Tag: Walking

The tragic and savage history of l’étang d’Izourt

The drive to the start of the walk was dramatic enough.  Forested and craggy, our narrow road out of Auzat switch-backed steeply up the slopes in a seemingly endless series of hairpin bends.

And our walk began, an 1800 foot climb, upwards through forest then out onto the stony, rocky path towards the man-made étang d’Izourt, one of the many reservoirs in the area maintained by EDF to provide power. Once, a helicopter flew over.  Since there are no roads up there,  it was delivering either men or supplies to a team we could see labouring on a more distant slope.

The walk changed for me as I learnt the story of what had happened back in 1939 when the reservoir was being built.  Most of the members of the construction team at that time were economic migrants, Italians from the Veneto, and whilst working there, they lived in huts on site.

The weather conditions had already been atrocious for days when on March 24th 1939, a fierce blizzard struck.  There was no option for the workers but to hole up in their huts.  The storm was so fierce that huts B and C were destroyed from the weight of snow above, and the roof from hut A blew off.  The desperate men sought both to escape and to try to help their work mates, many of whom had died or been gravely injured by the tumbling buildings.  A nearby avalanche brought down the cable car linking the site with the works below.  The only way up was on foot, and rescue attempts were pretty much futile, though bodies and the injured were recovered as management attempted to evacuate the entire area.  On 28th March, a team of army skiers managed to get through and working into the night, brought down the remaining bodies and wounded.  31 men, 29 Italians and 2 French, were buried at the cemetery in Vicdessos on 31st March.  There they remain, as the families in Italy were too poor to manage the expense of repatriating the corpses.  The memorials at the lakeside are still the site of pilgrimage, thanks to the efforts of the ‘Ricordate-Izourt’ Association: locals and Italians who honour the memory of those lost workers.

We ourselves had started our walk in bright sunlight.   Spots of rain began.  Then the wind.  By the time we reached the lake, there were times when the gusts felt almost horizontal, and we struggled to find protection from the rocks to eat our lunch.  The more modern huts now on site have their roofs held on by strong metal cables, and we could understand why.

The sky turned the colour of lead, and we rejected the idea of exploring the lake in favour of hurrying down the way we had come.  We knew we’d be OK, but we also know to treat the mountains seriously and with respect – conditions can change very quickly.  We were fine of course, but that fierce wind on a warm October day gave us the smallest hint of what things could be like if you were trapped there in much nastier conditions.  Even now, the most efficient way of supporting the workers still on site from time to time is to get them and their supplies there by helicopter.  A noisy chopper whirled up and down the mountainside several times as we walked down, our journey cheered by a rainbow linking our mountain with the one next door.  Though we were sorry the weather had chased us home, we were grateful  not to have been exposed to  the dangers the mountains can offer from time to time.

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Château de Lordat

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Fourth of October.  The sun’s shining hot, but not too hot, high in an azure sky.  A small group of hikers stands outside a little church and gazes up a steep slope towards the ruins of the Château de Lordat.  And then sets off in the opposite direction.

It’s Anny who’s picked our route, and it’s designed to wind us up the hillside to the castle along chunks of country road, craggy uphill scrambles, dry-leaved woodland just thinking about exchanging green summer leaves for the ochre and russet tints of autumn, and the occasional tiny village – no more than a couple of streets encircling an ancient church.

Most of the time there are views upwards, towards the castle itself, or the cable-wagons serving the talc mines of nearby Luzenac, or across to the more distant mountains covered for the first time this season with bluish-white powdering of snow.  Or down, past thickly forested almost vertical slopes to craggy rust-stained rocky outcrops with occasional hamlets and villages scattered through the countryside. Near villages and farms, we pass walnut trees, and feel obliged to gather the recently ripened and fallen nuts – this is France after all.  We exchange recipe ideas.

Suddenly, we’re there. Lordat.  In high season, the village must be a tourist trap, but now we’re happy to saunter along the sunny empty streets, with their pastel-painted cottages and tubs of geraniums.  A final yomp and we’re at the castle walls.  It’s ruined and closed to the public at the moment, but the views in all directions make the climb worthwhile.

A meandering trek through the woods, trying hard not to kick over the delicately-stemmed autumn crocus, brings us to our lunch spot in Axiat, sitting outside its Romanesque church.  Mal and I are particularly taken by a notice on the door in French, English and Spanish. The English version reads: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen the visitors, we thank you for closing the door by going out’.

