Dogged: How Adeline Hallot Crossed the Pyrenees with Two Dogs, a Cart and a Cat
I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.
Adeline Hallot had a simple plan: walk from France to Spain with her two dogs, a cat, and a hand cart. What she didn’t plan on was winter in the Pyrenees, a cart that kept flipping over, and eventually trading that cart for horses.
Adeline today with one of her horses.
When Your Van Dies, Start Walking
Adeline was living in her van, traveling around Europe with her border collie Dazou, wolf dog Aiyana, and Bengal cat Effie. She was battling Lyme disease and sciatica and had no energy. Then her van broke down on a steep highway in France.
The repair would cost more than she had. So Adeline made a decision: “I always wanted to go to Spain to recover my health. I might as well go now.”
She got rid of most of her belongings, bought a cart, and hit the road on foot.
The Cart From Hell
Adeline started her journey in Saint-Pal-de-Mons in central France with about 50 kilos of gear on her cart. The cart was so heavy it got stuck on rocks the size of apples. “I wanted to go 2,000 kilometers to Spain,” she says, “but I couldn’t even go more than one kilometer because my cart kept getting stuck.”
She made it two kilometers the first day. But something magical happened. “I woke up the next morning and I was a little sore but I could move much better than the day before,” she says. The chronic sciatica that had plagued her was improving just from walking.
Adeline kept going, gradually shedding gear. The dog cage went first. Then she settled into a rhythm: three hours of walking per day, about 15 kilometers. “My goal was not to impress other people,” she says. “I wanted my trip to last for a long time, so my strategy was to go slow.”
People Ask the Same Questions
As Adeline walked south through France toward the Pyrenees, people asked her the same questions: “Where are you going? Aren’t you afraid? Aren’t you afraid of being attacked?”
Adeline says the thing she feared most wasn’t other people—it was one of her animals getting hit by a car.
A Horse Named Gezi
As she walked, Adeline dreamed of her next trip: a journey with a horse through wilderness and mountains. It was a childhood dream. Then she found a breeder selling a young Russian Karbardin horse.
“I started to dream at night about horses,” she says. “And in one of my dreams, the horses told me I needed to call these people.”
Adeline bought the horse—a young mare named Gezi—for 2,000 euros, which was all the money she had. The horse joined her cart-pulling journey, though Gezi was too young to carry anything yet.
Winter in the Pyrenees
Adeline finally reached the Pyrenees Mountains. Instead of sunny Spain, she found herself on the cold, wet Atlantic side of the mountains. “It never stopped raining and snowing,” she says.
Then disaster struck. The cart kept turning over on the trail. Every time it flipped, the strap around Adeline’s waist hurt her back. Finally, one day a wheel broke. “There was no way I could go on,” she says.
Adeline set up camp outside Sangüesa and found help fixing the cart. But the winter weather got worse. Her sciatica came back with a vengeance. “I had to figure out how I could keep traveling aside from pulling my cart. That was killing my health.”
The End of the Cart
Adeline decided to teach Gezi to pull the cart. The training went well at first. Then one day, Gezi got spooked and galloped toward a busy road with the cart crashing behind her.
“I started running after Gezi,” Adeline says. “There was a field off to the left and I tried to connect mentally with her to tell her to turn left before she got to the road.”
Gezi turned left into the field. “I found her still fighting with the cart and there was blood everywhere,” Adeline says. “Her back legs were hurt really bad.”
The cart was destroyed. What had started as a cart journey had become a horse journey—exactly what Adeline had dreamed about all along.
From Cart to Horses
Adeline bought a second horse, a pony named Ezka, to carry her gear. She spent months training Ezka to carry a pack saddle. Through crowdfunding, she bought proper pack saddles and panniers.
That next September—a year after she started pulling her cart—Adeline set out again. This time with two horses, two dogs, and her cat Effie riding in a backpack. Her transition to horse travel was complete.
The Journey Continues
Over the next two years, Adeline traveled along the Spanish side of the Pyrenees toward the Mediterranean, then south toward Castilla La Mancha. Her menagerie grew to include a Spanish mastiff named Mut, a mule named Lunita, and even a chicken.
She navigated dangerous roads, crossed scary bridges, went through tunnels with her horses while cars whizzed past. She relied on what she calls “guardian angels”—the kindness of strangers who appeared exactly when she needed help.
After three years on the road, covering about 2,500 kilometers, Adeline ended her journey in Nerpio, Spain. She was tired and ready for a new chapter.
A New Dream
Today, Adeline lives in southern France on land she bought outside Collonges-la-Rouge. Her traveling companions—Gezi, Ezka, and Lunita—graze in a pasture beside the cabin she built. She’s studying agroforestry, planting a food forest, and planning to give tours on edible weeds.
When asked what she learned from her journey, Adeline says: “The hardest part was to start. My goal was to start a journey, follow whatever feeling I had, and stop when I thought it was time to stop.”
She started with a broken-down van, switched to a hand cart, and ended up traveling with two horses, a mule, three dogs, and a cat. None of it would have happened if she hadn’t taken that first step.
Follow Adeline
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For the complete story of Adeline’s journey, read Part 1 and Part 2.
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