L'escolan

Décidément, ça bouge sur le GR10 dans l’Ariège. Apres l’ouverture du nouveau gîte-auberge « La maison du Valier »  en voici un autre qui a lui aussi l’air sympa, le gîte d’étape « l’Escolan » près d’Ustou.

Refuge du Rulhe sur le GR10

Je reprends quelques infos du site du Refuge du Rulhe.

Le Soula

Le gîte d’étape “Le Soula” n’existe plus à Mérens. Par contre, Jackie et Henri Vidal vous accueillent au Gîte d’étape, chambres d’hôtes du Nabre ou 05 61 01 89 36.

Aménagement du GR10

Crête de Llasse, Pyrenees

Avant, entre le Refuge du Rulhe et Mérens, le GR10 n’était pas au top. Le chemin n’était rien d’autre que de vagues égratignures à la surface d’immenses blocs de pierre. Il y avait des cairns aussi bien que des balises, mais ils étaient trop mélangés dans ce paysage lunaire rouillé. Sautant, glissant, trébuchant, on était assez vite rompu.

Eh ben, une grande nouvelle ! Vincent Sabadie, à la demande du Conseil Général de l’Ariège, s’y est attaqué. Vincent nous a ouvert un nouveau sentier qui contourne l’Etang Bleu, en empruntant un itinéraire linéaire sous les Gazalassis qui ressort en haut de la Crête de Llasse. Un grand merci !

The refuge at Esbintz, October 2010

I first met Gila Chevillon when I was walking the GR10, at the hostel she now runs at Esbintz (also known as Esbints)  in the Ariège. In the evening she fed us a copious couscous. Sitting in her stone flagged kitchen at an immensely solid wooden table, there were several walkers and a young woman who wanted to be a shepherdess. She had come to work with Gila’s husband Francis for a few weeks. So the conversation centred around Gila’s early experiences as a shepherdess in the estive, the pastures high up in the mountains, where the sheep go for their summer holidays.

“That year was exceptional. It isn’t normally like it was for me, and isn’t like that now,” she insisted. “When I started in 1979 there were no shepherdesses. It wasn’t the done thing for a young woman to go up into the mountains on her own. What would an honest woman be doing up there with all those lonely virile shepherds? I overheard some remarks when I went to the market. I could have been upset, but it was too ridiculous. I decided to laugh them off.”

Previously she had taught biology and physical education in a secondary school in Germany. “At that time, I had plenty of money, everything that I wanted, but I didn’t want to live like everyone else. I wanted adventure. Up there, being in the mountains, was an adventure. I had a little French but I knew nothing about the Ariège and less about farming. It was wonderful and terrible all at the same time.”

The next day I continued my walk towards the Mediterranean, but I wanted to find out more so I arranged to meet her again.

Steve and Gila, October 2010

Accident

“In the summer of 1978, I became a shepherdess by accident,” she told me. “A really serious accident, on the mountain. A shepherd friend had slipped on the snow and fell through the crust – it was hollow underneath. It wasn’t a big hole, he only fell two metres, but he landed with his back on a rock and broke his spine. It was just chance that Francis and I went up to see him.”

Gila and Francis replaced their friend for the rest of the season. Francis had just finished his training. The next year Gila took the sheep-herding course and was sent off to her mountain, to look after flocks belonging to several sheep farmers. She kept a diary and has let me reproduce some entries here, in green.

After much preparation of the ewes over the last few days, so they are healthy and look good – we have painted all the collars for the bells – we are going up.

Around 11 o’clock in the evening I prepare the last rucksack and I am ready, excited by the prospect. Around 2 o’clock in the morning we set off. Shamboo [the sheepdog] goes ahead and we bring the ewes down under the full moon, which means that they can eat a little. It is magnificent. The bells sound so beautiful in the streets of Seix. Only the baker and two girls see us passing through. We wait for Jean’s flock until 4:30. Then the bells can be heard in the distance, far away, approaching slowly. Impressive meeting of the two flocks.

Cow and sheep bells above the fireplace at Esbintz

[later] With the stifling heat, the sheep already have their heads to the ground. We are the same, heads bent forward from fatigue and the weight of the heavy rucksacks. It is steep for me, sometimes I can’t take it any more. Three sheep overtake me, then I overtake them, an endless game which continues as far as the edge of the woods. Then I give up, sit down to let them pass in front of me. The prospect of the hut and a rest keep us going – and for me the prospect of being there.

Her estive was at 2400m above sea level. There were no roads and no walkers – the slopes are too steep and too isolated.

“I went up with the sheep on 10 July. It is always late in the season there, because of the snow. Earlier would be too dangerous, it was too steep. I left the car at 800m; the top of the estive was at 2800m. It was an immense area because there were rocks everywhere and not much in the way of pasture. At first I spent my days running around to stop the sheep going over into Spain or into the neighbours’ pastures. I did 800m of climbing several times a day. Often I would climb up a rock to look for the sheep and then have to spend half an hour getting down again. It is always much easier to climb up than down. It was too steep.”

