The Call of the Mountains

With David and June here with us, we decided to have an expedition down to the Pyrenees which are some 4 odd hours away for us.  But, to make life more interesting, we detoured to Millau bridge on the way down.

As everyone will say, it is a very impressive sight, but we spent a good hour in the visitor's centre studying the information and the video on the building of the bridge. 

This excursion had added a couple of hours on to our journey but we arrived at our hotel at Vernet-les-bains in good time.  The hotel was a bit dated but clean but the receptionist/general factotum (and chef for all we knew!) put us all in the mind of Basil Fawltey.  He was full of himself, very talkative (in both French and then English) and insistent on giving us all the leaflets for the nearby attractions.  Having installed ourselves in our rooms we went off to find the nearest supermarket for some bottles of wine ... although by a mishap of organisation, we had to buy glasses and a corkscrew!!!

The next morning we set off early for the main purpose of our trip ... the little yellow train which runs on part of the line from Perpignon to Toulouse; specifically the part of the line through the mountains connecting some of the ski stations.  We had booked our tickets and so expected no problems but, of course, even this early in the summer season, some of the covered carriages were reserved for coach parties which meant that it was a bun-fight for seats in the open carriages!

We got on the train at its starting point of Villefranche-de-Conflent and went to Font-Romeu, a journey of an hour and three quarters.

We wound our way up in the mountains through picturesque scenery and increasing numbers of wild alpine flowers.  When we got off at Font-Romeu we had to use a taxi to get to the town as otherwise it was an hour walk uphill all of the way!  And once we were there we saw that it is really a ski resort and so quite missable at this time of year apart from the meadows of wild flowers.  

As there wasn't much to do we had a snack and then walked down to the station (going down was obviously within our capabilities!) but this meant that we were going to be too early for our train.  Fortunately no one even asked to see our tickets, let alone checked the time of our train so we were able to jump on an earlier one.  However this did lead to some anxious moments when we stopped three times at different very small stations/stops to pick up more passengers, which seemed to lead to some delays as the driver had to find spaces on the open carriages to squeeze them in.  We kept worrying that we would get turfed off but we kept our heads down.

The next day, before we came home in the afternoon, we went to the large fort at Villefranche-de-Conflent, a historic walled city which is a UNESCO world heritage site. We spent a very interesting morning there and I was delighted to see a number of school parties going round to learn of their heritage.  One of my highlights was when a small 8 or 9 year old french boy asked me in English 'please excuse me'!!!

Before we started back for home we needed to eat and Sue had seen a reasonable looking restaurant back in Vernet where we had stayed at the hotel.  And what a triumph!  The special for the day was Mussels Belgian style.

And as you can see we each had a bucket of mussels and a plate of chips between two!  The mussels were served in a spicy soup (with Cayenne pepper) with a bed of vegetables and they were fabulous!!!  AND they serve mussels every fortnight alternating with Paella.  The only problem is that it's quite a long way to go  ... but ...