Pâques en famille

Easter weekend was spent en famille! This is what it looked like at Hôtel de la Brèche de Roland! There was of course tons of chocolat, and l'agneau pascal (the paschal lamb)... There also was une tempête de neige (a snow storm)....

Gèdre, Millaris, la centrale hydroélectrique de Pragneres

After the morning at the Parc National and the pique-nique, we go down to Gèdre and Millaris, which houses l' Office du Tourisme and a very interesting interactive présentation de la culture, l'histoire and la géographie de la région.
We end the day at la Centrale Hydroélectrique de Pragnères, which is the largest in Europe, and produces électricité through processing the water of the Gave de Gavarnie, the local river. When it was built in the 1950's, it was the largest construction site ever, with 20,000 workers in permanence there for 8 years! They had to built a little city, with cement factories for the building of the dam, and housing for all the workers! In France, hydroélectricity represents 20% of all electricity produced, with the remaining 80% coming from nuclear plants. The plant at Pragneres can start producing electricity within 3 minutes, where a nuclear plant takes about three hours! It is also green energy, and the whole valley, because in part of the Unesco designation, is completely green.

Gavarnie, la Maison du Parc National des Pyrénées

It is Friday morning (my blog was abandoned during the Easter weekend, which we spent with our families, and I confess I felt like doing nothing, and just visiting with my mother and my sister Odile and her children!). We are at Gavarnie, at la Maison du Parc National des Pyrénées, where we see a very interesting film about the Parc National and the role it, and the gardes forestiers have to play in the Vallée des Toys, la vallée de Gavarnie-Luz.
The gardes, who are in some ways similar to rangers, have three principal tasks in the Parc: policing, maintaining, and communicating. They police by making sure the rules of the Parcs Nationaux are upheld by all the visitors, they maintain by working on the infrastructure of the Parc, but also by cataloging, making inventory of the flora and fauna of the Parc, which helps them preserve the balance in the eco-system of the Parc, and they communicate by giving specific tours of the Parc according to the seasons and what the groups wish to experience, by teaching classes and working with visitors and all the local schools.
We were amazed to see that the gardes really are scientists, each with specific missions in the Parc, and that they take notes and make reports which are then sent to the central command in Tarbes. They are complete athletes who are mountain-climbing to reach difficult areas where they need to count an endangered species of flowers noticed growing high on a cliff, or skiing to reach an indigenous species of bird and observe them nesting etc...The local collège (middle school) has a programme which sends students to work with the gardes for a few weeks.
After this programme très intéressant, we have a pique-nique in a meadow near Gavarnie's church. In the cemetery near the church are buried or honored with a plaque all the most famous mountain climbers of the Pyrénées, who are called Pyrénéistes, and not Alpinistes!

La Ferme des Cascades

After le pique-nique à Gavarnie, we take the bus back to Luz and la Ferme des Cascades (the Waterfalls Farm), where Duncan's host family will give us a tour, and explain to us the traditional lifestyle of shepherds in the mountains. Monsieur Gabriel and his British wife raise les moutons (sheep), les chèvres (goats) and les vaches (cows) in the ancestral farm. It is a dairy farm (une ferme laitière) which produces mostly butter, cheeses, and a specialty of goat's milk yogurt. We are enchanted with the animals, and Monsieur Gabriel's explanations on the functioning of his "green" farm, where the roof of the barn where goats and sheep stay in the winter is solar-powered, and the local brook provides enough electricity to run the milking machines and give warmth at night! The cheeses are not pasteurized (lucky for us cheese amateurs....waving to Duncan's parents who are awaiting their fromage with trepidation!). We learn about good and bad bacteria, and how the feed of the animals is a crucial element in the cycle of milk to cheese production, about rennet, about the difference between good hygiene and aseptic conditions....
During our visit, a baby goat is born, and we are entranced by the little one, vigorously licked by the mother, and who is already on its tiny hooves and suckling.....Some lambs were born that morning, and already gambol around the mothers.. Everywhere we turn there is a lesson, always unexpected, and always breathtaking!
In the summer months, for about six months, the animals are brought to les hauts plateaux above the line of the forest, and they stay there in the good mountain air, with plenty of tender grass to eat, until the shepherds come back to get them in November...There are stone barns up there for the shepherds and the visits of the families now and then. This ancient tradition is still honored by all the "éleveurs", the farmers who raise dairy animals. It is called transhumance.