She had four estives in France, south of Salau, in the shadow of the Mont Rouch (the red mountain): the Léziou, the Mail, the Maillet, and the Anglade. And there was one in Spain, el Pilas, south-west of the Pic des Mulats. A huge area, 6km east-west by 1.5km north-south. Five estives and 840 sheep.

[Four days after she arrived] I awake from a deep sleep at 5:30, drink a cup of tea, eat breakfast, hang around because the fog is still there. At 7 o’clock, I set off. It is clearing up and I look at the places where I saw the sheep yesterday. They all seem to have climbed up higher. Well, me too. Just before I reach the snow, the fog clears suddenly. I sit down, stupefied. 300 sheep lying down all over. They get up slowly. I wait for the sun with them. It is starting to be fine.

Little by little, the clouds are disappearing. I leave a score [of sheep] in the Coume and I follow [the others] towards the Clots de dessus, contented and happy, rewarded by the sun which I haven’t seen for two days.

The solitude of this mountain hasn’t yet overwhelmed me. I’m not afraid, but it is strange.

Gila’s hut was there, at the Clots de dessus, in a cirque (natural basin surrounded by high mountains) at 2000m above sea level. The farmers had made her a rudimentary shelter from a sheet of corrugated iron folded in two to replace a hut which had blown away. “I was supposed to have a mentor but once the hut had gone he refused to stay. The farmers bought me a tent, which would have been good for the Mediterranean but not for the mountain. We put that a little lower down.”

Once a week, on a Sunday, she brought all the sheep together to inspect them.

22 July. Sunday. I get up early. Francis and I are going to put down salt and attend to any sick ones. The sheep are in the rocks between the slopes of the Maillet and the corridor which goes to the Anglade.

Isards

Something delightful that I have never seen. Lower down on a snow drift I see 18 young isards racing around. They play, they butt each other with their heads, zig-zag rapidly, jump, run, fall. I burst out laughing. While the rest of the herd is eating, the youngsters are madly amusing themselves.

The round-up continues. I send Shamboo towards the col de Léziou…

Shamboo and I make one last effort and a hundred come down. Pity that he split them up and left a dozen. There is Bahia [the ram] with them, always sniffing after the ewes. He is a little thin. Eat instead of screwing all the time!

That’s one good bit of work done. Pleasurable work. It’s a week now that I have been waiting to see my sheep together again. We treat them efficiently for any problems. We find nearly all the animals that I had intended to find to check up etc, and lots of others who limping. I am sorry for little Romanov. Maggots in his feet.

“In the month of August we were allowed to take the sheep over the pass into Spain. I found a place for the tent in the rocks. There was a circle of huge boulders creating a little corral. A nest. I made a hearth against the rocks, with a stone above it. It was good.”

Monday 13 August [in Spain]. That’s it. They are no longer running around madly. They eat, their bells tinkle, everything looks fine. In the quiet of the evening, I always empathise with my animals. Consciously, I now think almost only of them. It is this moment that counts.

Bohème, one of the Esbintz patous, with her puppies and a lamb (2010). Photo: Anne-Marie Gutierrez

Although living in a tent at 2400m was exceptional, the daily life of shepherds in the estives had always been tough. This hadn’t been much of a problem when living conditions in the valleys were also rudimentary, but with the arrival of home comforts in the 20th century, fewer and fewer shepherds were prepared to tolerate the discomfort of the estives.

So, faced with a shortage of labour, the management of the estive was changing. By the late 1970s many farmers, instead of employing shepherds or living in the estives themselves, were leaving the sheep to fend for themselves, only visiting periodically. It was easier for the farmers, but not for the sheep. Sicknesses would not be noticed early enough and the pasture was no longer being managed. The sheep chose where they were going to eat, and naturally sought out the best pasture. The result was a mountainside with zones which were over-grazed and others, under-grazed, where inedible bracken was taking over from the grass. The sheep didn’t really benefit from their time ‘up there’, and there were excessive losses, particularly in the years when sickness struck. In the long term the estives were doomed.

The first response to the problem came in the 1980s with the Ministry of Agriculture funding new huts, encouraging a return to the old methods. Now, paradoxically, the renovation of the huts and the return of shepherds to the estives is financed by a programme to maintain and reintroduce brown bears, the shepherd’s traditional enemy.

Although bears mostly have a vegetarian diet, they sometimes eat sheep. Taken on the scale of the Pyrenees the number killed is quite small, but if it is your flock which is attacked, the result can be devastating. So the presence of bears was added to the other reasons for encouraging shepherds to stay in the estives. Sheep need shepherds. Shepherds need habitable huts.

But back in the 1970s, shelters in the estive were primitive: Gila was living in a tent. Nevertheless, things were going well, until the sheep broke into her provisions.