Afterwards, more craggy descents, sometimes through woods, at other times with more of those impressive views, along an ancient man-made winding path.  And back to the village we started from.  It’s a wonderful walk.  If you come to stay, make us take you.

In search of a druid – or a trout

Mont d’Olmes: local playground for skiers.  You wouldn’t travel any great distance to spend a holiday here, but for locals, it’s the ideal winter sports spot.  It’s a wonderful area for walkers too.  We’ve only just begun to discover the wealth of footpaths, mainly across truly ‘sauvage’ slopes, with views downwards to Montségur, Roquefixade, and northwards almost, it seems, as far as Toulouse.

It’s alright waxing lyrical though.  For many people living in the area many years past, and until the early years of the 20th century, these slopes were the places where they came for long hours each day, working both on the surface and by crawling through narrow airless tunnels, mining talc.

Talc?  Yes, that stuff you sprinkle on babies’ bottoms.  That stuff those Olympic gymnasts plunge their hands into before taking to an overhead bar.  That stuff that apparently still has many industrial uses, notably in the ceramics industry and for plastics paints and coatings.  This soft soapstone was found here on Mont d’Olmes and is still mined in nearby Luzenac.  Here though, all that is left are the gashes in the mountainside where the workings once were, and a few ancient trucks once used to transport the material down to civilisation.

Come and take the path we took last Sunday.  We walked in more or less a straight line, up and down hill after hill, as the path became increasingly rocky and impassable.  Our reward was the occasional handful of raspberries or bilberries, then a lunchtime picnic by l’étang des Druides.  No, sorry, l’étang des Truites.  Whatever.  Nobody seems to know which name is correct.  Some say the person making the first map of the area misheard and wrote ‘truite’ – trout – instead of ‘druide’.  We saw no trout.  We definitely saw no druids.  But we had a jolly nice picnic.  And I paddled.  And then ruined a perfectly good day, in which morning chill and mist had given over to hot sunshine, by falling flat against the rocky path, cutting open my face and chipping three teeth.  I hope the druids weren’t lining me up for some kind of sacrifice.

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Fire in the Pyrénées

Smoke from a forest fire high in the mountains above l’Hospitalet

We’re back in France.  It’s hot.  Very hot.  Humid too. And yesterday we returned Emily to Barcelona, the city she now considers home.  Barcelona was very hot indeed, 38.5 degrees Centigrade actually, which is 101.3 Fahrenheit in old money.

To get to Spain we crossed the  Pyrénées where, for the past month or so, fires caused by the extreme dry conditions have been fairly out of control: mainly in Spanish Catalonia, but spreading through to the Catalan area of France too.

Now though, there are fires near L’Hospitalet-près-l’Andorre.  This little commune is by way of being a frontier settlement between France, Spain and Andorra.  It’s unaccustomed to being newsworthy outside the pages of tourist brochures aimed at those wanting mountain scenery and an energetic walking holiday.

We knew that so far, and thankfully, no human settlements are at risk from the fires.  We knew too that all the walkers’ footpaths have been closed and so have the refuges, which offer basic accommodation and food to roughie-toughie hikers miles from normal civilisation.  We’d heard that more than 25 tourists had been evacuated from deep in the area some days before.  We didn’t expect to see from the road evidence of these fires, which have burnt and ravaged over 400 hectares of the countryside.

A helicopter reconnoitres.

But as we approached the village, traffic slowed.  Bit by bit, we snaked up the mountain road which, as it turned out, had been reduced to a single carriageway. A lay-by outside l’Hospitalet has been commandeered and enlarged by the army and fire services to provide a heli-port.  The fires are in thickly forested areas some 2400 metres high, and inaccessible to land-based fire-fighters.  Trackers (air-borne fire-engines) have come from Carcassonne, and scoop some of the water they need to quench the flames from our nearby reservoir here at Montbel. Expertise and equipment have been borrowed from other areas of southern France, and both army and fire service are on duty 24 hours a day.

