As some of you know, we are currently house-sitting for friends near Rimont, which is west of Foix, in the Ariege. The break is extremely well timed for us, as we are tired from our house search, which is now over (as we have found a home – but more on that in another blog). The house is next to an Abbey, which we plan to explore later in the week.
Today the weather was supposed to be overcast and maybe a few showers, so Wouter didn’t think a car trip was worthwhile, but having convinced him that a short trip to scout around would be good, we set off at a leisurely pace.
At St Girons we were supposed to take a particular road, after having carefully planned our route to avoid going over old ground and do a relatively short circuit. However, the best laid plans.... we (that is, the driver) took the wrong road as I was not yet navigating. But, what a lovely mistake this turned out to be.
After going through some familiar looking scenery we discovered the mistake so had to take an alternate route via Croix, Vic D’Oust, Oust and Seix (no smart comments please). At Vic D’Oust we found the most delightful old Roman church and stunning turret where Rapunzel surely let down her hair.
The route took us along the Cap de Bouirex, and the Col de la Core – checked on the map to find the contour lines were very close together. Our height at the Col was 1395m, but we saw that the Cap actually goes up to @2500m. The clouds shrouded the tops of the surrounding mountain tops, but we did catch glimpses here and there of animals grazing further up – they looked so small in relation to the background, so we had to imagine that indeed, there was a lot more mountain hidden in the misty clouds.
Lots of people camping there in their motor homes, and lots of other people going on walks dekced out with their sticks, backpacks and hiking gear.
We started our descent and found a small village which we’d seen from higher up which appeared to be very sunny – Ayet. The roofs in the villages of this region all had slate in varying patterns, which once again reminded me of my homeland. Also, going down to lower altitudes, we saw paddocks which had been ‘fenced’ by rocks – by no means there to keep out deer, bears, pigs or other wild animals, but merely to show the boundary from each other’s neighbour.
Among the trees we found many beech, ash, birch, and vow to return in mid-autumn to check out the wonderful colours we know they will be.
Lower down we saw some sheer rocks dotted by half a dozen goats who seemed to prefer grazing on bare rock to the lush growth around them. They were semi camouflaged by the colour of the rocks, so perhaps that is why they like it (maybe someone who knows goats well can let us know).
After Portet d’Aspet the mountainous landscape behind us, the hills were once again apparent to show us the way home. All in all we had a great day and were pleased at the wrong turn made early in the day which showed us some little delights we would have otherwise missed.
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