Disaster

Tuesday 14 August [in Spain] I have tidied up the mess that the sheep have made in the ‘kitchen’ [between the rocks]. They have eaten everything possible, including the last bit of bread which we had saved so carefully. Worse still, while I was tidying up, one of them had the cheek to hide behind a big rock looking at me. Another one still has the wrapper from the mushroom soup packet in her mouth. Without bread – Gilbert [one of the farmers come to give a hand] suffers and I do too. In the morning I ate a beetroot and drank water. Even so, we manage to laugh at our pitiful situation…

I see before me fat animals, getting fatter. And we are getting thinner…

[Gilbert goes to fetch some food, leaving Gila alone.]

I am hungry, there is nothing left to eat. Shit! My feet feel heavy, my head feels light, my heart wavers. The wind brushes me softly this evening as the sheep eat in the rays of the setting sun.

The next day things deteriorated again.

Wednesday 15 August. No breakfast, I’m hungry.

I haven’t understood anything this morning. Almost the whole flock has headed for the little rock chimney [towards France] passing by the plateau above the sleeping place.

Afternoon – thunderstorm, hail. 6 o’clock. Yet again, I am wet and lying on wet duvets. The water has come in. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. I don’t know what to expect with these animals. What a dog’s life, what a mountain. If only there was something dry and warm. Come on Gila, pull yourself together. Don’t cry.

So I go out. It is white outside. I want to see what my sheep are doing. When I arrive at the big rocks near the hunters’ place, I rush to find shelter. The hail hurts my face and the storm is now starting for real. Only think of the moment, don’t dream of somewhere warm. I force myself to experience the storm. There are some nice moments. A ewe and her lamb seek shelter with me. These two living things warm me with their presence and I calm down listening to them ruminate. An isard and her youngster run directly towards us. She looks in. It’s occupied…

I go back to the tent – water has come in and the weight of the snow is pushing the roof down. The night is difficult. I can’t stop thinking about the animals…. Finally when morning comes [Thursday 16 August] I go out straight away into the hail. Everything is white; no animals. Four hours or more to find them and bring them together. They have gone down as far as the stream, and it isn’t easy to make them go back up again. But I insist because I don’t want to lose them in the woods.

Friday 17 August. Hail, bitter wind. [Max, another farmer, arrives.] We bring the animals down and keep them nearby. I still haven’t understood, until the next day [Saturday 18 August] it snows again, the temperature drops again, the sheep go down again to the stream. Max stays higher up to round up what there is. I come back at midday with the last escabot [about 90 sheep] and we move out this time, with the sheep pushing on towards the pass [back to France]. It is a long way – two stragglers stay with me. I fall, I get up, I slip how many times?

“I didn’t understand what the sheep were doing. Three days in a row they had been telling me it was time to go back home.”

Sheep on the slopes of the Valier, waiting to go home for the winter

“I had nothing left to eat so I went down into the valley and then came back up with my husband to my French shelter. The “door” was gone and everything inside had been ransacked by the sheep. The sleeping bags, the toothpaste, the bottles of gas were open… they mess about, sheep.”

“I had completely changed. I no longer wanted to talk to people; I was happy up there with my animals. That was the only thing I had in my head. If one was ill, I would worry about her. Life down below wasn’t interesting. I didn’t have any contact either. No walkers. There were Spanish shepherds but I didn’t speak Spanish.”

Some sheep were sent down to the valley early.

Saturday 2 September. Half happy, half sad, I watch the white ‘snake’ take 200 animals away.

“It was hard. And it finished badly as well. It snowed in France. Lots. Most of the sheep went down a little into the valley but there were seven who were caught on a cliff by the snow. We had to use ropes to get them off. I couldn’t have had a more rewarding experience, nor a worse one. For me it was very, very beautiful. I was very alone, though. There were moments when it was hard, both physically and mentally.”

“How long were you up there?” I ask.

“Until 26 September. The next year we changed mountain.”

That was the last time anybody used the estive at Léziou.

Note: Gila and Francis’s hostel at Esbintz, Seix, Ariège is open all year round, but ring +33 (0)5 61 66 86 83 to book. They speak French, English and German. Email gilache@wanadoo.fr

Photos: Steve Cracknell and Club Rando, Lézignan-Corbières

Sheep at Esbintz, recently returned from the estive

On sheep in the Pyrenees

Intelligence

Sheep are born meteorologists. There was the time when Gila was in Spain and the sheep insisted on heading for home, knowing that it was going to snow. And at their current estive Gila and her husband know it is going to rain, even if the sky is clear, when the neighbour’s sheep come over the pass.

“A sheep is lost when it is on its own, but as a flock they are very clever. One of our neighbours changed mountain but the sheep found their way back to the old estive. Without ever having passed there before, they cut across the high mountain slopes to get to their usual pasture.”

