Who Are We ?
In 1984 a small walking holiday company was created, based in the beautiful Val d’Azun in the heart of the French Pyrenees. This company, named « La Balaguère » after the warm breeze that blows upwards from the Sahara to the Pyrenees, offered guided walking trips led by a small group of friends with a huge passion for the mountains.
Little by little La Balaguère expanded and more than 35 years later we help over 13,000 people every year enjoy walking and cycling holidays in the Pyrenees and further afield, to the most unspoilt areas of the world.
In 2018 we launched a new and exciting project. Purely Pyrenees is the English language branch of our business, offering self-guided and guided trips, walking and cycling from Spring to Autumn and snowshoeing in the Winter. Using our decades of experience we created a new range of holidays designed for English speakers who come, maybe for the first time, to experience the best the Pyrenees has to offer. Our focus is always to provide highlights, iconic places to visit, wonderful itineraries, authentic hotels and, of course, tremendous cuisine.
Purely Pyrenees and La Balaguère are now owned by the UCPA (Union des Centres Sportifs de Plein Air) which is a non-profit organisation in France that specialises in making outdoor sports holidays available for all. We are still based where we have always been, in the Pyrenean village of Arrens-Marsous.
We are very proud of our Pyrenean chain and of the knowledge that we have of it, amassed over years of providing guided and self-guided holidays. You can be sure that if you travel with us we will do everything we can to make sure you have a wonderful trip.
We loved the holiday! We walked from Collioure in France along the coast to Cadaques in Spain.
We had never done a walking holiday like this before (normally we self-organise) and we were really impressed at how smoothly all the arrangements worked out. All the hotels were lovely and our luggage was always waiting for us on arrival. Everyone was helpful and friendly. We particularly liked the Hotel Playa Sol in Cadaques: a fantastic location and comfortable room with a balcony overlooking the bay.
The walks themselves were very well planned: right distance, lots of fabulous views, places to swim en route and interesting places to visit. It was very easy to find the paths, particularly witht he help of the 'road book' provided to guide the walks - it was so detailed and accurate that there was no real need for a map - we used a compass only once to check we were heading in the right direction, but that was on a very misty day in the hills.
We had to make an earlier than planned departure from Cadaques because of protests against the imprisonment of Catalan politicians. But PP contacted us in advance and organised this for us, the hotel were really helpful and it all went smoothly. We were impressed by the level of care that PP provided.
So we are already thinking about the next holiday and hope to be booking again for next year!