehow being steeper than the ascent, it was slow and steady going as to not fall victim to scree buckling beneath our feet. Eventually the valley levelled out and we recrossed the tree-line into a beautiful afternoon stroll through grassy forested valleys next to winding alpine streams.

Arriving at Refugio Estany de long in the early afternoon, we headed to the lake nearby for some needed rest and relaxation. However, the weather had other plans for us, so it was far too cold for any of us to be invited in by the beautiful mountain lake, apart from Fred who took a very brave 5 second plunge. Instead of our planned swim, we headed back to the hostel and filled our evening with a million and two games of cards before dinner, and you guessed it more cards.

The next day was a similar 11km and 750m elevation. After waving goodbye to our favourite pinecone chasing dog belonging to the Estany long refugio we were gifted with a beautiful day of hiking. Although we had a decent amount of elevation, it was more of a slow and steady day. The path winded away from the refugio, up through a craggy tree-lined valley, we passed many a beautiful alpine lake and strolled along paths cut out into the side of the valley walls. But, of course, the Pyrenees couldn’t make it too easy for too long, so we still had a decent ascent over large boulder field to tackle mid-morning, but the view from the top ended up being one of the best.

Another steep ish descent took us past more and more beautiful valleys, lakes, streams, dams and even a disused railway track seemingly leading to nowhere, before a final short ascent up to our refugio for the night.

This refugio had a truly breathtaking view (I say this like it wasn’t true of the rest of them). It was our highest refugio of the trip, situated at 2,400 meters above sea level and looked across a vast valley in front of it and had a crystal-clear dazzling turquoise lake behind it. A recent renovation meant there was a ginormous window with a panoramic view of this incredible scenery from the communal area of the refugio, which was a real treat. But the biggest treat of them all was free hot water showers and wifi. In most refugios the hot water is chargeable, so we’d gotten by with ice cold showers or dips in the lakes, so you best believe we all took our sweet time enjoying the warming showers and becoming slightly more acceptable to society for one day.

We made friends with a lovely Dutch family of 5 with 3 rambunctious children at dinner and a lovely couple from Madrid who chatted with Archie as he flexed his Spanish skills over the rest of us. This refugio was another contender for our ‘favourite refugio’ top spot. Despite the hot water, free wifi, killer lunch selection and incredible scenic view; it was actually the addition of pasta to their soup at dinner that put them almost at the top spot; who knew these were the simple pleasures of hikers!

By this point we had pretty much covered all our distance and elevation, so the remaining two days were an easy hike back down towards the town of espot. We had a very chilled 6.5 km to cover and 300 m elevation to cover for the day so we all decided to really take our time and enjoy the scenery as we knew we would arrive at the refugio well before lunchtime.

Treated to a beautiful gentle ascent through picturesque valleys, past shiny lakes and stunning lookouts we took respite just above our final refugio of the trip, admiring it from the top of the valley where it almost looked like a house from the elvish kingdom in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The refugio was situated right on the lake so once we reached it around midday we took advantage of the shining sun to bask in the warmth and the beautiful views; which of course had to be accompanied by some ice cold cervesas (the first refugio to sell beer on tap may I add) and a bottle of Spanish wine as it would almost be rude not to. Again, we played about 400 games of cards before tucking in for one final night.

After a lovely final breakfast, we headed off for the final section of our walk with a massive 2m of elevation of the day, we knew it was going to be a tough battle for all of us (I’m joking of course).

The final section of our walk was an easy breezy 7km walk back down into the valley where espot was located for our pickup later that day. We had all come to the conclusion that walking down hills was actually far worse than walking up them (an opinion only vetoed by Will who felt strongly the other way), so the morning was accompanied by a decent dose of ‘are we there yet?’ jokes. We finally re-entered civilisation and the town of Espot at around 10:30, winding down into the centre of town along familiar cobbled streets and alleys. We treated ourselves to some seats in the sun in the centre of town next to a babbling Brooke and of course the supermarket!

It was hard to accept it was suddenly all over.

We honestly had the most incredible week hiking; the views, the refugios, the company, the nature – it was all perfect.

We have to give a massive thanks to the Randonneurs for sponsoring us so generously and making this hike a reality.

All of us would strongly recommend getting involved with the Randonneurs and getting out into nature and seeing what it has to offer, away from the hustle and bustle of all our busy lives!

The Randonnueurs walking group walk regularly in and around the South East. Walks are posted on the Always Alleyn's events page. And you can find out about other alumni sport opportunities here.

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