Lambing

“Lambing isn’t like in England or Germany, in the natural season, in spring. In all the Pyrenees lambing takes place in autumn in the valleys. It’s too dangerous up there in the estive, even in summer. If it is cold, the mothers get udder infections or the lambs may die. If it isn’t the cold, it’s the heat. The lambs dehydrate very quickly up there because there is no shade, the sun is deadly. The mother goes away to graze, leaving her lamb. When she returns in the evening it is dead.”

But if the farmer miscalculates, some lambs may be born in the estive.

Saturday 25 August [She is rounding up the sheep to get them to go up higher] I send Shamboo into the Coume. A ewe attacks him. I recall him and go myself. A new-born lamb. Wrong place. I look at him admiringly and then he starts to suckle. I am filled with joy for this morning’s gift. I take the little one and his mother up the slope. When we finally arrive at the top it is 11h30. I put the little one next to his mother and the animals come to sniff this Titon – an unforgettable scene.

“I couldn’t use the dog anymore, because the mothers will charge a dog. Viciously. They are fearless.”

So it was slow work to bring the sheep, the lambs and the dogs off the mountain when finally the time came.

Sicknesses

In her first year in the estive on her own, Gila told me, something happened that even the old shepherds didn’t know much about. The spotted flesh fly (Wohlfahrtia magnifica) came back. From that year onwards it has always been present.

Sunday [29 July, with Max, a farmer, and Christine] What a massacre. The maggots are disgusting. Firstly we treat one of Jean’s animals. I cut off the rotten flesh, I dig, dig to extract these shameless parasitic bugs. Then I continue with the feet. I don’t understand what is happening with the feet. They are rotting and the fat white maggots are digging deeper. I feel sick, want to wash myself.

“My work was to search the patches of snow to find the sheep who had hidden themselves there because of that,” Gila explained. “When they have maggots they almost go mad; they itch all the time. They stop eating properly. They seek out cool places so I had to extract the sheep so that I could treat them. The fly seeks out anything which smells – wounds, the foreskin of the ram – and the larvae grow quickly. You have to extract them with tweezers and then treat the area.”

Piétin (foot rot)

“On Sundays I would bring all the sheep together to examine them and treat any problems. In the high mountains, mostly it is animals that are limping because of foot rot. It is a microbe which attacks when the hooves have not been trimmed. It can go a long way, destroying the hoof.”

Thursday 23 August. I must make some bandages. Here, there is not enough cloth so I tear up the arms of Peter’s shirt that I like so much. Jean’s sheep are limping terribly and those I can catch are in a bad way. Blood and foot rot. Maggots again.

Heat and cold

Sheep don’t much like heat. “That’s why, when it is good weather, you hardly see them. As soon as the sun comes out they want to hide. If there isn’t any shade to be had they will put their heads together and hide them. You can’t make them move. It’s very funny.”

Sheep shearing in Navarre, Spain

Left to themselves, the sheep would decide where to go early in the morning. “You have to get there just before sunrise. The sheep start to move the moment the sun arrives. They will start to eat straight away and if it is fine, in summer, at 9 o’clock they have finished. The sun is too strong and they will go somewhere to put their heads in the shade. They don’t eat between 9 am and 4 pm. They hide – when it is fine. If it’s foggy they will eat all day long. Otherwise they will only start again at 4 pm.”

Salt

“You have to put salt on large flat stones around your hut so that everyone gets her salt. It’s the moment when you see everyone together. I loved that moment, being together.”

It is also the moment to pass through the flock, looking at each sheep, checking for problems. At that time there were none of today’s metal enclosures which facilitate the task of checking the sheep.

“One day the sheep got into my rocky corral – my nest – in Spain where I kept my food hidden in holes in the rocks. They unearthed everything. When I got back one of them still had the last packet of dried soup poking out of her mouth. She was chewing her way through the plastic to get at the salt inside.”

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.

The snow on the ground has long since solidified into ice but the dogs seem indifferent to the cold. Most of them are jumping up and down excitedly, running in mad circles. A few are lying down, but only one or two are hiding in the rudimentary wooden kennels.

‘We built them so that the visitors didn’t think we were mistreating the dogs, but they hardly use them,’ David explains.

These are quintessential dogs. Dog’s dogs. They don’t walk, they run – up to 25 km/h. They don’t yap, they howl. And when they smell, they stink. The air is sickly sweet with the smell of wet hair, stale sweat, urine and excrement although, apart from the inevitable yellow stains in the ice, the compound and the dogs themselves look clean.

I go to stroke one of them but he leaps up at me. I have no choice but to take him in my arms and cuddle him, to let him lick my face. They can be affectionate, David tells me, but they have not sold their souls. Full of life and powerful, they are quite capable of living in the wild. They are obedient – in some ways – but not slavish.

David points out the dogs I will have on my sledge. Onyx, brown and beige with a nose like an Alsatian, is thin, short-haired, and quiet. She will be my lead dog. Sam is mostly black, much more stocky and already trying to knock me off my feet. He is part of the power for the sledge.