Seeing some helicopters temporarily at rest together with their crews, brought home to us the real dangers of fighting these fires: they obstinately refuse to submit to man’s control in isolated and largely unreachable forests.  It was only on our journey home that we noticed, high above us, several fires at altitude, burning the trees and vegetation.  It may be a long time before the fire-fighters can go home, certain in the knowledge that this round of drought-induced danger to man and wildlife is really over.  The rain promised this weekend should help.

Army helicopters ready for action

My photos, by the way, are pretty poor.  This is because they were taken from a moving car

A Mediaeval picnic

Montségur in the morning mist

Saturday morning dawned damp and misty. This was fine by the 100 or so walkers who gathered bright and early in Lavelanet for the annual Marche du Tisserand. The walk, organised by the town’s Musée du Textile, celebrates the ancient ‘chemin pavé’ used by the cloth workers who lived in Montségur and walked this path to bring their produce down to Lavelanet to be sold. Saturday’s walk, the 27th, was for fun, and nobody would have had more than a light rucksack to carry. The full three hour trek (6 hours both ways of course), steep and stony at times, when laden with goods to sell one way and perhaps provisions for the household the other must have been a slightly different matter.

This time too, there were goodies at the top for the walkers as they finished their ascent. The mayor of Montségur was there with an aperitif for everyone, and we at Découverte de Terres Lointaines were there too, with a mediaeval picnic we’d been preparing .

Who knew chopping coriander could be such fun?

The cooking took several days, but the research, with the help of the Museum at Montségur, took weeks of researching, testing, tasting, rejecting, trying again… Still, eating’s always fun

Though curious, the walkers were suspicious too. What would a mediaeval picnic be like? Heavy, probably, with mountains of flatulence-inducing beans. Tasteless too maybe.

What a surprise then. Here’s the menu:

Spinach tart with lardons: we could have used nettles or any of a whole range of herbs, but settled on the more widely available vegetable option.

Poichichade: this herby chick pea paté, which we served on hunks of organic wholemeal bread, is a close cousin of hummus, but without the tahini. It went down well.

Broussade:  star of the show! A very tasty mix of smoked fish and curd cheeses. This really is one for anybody’s dinner table. Simple too. Recipe below.

Pets de nonne: basically deep fried choux pastry, puffy and light. Here’s the story. Back in the Middle Ages, the bishop of Tours was visiting the Abbey of Marmoutiers to bless a relic. Whilst preparing a meal in his honour, a novice let fly an unfortunate noise of the kind familiar to those of us who’ve eaten far too many beans. To cover her embarrassment, she busied herself dropping the choux paste she’d been making into some handy cooking oil so that it sizzled loudly. The pets de nonne were born.

Fromentée sucrée:  cracked wheat cooked with milk and honey. If you like rice pudding, you’d like this too

Gâteau de fruits secs:  a rich and heavily fruited pain d’epices style cake.

Just before the walkers arrived: The picnic on its thoroughly modern paper plates.

The congratulations when they came – and they came in quantity – were tinted with some astonishment:  ‘It was so good. We never expected it to be so tasty! Well done’.

But after eating, drinking and lots of talking, it was time to dance. Zingazanga had been playing loudly throughout the meal, but they turned their attention to teaching us simple steps and dances from centuries ago. Even I with my two left feet joined in.

Let the dancing begin

Broussade

Ingredients
• A quantity of as many varieties of smoked fish as you can decently lay your hands on: we used smoked salmon, herring and haddock.
• A more-or less equal quantity of brousse. This is a curd cheese made from the milk of sheep, goats or cows. A mixture would be ideal, and failing that, any soft curd cheese.

Broussade in the making

• Paprika
• Chopped dill
• Seasoning.

Process half the fish coarsely, and finely chop the rest. Mix with the other ingredients. That’s all. Enjoy with some good bread and a probably thoroughly un-mediaeval green salad.

‘East, west, home’s best’

When guests come to stay, Malcolm and I often pore over maps looking for some unexplored – by us – corner of our patch.  But in the end, what’s the point?  Our visitors aren’t sickly pale wraiths whose jaded walking appetites have to be tempted by novelty.  They’re happy with the solid day-to-day fare just a mile or two down the road. To them, in any case, everything is new.

We too are happy to revisit favourite walks.  They’re never the same.  The changing seasons bring different flowers, different cloud formations.   Mountains which perhaps were sparkling bluish-white last time we visited, turn green and purple towards summertime with just the odd small patch of snow near their summits.