Le Cirque de Gavarnie

Le Cirque de Gavarnie is on the registry of world sites protected by UNESCO. It is the site of a magnificent glacier, with the highest cascade (waterfall) in Europe, frozen in winter (420 m high - roughly 1,280 feet)! We had a memorable hike with Bernard, guide de montagne professionnel, followed by a lovely pique-nique on a promontory facing le Cirque. The absence of fresh snow did not allow us to go snoeshoeing (faire des raquettes), but our disappointment was soon assuaged by la beauté du site, the brisk walk in the wonderful mountain air, and some of the légendes, histoires, et explications sur la géographie, la géologie, la botanique et la biologie our guide Bernard shared with us.
We saw lovely trouts in the torrent (le Gave de Gavarnie), some vultures indigenous to the Pyrénées, and several local flowers heralding the spring (rhododendrons, primevères, hellébores or Roses de Noël...) Bernard pointed to us un izard (a mountain goat native to the Pyrénées and similar to an ibex). We leaped in the bed of torrents from stone to stone, we hiked, we observed nature, we listened to Bernard enraptured...We learned about plaques tectoniques, the big crash of two of them which produced les Pyrénées, the fact that the area at the time had been un océan (which explains the numerous fossiles d' animaux marins found in the roches). We heard the legend of Pyrène, the daughter of the King of Cerdagne, with whom Hercules fell in love, and how he created the Pyrénées as a worthy tomb for his beloved after her death....In brief, Bernard enchanted us all morning with his knowledge and his good spirits.

Mercredi à Luz, la neige, les champions

Wednesday is traditionally a day off for French children, but le Collège des Trois Vallées holds some classes, as they have to share several specialists with two other towns, and scheduling becomes difficult over only four days of school.
Il a neigé!!!!!! (It snowed!!!!!)
We came to le collège for three morning classes, after which we took the group to explore the local Eglise fortifiée des Templiers, a fortified Templar church: a defense wall surrounds an enclave of land around the church, where the villagers would come for refuge during raids from Spanish brigands.
Students then went to their respective families, some to ice skate, and later go to the local bowling establishment.
The big news have been first the ski accident of François Thevenet, who was hosting Jordan. Today François came out of the hospital and rejoined his family, and Jordan came to have lunch at my sister's with us, before going back to his family, at l' Hôtel de la Brèche de Roland (the whole region is seeped in the legends of Charlemagne, who passed les Pyrénées at this spot with the Sarraceens on his heels, and whose nephew Roland of the Chanson de Roland's fame opened the mountain with his sword to let Charlemagne and his knights pass through) .
François is now well, but his family had quite a scare.
The other big news is that the snow boarding team of le Collège des trois Vallées is now Champion de France! Needless to say, I am very proud of my nephew Ambroise and of the Collège! This is quite a feat, because the Collège is quite small (only 6 classes) and competed against largest collèges such as the one from Chamonix, which boats the Mont Blanc' s slopes!
We are all celebrating!!!!

A Lourdes

Today is our visite à Lourdes, and we pick up our pique-nique lunches and board the bus. A very agréable ride through la vallée takes us there. We first visit le château médiéval, a little over a thousand years old, and built on the remnants of a Roman fort. It is a vast enclave containing many buildings, all very well preserved, a parade grounds (we imagined it filled with chevaux et chevaliers, keeping Tony in mind!), a botanical garden full of herbs, plants and flowers known in those days (we remember the Cloisters...)
Le château also contains le musée des Pyrénées, with une magnifique collection of everyday life artifacts and implements, costumes, etc... Le château domine la vallée, and stayed impregnable throughout its history because of its situation. The view from the top of the keep is unbelievable!
It is then time to walk down to les Sanctuaires et la Grotte miraculeuse, a nice walk where kitsch religious objects capture our interest! We arm ourselves with little bottles to be able to bring miraculous water back to NYC.
I want to add, for all the catholic families, that le Pape Bénédict announced that all pilgrims who would come to Lourdes in this 2008 Jubilée year (which marks the 150th anniversary), would earn indulgence plénière (Lachlan asked if this would extend to the whole family, and was told it would...)
This was a time of reflection for all of us, of asking questions, of enjoying moments de paix intérieure, and we all came back refreshed from the experience.
Students earned an hour of free time (their behavior around the sanctuaries and the pilgrims in prayer having been exemplaire), which they promptly spent exploring Lourdes ' chocolate offerings.