‘Start with Onyx and then work your way backwards along the traces,’ David instructs me. I undo Onyx’s collar from the chain and she pulls me across the compound to see a friend.

‘Lift her up by the collar. You won’t strangle her. Grip her between your knees and pass the harness over her head,’ advises David. Onyx is easy enough but I soon discover that the other dogs can drag me wherever they want to go, even with only two legs on the ground.

The sledge is attached to a tree but the dogs make fitful attempts to free it. ‘Stand on the brake before you unhook the rope. Otherwise they will disappear.’ I unleash the rope and the dogs instantly drag on the sledge. I have to put all my weight on the brake to stop them.

just starting out

I assume that David has grown up in the countryside with dogs from his earliest youth but he corrects me: ‘No. My father is a dentist and he doesn’t like them at all. When I was young I could have a lap dog at home but nothing bigger. He said that if I wanted a pack of dogs I would have to wait until I had my own house.’

‘And now that you’ve got your own house?’

‘We’ve got eight settees, but my wife and I only use one of them. Even the lazy ones and the fighters have a right to their share of affection.’

David is twenty-five, small and thin, with a girlish face and long golden brown hair. He has a disconcerting way of laughing at the end of every sentence, making me wonder if I have quite understood what he has said. He shows me his puny hairless arms to demonstrate that one doesn’t need to be muscular to control a dog sledge.

The three of us are waiting in line. David, with six dogs, followed by me and then Guillaume, another neophyte, with four each. The two other people who had booked in have already chickened out.

The sledge is built around a glass-fibre baseboard with two skids running along its length and projecting out the back. If the snow is solid the skids glide over the top of it. If the snow is soft, the glass-fibre base takes the weight. At the front of the sledge is a curved wooden bumper. ‘When you hit a tree it will deflect the sledge to one side or the other,’ says David. Strapped onto the base is a large blue waterproof kit bag for stowing provisions and, if necessary, injured dogs. For the moment the only thing in it is the anchor, a vicious looking device which serves as a handbrake. We are advised to stow it in the sack with the points facing down and away from us. Towards the back of the sledge is a vertical hoop, making the whole thing resemble a Victorian brass bedstead with the legs sawn off. This bendy wooden framework, described inaccurately as the ‘handlebars’ by David, seems rather flimsy for its purpose. Behind it, between the two projecting skids, is a small rectangular aluminium grid: the brake pedal.

The huskies decide that it is time to go. I lean back, as instructed, and release the brake slightly. The dog team surges forwards. My hands are welded to the ‘handlebars’. My feet, on the other hand, are precariously balanced on top of the projecting skids. But only for an instant. As soon as I have recovered from the shock of the acceleration, I jump with two feet onto the brake pedal again. The grid forces two spikes deep into the snow. After several metres accompanied by annoyed growls, the sledge shudders to a halt.

Huskies can pull twice their own weight, happily, all day long. My four are capable of pulling 200kg – about twice the weight of me and the sledge put together. And they are fresh.

I lean into the first bend and swish round it, one foot on the brake, the other on the skid. Then the dogs charge down the hill on an icy slope between rows of pine trees. The sledge is catching up with the dogs and the traces are dangling dangerously between their legs. I hit the brake to avoid disaster.

The next bend is sharper. I lean into it but straighten up at the last moment to avoid attaching my head to a tree trunk. The sledge swerves wildly and nearly hits the trees on the opposite side of the track. After several more bends, my heart beating ferociously, David pulls up his sledge and we slam to a halt behind him. I remove four of the six layers of clothing I am wearing.

Off we go again. This time through the forest on a path which seems hardly wider than the sledge. These dogs live to run. At each corner David calls out ‘gauche’ or ‘droite’ and the lead dog starts tugging, almost walking sideways in her efforts to persuade the others to follow. Onyx mostly follows David’s tracks but every so often she takes a short cut, dragging me into drifts and over bouncy snow-covered rhododendrons. The dogs run round cavities where the snow has partially melted. The sledge flops into them and then flops out again. Miraculously, I don’t fall off, but by lunch time my arms are aching.

After eating, David, Guillaume, and I add one dog to each of the sledges.

‘La montagne va plumer l’oie – The mountain is going to pluck the goose,’ says David looking at the sky.

The dogs are beside themselves with excitement. This afternoon, the bends seem to be sharper and the dogs less disciplined. We leave the relatively smooth tracks of the morning and on the first serious bend I lose control of the sledge and it falls over on its side.

‘Don’t let go of the sledge, or the dogs will run away,’ David has warned us. ‘But don’t feel that you have to go over the cliff with them, either,’ he adds comfortingly. So I cling on to the handlebars, shouting ‘Stop’, being dragged through the snow until the dogs decide to pull up. Still dizzy, I scramble to my feet and right the sledge. The dogs race off immediately, wrenching my shoulders out of their sockets. I have to jump on the skids or leave go. We are off again. The next time, my coccyx finds something hard to land on. The time after, I decide to play dead. The dogs are not fooled and after a very short time they start tugging at the traces.