Today, then, we went with Christine to visit our old friend Roquefixade, just a few miles away.  A steady climb through the juniper-scented woods and along a rocky ridge leads to a ruined château, once far above us, now somewhat below. Here it is.  Enjoy the views.  We did.

The village of Roquefixade far below. We were there half an hour ago.
The gently clanking bells on the Gascon cattle joined the birdsong as our accompaniment
First view from our walk of the Château of Roquefixade
Castellated rocky crags complement the ruined château
View through the castle wallls
The 11th century château may have had a 17th century makeover
View from the château
..and another one
Wind and rain have sculpted these ruined limestone archways
Conquering the castle and raising the Occitan flag
Flowers by the flagpole
Walking back towards the village, the château above us once more

Capital Capitelles

The first capitelle on our walk

We’ve been walking north of Carcassonne today, with our friends Barbara and Tim, holidaying in the Aude from North Yorkshire.  When we decided to go and explore the curious stone huts called capitelles in the scrubby garrigue near Conques sur Orbiel, we assumed they were something like the orris of the Ariège.  These too are small sturdy dry stone wall huts: but orris were used by upland shepherds.

The dry stone walls of the capitelles

Capitelles are quite different.  Following the formation of France’s Second Republic in 1848, everyone wanted something to call their own.  Here in Conques, the poorest members of society looked beyond the village where they lived for some way of acquiring a bit of land  and earning some extra money. They realised that the dry impoverished soils of the garrigue were good for only one crop: vines.  As the peasants started to work the land to plant their vines, they dug up stones – hundreds of stones.  And they used them in the first place to make low stone walls marking the limit of their territory.

That south-facing door’s not very big

After that they built small huts to shelter from bad weather.  These round or square huts are in the form of a dry stone wall rising to a semi-circular vaulted roof also in stone: no mortar, no foundations, a bare earthed-floor and a single small door, always facing south.  They were all built by1880 or so, and the peasants who built the huts and worked the land here would have done so in any spare time left from their ‘day jobs’ as farm labourers.  And this continued till the Fist World War.  Men left to become soldiers, and at much the same time phylloxera struck.  This double blow meant the area returned to uncultivated garrigue, and only recently have the capitelles been restored.  They add interest to a stony landscape characterised by scrubby vegetation, low trees and shrubs and bright ground-hugging summer flowers.  I’d have said distant views of the Pyrenees too, but today was misty and overcast, so Barbara and Tim had to take our word for it.

Close up of a carefully constructed roof

Above us only skylarks

The walk begins
Easy at first. Up through the woods, bilberry bushes everwhere
A first glimpse of the Pyrénées
…then another….
…. onwards and upwards…
The views come thick and fast
We’ve just come from there
Almost at the top
…and here’s the signpost to prove it
A view in one direction
…and in another direction
Massat’s far below
Tour Lafont
Horses on the homeward stretch
A final view

Every Thursday, Anny leads us on a walk. We might go eastwards to the Aude, south towards the higher  Pyrénées….or indeed travel in any direction, certain of a wonderful day’s walking.

Today we met just beyond Foix, and still in our cars, climbed…and climbed…and climbed,  steadily for 9 miles.  And at the highest point of the Col d’Uscla (1260 metres), we parked. Then we laced up our walking boots, slipped on our rucksacks, and climbed…and climbed…. and climbed.

It was steady rather than challenging, and several times, Malcolm and I remarked that if it were not for the  Pyrénées beyond, we could have been on the North York Moors, with added altitude and sunshine.  Endless expanses of bilberry plants added to the illusion. Each hill we climbed promised to be the last: but as we reached each summit, another hillside appeared in view.

Our eventual reward was at the Cap-du-Carmil, at 1617 metres, with a 360 degree panorama of the  Pyrénées. It was quite, but not perfectly clear, yet we could probably see 50 miles or more in any direction. The only sounds were from the skylarks, joyfully singing way above our heads. I’ll let my pictures tell, slightly inadequately, the story.

Down through more wooded paths, there was the town of Massat below. Once the Ariège’s largest town, its isolated position and failing industrial life means it’s slightly forlorn now.  But not when you’re looking down on it, several hundred feet below.

