Cayolar Outside Larrau, France
Trip Start
Apr 11, 2006
1
20
26
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
Larrau,
France
Monday, August 28, 2006
The first thing you notice while approaching the cayolar from Aussurucq, a long 40 kilometers up/down and inside-out, is the really rich, building landscapes of the Pyrenees. The cayolar is perched very high on a large mountain, with spectacular views all around. Or else, that would be the first thing you noticed if you could see through the blanket-thick fog that permeates the entire area. This gives an eerie, almost tense feel, though the tenseness may have been caused by the undulating drive up the mountain on precarious roads in a little, efficient Peugeot meant more for the city/highway
01 Pierre, His Dog, And Me
. We arrived to meet the daughter of one of Pierre's co-operators, who seemed to be very ready to give up her post and be done with the mountain work for the summer, though she did end up waiting for her father to pick her up for a few minutes afterward. The building itself was very modest but economical and capable nonetheless. The main features of the kitchen/eating area are its large fireplace and rough wooden table, the bedroom contains a twin bed and two singles, a very dusty loft has a couple of mattresses, and the bathroom rounds out the small house, which despite the best efforts of the fireplace, was almost always cold.
This brings us to the weather, which as already mentioned, was not so friendly upon our arrival, and did not change until the day we left. Fortunately, it wasn't overwhelmingly terrible, and we managed to get in some good hiking, made necessary by the tasks of gathering and distributing the sheep morning and afternoon, every day. The fog and clouds combined for some really incredible imagery, and the cool, damp weather kicked in to form an overall aura of being almost lost in time.
Sheep dot the landscape in almost every direction, and there is virtually no land in the area left ungrazed, which is very strange compared to my east coast mountain stereotypes
02 The Sheepdog At Work
. The interesting thing about the effect of grazing on a landscape is that allows you to see the area's surface geology quite well, and this is usually very interesting with folds, sinkholes, etc. While the shepherds are obligated to care for their sheep as described above, with someone constantly keeping an eye on them, cows and horses are allowed free range, but are far fewer in number than the sheep. The one nice day we saw at the cayolar made up for the other two with fantastic mountain weather: clear, crisp skies, comfortable temperatures, and the sun playing off the still-wet landscapes beautifully. We used this great weather, scenery, and company to hike over the ridgeline of the Pyrenees just into Spain, where things do look a lot different than in France, both in terms of natural and built environments. The altitude along the border, which follows the ridgeline, is roughly 5,500-6,000 feet. This was a very cool thing to do, and now I've driven, cycled, and walked from France to Spain.
The reason we accompanied Pierre up here to the mountains was so that Meredith could get a better idea of how the cayolar system works, and specifically, what the shepherds do there. Pierre's main daily duty is to herd the sheep into the corral, make sure everyone is accounted for (somewhere around 300-600 sheep), and get them going into the right place to eat all day long. His little white dog helped a bit in getting them headed the right way, but found it too tempting sometimes to follow commands to stop chasing them once his job was done. Other tasks are secondary to herding; for example, Pierre and I finally got the motor on the small hand-operated plow working so that he could scrape out the sheep waste from the corral. This was basically a walk-behind Zamboni for poop - something every homeowner should have.
Anyway, I think that's all for this one. Coming soon: a couple of Spanish Basque cities, Pamplona and San Sebastian.
