A Spanish sortie

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Yesterday, Mal spent the day up a ladder, changing light fittings. This may not sound a very big deal to you, but you have to remember that some of our ceilings are up to 15’ high, that the fittings are French, and therefore unfamiliar, and that wobbling about on the top of a ladder isn’t something that adds to general well-being…especially when things go wrong. Today, the forecast was good, and it isn’t again for many a long day (though, as in England, the forecasts can be wrong - so far to our benefit). I was keen therefore to be at the potager digging the veg. plot, planting onions and arguing with yet more lierre. Ever the martyr however, I decided that Malcolm Needed a Break, and suggested a sortie to Spain. It’s only some 2 hours away, so no big deal, and what took our fancy was a small area called Llivia, which is a Spanish enclave within France itself, though near the border. Allegedly, it got marooned in a treaty of 1659, which stipulated that Spain must give up the villages of the Cedagne. Everyone apparently forgot that Llivia is in fact a town, so wouldn’t change sovereignty when the villages did - so Spain it was, and Spain it has remained.

However, it was more fun to travel than to arrive. After Ax-les-Thermes (Touristy. Nul points), the roads began to climb in earnest. We could see the hairpin bends winding above us, sometimes 4 ribbons of road above and the same below the stretch we were travelling on. We hit the snowline and enjoyed wonderful vistas of snow covered peaks and valleys stretching before us.

Then we hit Spain. We knew we’d arrived because of the endless modern developments built to support the ski industry which sprawled out of the first Spanish town we got to, Puigcerda. We hurried out of Spain and back to France, but only in order to reach Llivia, which we discovered was just as bad. It probably did have its charms, but we were more interested in lunch, and were caught in the no-man’s land of its being 1 o’clock (Church shut. Museum shut). Too late to go back to France (12.00 sees the average French man hurtling home from work to fill his stomach, and by 12.45, most restaurants have run out of all the best choices), and too early for the 2.00 Spanish lunch break. So back to Puigcerda. It turned out to be a much nicer place than we had given it credit for, with ancient tiny streets with lots of bars and eating-places. So we installed ourselves in a small restaurant on one of the untouristy squares, and joined the locals in tucking in to a selection of dishes of the day.

Poked about a bit in a couple of pottery shops, looking for pots for the garden, but frontier towns probably don’t represent good value, so set off towards France and home. We called in at Llo, because it’s a wonderfully picturesque village, with ruined castle above, and splendid views of the Pyrenees, and because we wanted a walk in the warm sunshine. After that though we set off home more purposefully. I got to feel quite anti-skiing, seeing more and more settlements both in Spain and France spoiled by the incongruous sprawling settlements thrown up to support the skiing industry, and the ski runs, often covered in artificial snow, slicing through the forests.

The road back to Axat however, leaves skiing country behind. We traced the path of the river Aude as it grew from being a tiny stream to being a river of consequence. To do this, it’s carved deep gorges in the craggy rocks, and we followed its path through tall steep forested cliffs, with few settlements- no room for them in such a narrow valley. Awesome and magnificent. After Axat, we found a minor road to avoid the main route home via Quillan, and this too led us between rocky gorges, gradually becoming lusher and greener as the land levelled out towards Belesta and home.

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Photos

A view of the river Ariege
at Ax-les-Thermes. The town is often very pretty actually- just very touristy with it

Col de Puymorens
And we went even higher than this....

Another view from the top
Just to prove we were actually among the remnants of deep snow

The road to Axat
You're not allowed to stop where the gorge is steepest and narrowest, so this gives no idea really of how startlingly sheer and high these cliffs are

More view from the road
The river Aude did all the work of carving this gorge