A quick sortie to the Tour Lafont. This was built in the 1830’s, at a time when 12,000 French soldiers descended on the area to fight the ‘demoiselles’, local guerrillas disguised for some reason as women, determined to maintain their rights to collect wood for fuel, rather then allow it to be taken for the industrial economy slowly emerging throughout France. Despite their superior numbers, the soldiers lost the battles, and there are only odd reminders of their presence at the time in towers such as this one.

After lunch, on through the woods, until we rejoined once more our path with its open mountain views. Horses grazed the short grasses, and seemed only mildly curious about us.

And then it was over.  Boots and rucksacks off: cold juice, a moist and squidgy chocolate cake (thanks, Anny!), a final chat…. and back down that narrow uninhabited 9 mile road to civilisation , home and a cool shower.

A ruined castle above spring flowers

We ‘do’ ruined castles here in this part of France.  And last Sunday we Laroquais from the walking group ‘did’ one that was new to us.

We went off to the Aude, near Rennes-le-Château, for a long morning’s march and a final energetic upward scramble to Bézu and the few castle ruins that are left there.

I was going to tell their story.  But then I found another blog to do the job for me.  Follow the link!  Some of the research here has been fostered by the – to me – unaccountable interest in Dan Brown’s books, but the page on Bézu is mercifully free of his influence.

I’d sooner simply share some of the photos of the day, many of them of the flowers we saw.  May, as in much of Europe, is a glorious time for them.  The dry, thin soil of this part of the Aude nourishes small, bright ground hugging plants: they show themselves off perfectly against a backdrop of alternately red and rather white earth.

I’m going to go on being lazy today.  If you can name the flowers so I don’t have to, I’d love to hear from you.

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On the path of Cathar shepherds

Montaillou

Yesterday we walked through Montaillou.  It might seem a tiny and unremarkable village now, but it’s the place that’s maybe done most to contribute to our understanding of turn-of-the-14th century village life in the Languedoc when religious strife between the Catholics and the Cathars was at its height.  This is a big subject: it deserves more than passing mention: a future blog maybe.

I’d read le Roy Ladurie’s book on Montaillou more than 30 years ago,and never dreamed that I might one day live in what the tourist offices are pleased to call ‘Cathar Country’.  So it was the shepherds of Montaillou I was thinking of as we began our Sunday walk.  They would come to the annual fair at Laroque d’Olmes, a good 40 km from where they lived.  They would drive their flocks long distances for good pasture, and as national boundaries meant little in these mountain zones, their fellow shepherds whom they met in their travels would sometimes be Spanish.

Blossom and snow

We too were climbing out of Montaillou.  The paths seemed unchanged through the centuries – short springy turf with early spring flowers pushing through. Pale pink and white blossoms busting open.  Narrow streams cutting deep channels through the turf.  Thick forest climbing the slopes.  Patches of snow made the going a bit tough from time to time.  It was warm and sunny, the slopes were steep and sometimes hard-going

Those peaks appear

Then suddenly…suddenly, and so unexpectedly, we reached the top of our first climb.  Around us, to east, south and west were the snow-covered peaks of the Pyrenees, glistening white against the blue sky.  Above us, skylarks called and swooped.  Later, Danielle remarked that she felt as if at that moment she’d received a special gift: that perfect view, the clean clear air, the singing birds which were the only sounds.  She voiced, I think, what we all felt.

A few of those unending peaks

We keep walking

More distant peaks

We hadn’t reached our highest point: we climbed onwards, always with those snow capped mountains at our side.  And then we were on top: handy rocks provided seats and shelves and we unwrapped and shared our lunches, lingering in the sun, drinking in the views for well over an hour.

Picnic spot

The afternoon walk begins

Soon after lunch, we turned our back on the snowy mountains.  As we faced the hotter, drier Pyrénées Orientales, the equally high peaks there weren’t covered in white.  Our path was downwards now, and soon we had to pass the ski station above Camurac.  Built long after those years when snow could be relied upon throughout the winter, it was an area of scalped earth, snow machines and all-but-redundant chair lifts.  My Montaillou shepherds certainly wouldn’t have recognised it.

The walk draws to a close

But then it was forested paths again, open pasture and spring flowers.  We finished the walk passing a collection of horses, Thelwell style ponies, and appropriately for Palm Sunday, a couple of friendly donkeys.  A good day.