Oeil d'Arros - Our Local Rainforest

One of the things we were most looking forward to when we jumped ship and moved to the Pyrenees, was taking advantage of not being tied to a nine to five existence and being able to go and do stuff whenever we wanted.  Or the weather was up to it.  Or we had the funds to do it.

In the first eighteen months or so we ran around like fools making the house habitable and the garden productive.  In between we gave ourselves time off for good behaviour, roaming around the local countryside on foot, pushbikes or motorbikes. 

Then the house was finished, well habitable anyway, and the garden no longer took up every waking moment, once the spring sowing frenzy was out of the way, at least, and we suddenly had buckets of free time.  And somehow, because we can nearly always go out tomorrow, we seem to do less and less. Far less than when we had to make the most of a weekend.  Let that be a warning to you if you are planning early retirement or a change in lifestyle.  It can be really difficult to get going when you have all the time in the World.

Fortunately we have friends and family who visit and need to be entertained and others who drag us out for our own good when they are staying over here.

And what a gem they took us to last week.

We live in a little side tributary of the Arros valley and one of the things we'd planned to do was cycle or walk up to the source one day.  We hadn't quite worked out where it was on the map but knew it had to be somewhere between us and the wall of mountains.  Fortunately we had friends who'd stumbled across this place before.

The path we took followed the banks of the river as it narrowed between rocky cliffs or rushed through the forest in a steep sided valley.  The river was beautiful, pure and clear, but the woodland was something else altogether.  Everywhere was draped with moss, more like the Louisiana swamps than a French woodland.  This is your temperate rainforest.

 It was a bright sunny day when we visited, but this place must be so oppressive in wet, dark weather.

The Oeil d'Arros, the source of the river, was no less impressive, especially after the long wet winter and spring we've just had.  While a small stream ran in from the left, the bulk of the water simply surges and bubbles out from under a rocky moss-covered overhang.

This may look like the river flowing by, but in fact it is running straight towards you from beneath the large rock in the centre of the shot.  A few paces further upstream and the quantity of water coming from underground becomes obvious as the trickle from the stream running down from the mountain was negligible.  And it was quiet.  We could hear the birds again as the roar of water was left behind.

The walk was educational, too; information boards explain the trees you were looking at (or more likely are behind you!), the wildlife you may see and the industrial heritage of the area, water-powered saw mills and iron age metalworking.  We even saw a salamander, although sadly squashed in a tyre track.  But now we have the challenge of spotting a live one.  Maybe tomorrow.

A special place, not half bad company, and with cake and wine to end the day what more could you want?