Meanwhile Guillaume has stamped so hard on his brake that it has broken in two. We find another abandoned sledge a few metres away and transfer his kit bag to it. Guillaume is approaching retirement but is as tough as the sea boots you can buy at his ships’ chandlers and boat repair shop. His daughter has given him a weekend dog sledding as a Christmas present. He thinks it will make a change from snow shoeing, which he finds rather tame.

Scientifically speaking, the lower your centre of gravity, the more stable you are, or so I believed. So, as well as leaning back as far as possible, I bend my knees. The huskies charge down the hill. At the bottom, there is a hairpin left-hand bend with the obligatory pine tree and adverse camber. I navigate the bend somewhat shakily, but when I stand up again the sledge slithers sideways, one skid off the ground. I can see myself shooting over the low cliff on the outside of the bend so I lean in the opposite direction and the sledge falls over. Guillaume jumps on the brake to avoid me and is thrown over in turn. We are both pulled along the ground by our arms until the dogs decide they have had enough. After another three crashes I conclude that science can’t explain everything. Standing up is better.

By now the clouds have come down the mountainside and visibility is about ten metres. It starts to snow. I have no idea which way David has gone, but it doesn’t really matter. The dogs have no problem in following his tracks.

At five o’clock it is beginning to get dark and we make our way to the camp where we are going to spend the night. Guillaume and I intend to sleep in one of the igloos. David, who has done it all before, prefers the hut. The dogs prefer the stakeout. Attached to a rope stretched between two trees, they sprawl on the snow, panting. We fill their bowls with biscuits, pouring water onto them and leaving them to stand until most of it is soaked up. ‘It’s the only way to get them to drink,’ explains David. Some of the more obstinate dogs tip their bowl over and leave the biscuits to drain before eating them.

Lifting up a straw bale to block one of the entrances to the igloo, Guillaume cries out in pain. Subsequent attempts to bend over make him gasp in agony. I wonder if he has cracked a rib but no, he thinks he has torn a chest muscle in the crash on the hairpin bend. Now that he has stopped moving, the muscle is seizing up. We prop him against the living pine tree which is the central structural element of the hut and pass him things as he needs them.

‘I’m going to go to bed early. I think I will be better off in the cold,’ he says. Getting into the igloo is not much fun because the low entrance tunnel forces him to bend over. I unlace his boots, take them off, and ease his legs into the sleeping bag. ‘No, it’s worse,’ he gasps, ‘and if I need to get up in the night I won’t be able to get out.’

Guillaume follows me out of the igloo, literally screaming. Back in the hut he sits on a bench, hyperventilating, his eyes watering. We suggest calling the emergency services.

‘No, it’s alright. Just help me get into my sleeping bag. As long as I don’t have to get up and go outside, I’ll be fine.’ I empty my plastic water bottle and cut its top off, in case he needs to use it in the night.

David, is stirring his cassoulet. ‘What do you do with the dogs in the summer? How do you keep them in condition?’ I ask.

‘In summer they run wild around the prairie and then in September I start training them again. I have a sledge with three wheels which they can pull over the grass. When they get a bit stronger I have a Renault 4L. I’ve cut off the roof and most of the bodywork and I attach them to it. The advantage of the car is the brakes.’

Somewhat later the dogs start to howl and I go out to investigate. The sky has now cleared. A group of walkers with snow shoes is crunching through the forest in the bluish snow-refracted light of the full moon. They disappear over the hill and the dogs fall silent, leaving me to appreciate the dépaysement, the magic of being ‘elsewhere’.

Opening the door to the hut, I overhear David talking quietly on his mobile: ‘C’est la vie’. Something bad has happened in the other world. His accountant has fallen 300m in the Alps; he is in hospital with broken ribs. He managed to stop himself just ‘that far’ – David spreads his arms apart – from the cliff edge. ‘C’est la vie. C’est comme ça.’

The morning is crisp and cloudless. A snowmobile comes to take Guillaume back to the base where a doctor will examine him. David and I attach the dogs to the sledges. ‘Allez,’ he says, and we head off up the hill. He calls back to me: ‘nous nous sommes réduits comme une peau de chagrin.’ I translate this – inaccurately – as: the group has shrivelled up like a dry chamois leather. Certainly I feel about as supple as one, still tired from the day before.

On the slope I push the brake a little too hard and the dogs stop momentarily. When I release it the sledge surges forward but, unnoticed by me, Sam has taken the opportunity to squat and relieve himself. The other dogs drag him forwards, waddling, legs akimbo, spraying indelicately. I jump on the brake and wait until he has finished before releasing it again. But the huskies have picked up the scent. At the slightest deceleration, one or other tries to squat down or to drag the sledge towards a tree. The dogs not involved in this activity seem to take a malicious pleasure in forcing the sledge forwards. In the Tour de France the cyclists haven’t the time to stop and find a convenient bush. The difference is that the cyclists wait until there is nobody else in range.

