A Stay in the Mountains

    Well, we`re back from our annual stay at the Colonie de Vacances Vers les Cîmes. You may have noticed that there has been even fewer Arks than usual and this is the reason. We spend a week at the Colo each year. The holiday centre was set up by the Evangelic Church at Orthez as a holiday centre for children, but twenty years ago, a week for older campers was started before the season for children started, the Camp des Ainés. The church at Ortez has links with our church at Matha and we started going to the camp nine years ago.
     When it was first started, the Colonie consisted of wooden huts, which in fact are still there, used by the local farmer to house his hens! They have been replaced by modern, purpose-built buildings. An old Pyrenean barn was also used as an assembly hall by the campers but had become ruinous in the last few years. However, with the aid of a loan to be repaid by benevolent persons, including ourselves, the old barn has been entirely refurbished and is now better than new. We were particullarly pleased at the rescue of this attractive old building, whose entirely new slate roof should be good for another century. This is a picture from last year.


  But the real attraction of the site is its setting in a glaciated valley, with the snow-covered Gabizos mountain behind, a lower, grass covered hill in front, from where hang-gliders are regularly launched, and the wooded slopes of the Pic de Pan completing the bowl. The valley is accessed by a road running along a ridge some 100 feet above the valley which is, we have been told, a morraine left by the retreat of a huge glacier.
  The Gabizos is snowier than we have ever seen it, as the snowfall in the Pyrenees has been particularly heavy and late in the season contradicting the global warming theory!
  Well, having set the scene, I will leave the details of how we spent our days at the Camp for another blog, as Kim has woken and has come downstairs to drink her morning coffee and breakfast calls soon.  A bientôt!