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PYRENEES REVISITED - Week 5 News |
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We left
France over the 1500m Col d'Ares and began the steady sweeping descent through
high alpine pastures down to the Catalonian mountain village of Camprodon.
Since this was the birthplace of the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz
(1860~1909) we felt we should stop to investigate. The rather woe-begone
village has 'rediscovered' its illustrious son as a much needed tourist
feature, but you could see why Albéniz left to seek the bright lights of
London, Paris and Nice. We felt however we should do our bit to support
Camprodon, by including
this week a piece from Albéniz' piano and guitar suite
Iberia. Although out of the higher mountain area, we wanted to visit the medieval Catalan town of Bessalu, and being a weekend, we were glad to find the beautifully laid-out and peaceful Masia Can Coromines campsite, kept by a French- English couple. Bessalu was no disappointment: the 11th century fortified bridge (painstakingly restored after being dynamited during the Spanish Civil War) is a magnificent entry into the winding narrow streets, dark-arcaded shops and sunny squares of the medieval hilltop town (Photo 2). Today's sleepy atmosphere belies its illustrious past as the dynastic seat of the Counts of Bessalu who once ruled over this small and briefly independent principality. After our stay at Can Coromines, we camped near the village of Montagut for a mountain walk up into the wooded limestone country of the Alta Garroxta. Buzzards circle overhead, and the area is criss-crossed with stone-paved tracks and elegantly arched stone bridges used previously by muleteers. Our route now took us westwards over the 1000m high Col de Coubert; the surprisingly good road gained height steadily giving panoramic views over wooded hills to the high mountains of the border area, then dropped down through a beautiful long valley to Ripoll, a modern soulless town, all appartment blocks and glossy car showrooms. We were glad to pass straight through, up the Freser valley back into the higher mountains to camp just outside of Ribes de Freser at what surely must be the campsite of the trip (so far that is!) - Vall de Ribes. We have camped in some spectacularly memorable settings, but Vall de Ribes must rank among the best, particularly at this time of year when it was so peaceful. The site was terraced up the hillside, looking out across a side valley (Photo 3); in the evening, the lights of farms on the opposite hillside twinkled in the long dusk and the lowing of grazing cattle with their clanging bells echoed across the valley - it was blissful. Our reason
for coming up to the Ribes valley was both to experience the
inspirational mountainous area of the Puigmal range, just south of the Franco-Spanish border, but also
to ride on the Cremallera. What's that, I hear you ask? To give you a
clue, Cremallera is the Catalan word for zip - no you're not going to get
it. The Cremallera is a rack and pinion mountain railway, which runs for 12 kms
up grades of 15% to the mountain and ski resort at the head of the
Nuria gorges. Now to forestall any facetious comments about this degenerating into a
train-spotting web site, you need to have had the sort of intimate
experience of the Nuria gorges as we did: the Cremallera provided
convenient transportation for reaching the high point of the 1000m descent down
the gorge using a section of the GR11 Pyrenean long distance path. The
alpine flora which accompanied the
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