David points to a hill: ‘Let’s go that way.’ The hill isn’t very high but the slope is steep, 40 degrees or more, and the snow loose and powdery, impossible on foot without crampons and an ice axe. The dogs are soon up to their shoulders in it, forging their way through, their feet scrabbling to find a foothold. We hang on to the sledges, walking between the skids, being hoisted upwards. I feel as though my arms are only held in their sockets by my skin, the residual strength in my muscles having already been used up.

I tell David, and admit that I can’t continue, so we head back to the base, well before the intended hour. Back in their compound, the dogs are disappointed. One of them shows his disgust by breaking the thick iron ring which attaches him to his stake.

I’m over 50. I think to myself that a red Ferrari would be much less effort on the muscles and perhaps wouldn’t confirm quite so clearly that I am no longer 25.

Exciting? Yes. Exhilarating? Yes. Enjoyable? Hmm . . . most of the time. Will I do it again? Definitely. But next time I’ll do press-ups for three months beforehand.

• This is an extract from If You Only Walk Long Enough by Steve Cracknell, available from Amazon.co.uk and elsewhere. More details. [The photos were taken on a different occasion.]

PS.  Not everybody is as inept as I am. I have since talked to several participants who didn’t fall over once. But if you are looking for something less energetic try a baptême, a ‘taster’ – where you sit on the sledge, swishing around a circuit, safe in the hands of your musher.

The Base Angaka on the Plateau de Beille is near to Ax-les-Thermes in the Ariège. They propose a range of activities, from 45-minute ‘tasters’ to weekends in the wild. Other activities in the area include all types of skiing, sledging and hot spa baths. You can also build and sleep in an igloo.

Access: Carcassonne airport (126km, 2 hours) or Toulouse airport (138km, 2 hours).

Website: www.angaka.free.fr.

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.

The production of meat, milk and cheese is incidental. If the aim were to raise sheep and cattle for food, the authorities would be encouraging farmers in the mountains to descend onto the plains where the grass is literally greener – all year round.

I have been reading a university thesis (1) about livestock farmers in the Ariège département, in the central Pyrenees. The author, Corine Eychenne, emphasises how much livestock farmers here (and in other mountainous areas) depend on grants. In the Pyrenees they account for over half their income. (2)

The first of these “gardening” grants dates to 1974. A disastrous avalanche in the Val d’Isère in 1970 had buried 39 youngsters staying in a winter holiday centre. The long grass had prevented the snow from sticking to the hillside. In order to avoid a repetition, cows and sheep were to be employed as lawnmowers, and not just around ski resorts. The grant became known as the prime à la vache tondeuse (the cow-lawnmower grant).

Then in 1993, the Indemnité compensatrice des handicaps naturels (natural handicap compensation) was introduced. The aim, according to the ministry of Agriculture, is to “compensate the increased production costs of farming in these zones. The subsidy plays an important role in the rural world by encouraging small farmers in difficult zones, thus contributing to harmonious rural development.”  In 2008, mountain farms throughout France received an average of 4,250 euros each.

The question is whether the grants contribute to sustainable development or simply help to sustain the status quo. The mainstay of livestock farming in the Pyrenees for many years has been the production of broutards which are then sold to Italy and Spain for fattening. Broutards are young sheep and cattle which go up to the mountain with their mothers and live in a natural way on an organic diet of milk and grass. And then they are sent abroad and fattened on the cheapest feeds imaginable! (3) The various food crises have greatly increased demand for organic products and consumers are prepared to pay the price. Yet there is no recognised organic fattening system and Pyrenean farmers are reluctant to slaughter animals which are not “finished”. Only a few brave souls are starting to sell broutards directly to consumers.

In this parallel world, the sheep and cows have become lawnmowers, snowploughs, care workers and museum curators. I can see a bow-legged Pyrenean shepherd holding his organic sheep-lawnmower by the back legs as they limp across the hillside, preening their museum-piece landscape. At the end of the day, the sheep nuzzles up to the shepherd who feeds it a MacDo hamburger, and talks of the old times, when living in the mountains wasn’t a handicap, but an adventure.

1. Corinne Eychenne (2007) Hommes et troupeaux en montagne – la question pastorale en Ariège. Paris: L’Harmattan.

2. The average income of a livestock farm in the Pyrenees in 1995 (the most recent statistics at the time Eychenne was writing) was 12,500 euros. This was complemented by 13,900 euros of subsidies (111% of income).

3. Eychenne (2007) pp. 238–9.

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.

