If you are a randonneur passionné you may already be aware of a web site called www.Topopyrenees.com created in the last few years by a walker known only as Mariano. Working in Pau, Mariano fell in love with the mountains, but an almost catastrophic accident, leaving him stranded for over 3 hours, made him decide to create a site to enable walkers to plan their trips.
The site, a kind of on-line Wainwright, with routes, maps and photographs, has become so popular that it receives up to 150000 visits per month in the summer season. With 540 detailed routes, and about 65 new additions each year the site is almost a full time job now for Mariano, sometimes taking 30 hours per week to up-date.
