Find the general
The general in this case was de Gaulle, who famously complained in 1962: “How can you govern a country in which there are 246 kinds of cheese?”1
I happened to mention this to my friend Gaby as he brought out the cheese, after the main course but before the dessert, as is the custom here.
“Wait a minute,” he said disappearing into a wardrobe. He came out waving a small envelope.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he said theatrically. Read the rest of this entry »
David and one of the huskies
Imagine sitting on the comfortable seat of a fairy-tale Christmas sleigh. The nodding reindeer glide across the gentle hills, only the quiet swish of the parting snow disturbing the winter calm. A red-and-white fur coat keeps out the chill.
No. It’s not like that.
Imagine, instead, a top of the range Harley Davidson motorbike. Imagine also – I know that this is will be difficult – that this machine, for which you have paid thousands of pounds, has two major faults. The throttle is permanently stuck down; and the handlebars won’t turn. Oh, and there is no seat either.
When I arrive at the Plateau de Beille, south of Carcassonne in the French Pyrenees, it is surprisingly quiet: no wind, no cars, and almost no people. It is just a few degrees above zero. The road has been cleared since the last snowfall two weeks ago and the pine trees have lost their covering, but everywhere else is blindingly white.
David, one of the two mushers at the Base Angaka, opens the gate to the compound where the dogs are kept. They are individually attached to metal stakes by heavy chains, just long enough to allow them to rub noses and just short enough to prevent them from fighting. There are twenty-seven of them altogether; cross-bred huskies from Siberian and Greenland stock.
Bear hunters at Prats de Mollo, Pyrénées-Orientales
The bear has seen her. It is only a few paces away and she is petrified, in both senses of the word. In any case she can’t run away – she is standing on the edge of a precipice. The bear scuttles towards her, rising to full height on its legs as it approaches. The girl screams wildly and puts her arms out in front of her. I have the fleeting – absurd – impression that they are going to dance. But the bear tackles her to the ground and they roll over, bumping down the slope at the edge of the precipice, arms and legs entangled. I hear a gunshot. For a second the bear and the girl stop moving. The bear looks around, nose balancing from side to side. Perhaps it has smelt something. Seeing me, it releases its grip and charges.
We are just outside the fortified town of Prats de Mollo. This is about as far south in France as you can get, near to the eastern end of the Pyrenees. There have been no bears here for decades but, in a mad parody of traditional bear hunting, once a year, in February, three bears are released to rampage as they see fit. Read the rest of this entry »
This is not a sheep
At the beginning of summer, as the snow melts and the vegetation awakes, yawning, stretching its arms, turning slowly from yellow to green, the lawnmowers are trundled out of their winter storage, for four months of intensive activity in the sunshine. According to a 1999 survey, there are 659,200 of them in the Pyrenees.
According to the farmers these are not lawnmowers, but real live sheep and cows which they are taking up to the estives, rough pasture at 1400m to 2200m above sea level. But in the parallel world of the authorities, these are full-time lawnmowers and snow ploughs. In the evening and at weekends they moonlight as care workers for disabled shepherds. Some are museum curators. In this world, they are there to cut the grass. They are there to reduce avalanches. They are there to help overcome the handicap of living in the mountains. And they are there to ensure the continuity of a traditional lifestyle. This is why the authorities pay out grants. Read the rest of this entry »
“88%,” Alain says. “Can you imagine it, from one year to the next?” You are still doing the same job, working just as hard, but your income drops by 88%!” The Agriculture Ministry has just released the official figures for the département of the Aude. In 2008 net income was only 12% of 2007’s.
Veronica and I have been invited to lunch at a shepherd’s hut on the slopes of the mountain which overlooks our Corbières village. We are looking down at the vineyards in the valley. The weather has suddenly turned cold and the vines have put on their autumn coats.
“The red, that’s Carignan,” Alain continues. Our host, now retired, used to grow grapes. “The bright yellow-green, that’s Grenache, the mottled yellow-brown, that’s Syrah. It’s all going to disappear. All those vines. And nobody has any idea what’s going to replace it.”
I have just read two books about France and the French: Lucy Wadham’s The Secret Life of France (Faber) and Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France (Picador). Although ostensibly they tackle the same subject, they are very different. What they both have in common, though, is being dressed up as something that they are not.
There has been a sheep market in Tarascon since at least 1158
At the end of September every year, for the last 851 years at least, there has been a livestock fair in Tarascon in the Ariège département in the Pyrenees. This year the sheep seem to be exclusively tarasconnais – the breed being named after the town – with impressive corkscrew horns. A farmer climbs over a hurdle, picks up the back leg of one and inspects her belly. She is heavily pregnant, like nearly all her sisters. Only a couple of concave mothers are already suckling their weak-legged lambs. The farmer offers 75 Euros per sheep. The seller refuses. “77,” he insists. The farmer moves on. The sheep hide their heads from the sun under the flanks of their neighbours. The air smells feisty, of sweat, wool and sheep shit. Here, apparently, nothing has changed for centuries.
August 2009. The name means the “lost mountain” and Mont Perdu – Monte Perdido in Spanish – is about as far as you can get from a road in the Pyrenees. Some early geographers thought it was the highest in the range and it took the pioneering Ramond several attempts to get to the summit. Even though it has now been relegated to third in the height tables, it is still a challenge. We could have taken the Spanish route – a 4-hour slog, climbing up the 1200m from the Goriz refuge in the babbling company of dozens of other walkers on a well-worn path. But we wanted to experience nature in silence, and walk along the empty moonscape ridge of the Cirque de Gavarnie. And we wanted a challenge.
The “Cathar” castle at Peyrepertuse
Thirty years ago this religious sect simply didn’t exist. But now Cathars are everywhere. Much more effective than Jehovah’s Witnesses or Scientologists, they can be found in the local supermarket, in motorway service stations, and even on Mediterranean beaches.
Although the Cathars were a significant force in the 13th century, they had long been relegated to the dustbin of history. Thirty years ago, to all intents and purposes, they didn’t exist. Yet this summer will resonate across 800 years with the echo of the drums which announced the Cathars’ destruction. This summer will tinkle to the sound of Cathar merchandising, as the cash registers take their tithe. The Cathars have been resurrected, modernised, trivialised and, above all, made profitable. A religion which rejected materialism has become a tool of that most modern, most powerful, of religions: consumerism.
For Catalans, the Canigou mountain is a symbol of their one-time nation which straddled the Mediterranean end of the Pyrenees. For some, it is also the emblem of a nation-in-waiting, to be reconstituted from the eponymous Spanish province centred around Barcelona, and the French département of the Pyrénées-Orientales.
A Catalan friend had invited me to the trobada which takes place on Canigou in June but was hospitalised a few days before, so I decide to go alone. I ring up the president of the organising committee. “Bring something combustible for the fire,” he says. “ It must be something which belongs to you, that’s important. And it must be labelled with where you come from.” He doesn’t question my accent and my evident lack of Catalan credentials.
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