But this illusion quickly evaporates when I spot a nearby mini-van, one side entirely covered by an angry poster. Stark black writing on a yellow background announces a demonstration scheduled for Saturday. A stout man in black tee-shirt and black trousers thrusts a black-and-yellow leaflet into my hand. Without saying a word, he shouts: “danger”. He tells me that he wants to protect the tarasconnais sheep from bears : “I threw blood at the town hall in Arbas in the demo in 2006.”

Contented sheep

He was given a suspended sentence of a month and a half in prison. He and nine other protesters – out of the 300 present – were selected by the authorities to pay for the damage.

The mayor of Arbas, François Arcangeli, had agreed to bears, imported from Slovenia to boost the local population, being released in his commune. The demonstrators also burned a wooden statue of a bear, daubed walls with graffiti, and would have attacked the mayor’s house if it hadn’t been protected by the police.

The association ASPAP, which organised the 2006 demonstration and is represented here today, is fiercely against the bears. Although there are fewer than 20 in the whole of the Pyrenees, in areas where the bears habitually attack, shepherds and their employers are angry at the devastation of their flocks. For a shepherd who cares for his flock an attack which kills or maims one, two, ten, twenty sheep in one night is unbearable. In an exceptional case in 2005, 160 sheep frightened by the presence of a bear stampeded over a cliff. Even shepherds who live with their flocks and use patous (guard dogs) (as recommended by the authorities) are not spared.

The official figures for 2008 for the French Pyrenees (far too low according to the ASPAP) show 137 sheep attacked, 5 rams, 20 lambs, 1 cow and 40 beehives. Two-thirds of the attacks were here in the Ariège, although it only accounts for about a quarter of the French side of the mountains.

Blockade near Luchon, 1 May 2006

These figures need to be put into perspective. Half a million sheep live in the French Pyrenees. On the first day of their summer holidays this year there was a thunderstorm. The lightning killed 132 of them in the Ariège.  In July two stray dogs in the Couserans (also in the Ariège) killed 92 sheep, a calf, a foal and a goat. According to Alain Reynes (of the pro-bear ADET) 50,000 sheep die each year from attacks by wild dogs, falls, and lately the blue tongue epidemic.

There is also the question of compensation. For a sheep killed by a bear the owner will receive 126-180 Euros according to the type of sheep and its age. [In contrast, when a sheep is infected with blue tongue disease which is sweeping across the Pyrenees at present, the farmer only receives a paltry 46 Euros.] Of course, it is not always possible to prove that the sheep was killed by a bear…

Setting aside the statistics, there is another aspect to the rejection of the bears. The ASPAP sees the arrival of (foreign) bears as unwarranted (urban, Parisian) interference in local (rural) affairs. Some participants in demonstrations evoke the 19th-century “War of the Maidens” , when local pressure kept state interference at bay for over half a century. The full name of the ASPAP, which translates as the Association for Preservation of the Heritage of the Pyrenees in Ariège, shows that the dissent is as much about identity and decision-making as about bears.

Propaganda or reality?

In 2009, bear attacks in the Ariège have been half those of 2008 and pro-bear groups were claiming that the government’s 2006-2009 management plan was beginning to work. The bears were becoming less problematic. Even the shepherds were calming down. More bears could safely be imported.

And then, in an interview on France 3 television, Jean Lacube, who sits on the committee of the ASPAP, surprised members by announcing that two bears had been illegally killed in the Ariège. That was why the attacks had decreased. The members were not surprised by the killings, but by the indiscretion, which launched a police operation to find the culprits. Was he ratting on his friends? In the October bulletin of the ASPAP, he explains: “I wanted to throw a big stone into the millpond so that the minister would hear the splash. On the one hand so that she would realise that if there were fewer attacks, it was for other reasons [the bears had not become vegetarian!]. And on the other hand, so that she would realise that the bears had not been accepted locally.” The investigation was inconclusive. No bodies, no weapons, and no confessions.

Sheep contraceptive

Whatever the truth of the matter might be, the splashes in Lacube’s millpond show that the 2006-2009 management plan has failed on all counts. The Pyrenean bear is still heading towards extinction – the last native female, Cannelle, was killed by a hunter in self-defence in 2004. Franska and Palouma, two of the newcomers, have died in accidents. The shepherds are still angry. And the debate has polarised into pro-bear and anti-bear, degenerating into insults and threats.

The man at the stand tells me: “We have pulled out of the meetings with the authorities. They were loaded against us. Whatever we said was ignored, but our presence gave them a legitimacy. Afterwards it was said that all the diverse opinions had been considered. We’ve learned from the Alps. The same thing happened there with the reintroduction of wolves. The shepherds were invited, and were ignored but they had been consulted,” he says, ironically.

François Arcangeli, the mayor of Arbas, fears that the new minister responsible for the bears will back down from her predecessors’ pro-bear stance: “I hope that France won’t celebrate the International Year for Biodiversity in 2010 by trying to bury the plans for the bears.”

Alain Reynes was quoted in the Dépeche du Midi, Lot edition, 6 October 2009, p 8.