Dippers up in the mountains

This was the first time we had been up into the Pyrenees since we bought our house! We'd stayed near Tarascon-sur-Ariège after we made an offer on our house and enjoyed the mountains for about five days, but since then, just not got around to exploring further. 

So we chose to show my brother around in the area within driving distance from here in one day. We first headed to Tarascon which is only one hour from home, and stopped to have a walk around and explore the centre of this small town. 

We headed up to the clocktower to have a look; the backstreets were very quiet although there were still a handful of tourists.

It wasn't too much of a climb up there and the views were well worth it! The 'Castella Tower' was erected in the 18thC and built on the site of an old medieval keep.

It's certainly a scenic town. The river is the Ariège, from where the departmental name comes. Most of the departments in France are named after the major rivers running through them.

After we had a wander around we set off along the Ariège river valley to the next small town of Ax-les-Thermes, but decided to go higher into the mountains to L'Hospitalet-près-l'Andorre, which is very close to the border of Andorra. We found a layby to have our picnic lunch but by then it had started to cloud over and as we went higher it got colder and colder. The river was full of rocks and was perfect Dipper territory, so we spent some time searching, but in vain. However, finding several clumps of Autumn Crocus (Colchicum autumnale) in the layby picnic area almost made up for it.

Hospitalet was nothing to write home about, in fact, it was downright ugly and a waste of time apart from using the convenient public loo which happened to be beside where we parked! By this time the temperature was down to about 13C so we were very happy to head back down to warmer temps! Though for the first time ever I started to feel a bit icky from the winding mountain roads. Strange, as I have never had travel sickness before, except on boats.

Ax-les-Thermes was higher up than Tarascon-sur-Ariège and not as attractive, but the main feature for us was the Ariège river rushing through the town, with another couple of small rivers running into it. The Lauze river runs into it just uphill of this bridge, and in the picture below this one, you can see a stream called the Oriège joining it too.

It was quite interesting looking at the backs of the houses and seeing their little terraces and balconies overlooking the river. I do wonder what it is like in winter when the rivers must be much fuller, and especially in the spring when the snow is melting! I would be a bit worried having a house so close as the stream must at times be up over the basement walls of the houses!

Again this was perfect Dipper territory so we spent some time looking at the river. I first noticed some Mallards in the small stream, then we saw the usual White Wagtails (Motacilla alba) flitting from rock to rock, wagging their tails. We also saw a female Grey Wagtail (Motacilla cinerea) looking very handsome with her bright yellow plumage, but I didn't get a chance for a decent photo. The next two photos are Keith's as his were much better than mine!

Photo credit: Keith Allen

Photo credit: Keith Allen

Suddenly though, guess what we saw? Yay, a Dipper! In fact there were several of them and we spent quite a lot of time watching them and taking photos. We then had a little explore of the 'town' (more of a village really), but there wasn't a lot to it. We then went back to Dipper watching. My poor brother was probably bored to tears, but hell, we hadn't seen a Dipper since we lived near Geneva (which was before our 15 years in Brittany), where we had them in the local stream across the road from us! For those reading who don't know this, Dippers (Cinclus cinclus) are birds that can actually swim under water and dive under searching for their food. They are continually diving in and jumping out onto the rocks - so very hard to get shots of unless you have a super fast shutter speed (which I couldn't do because it was cloudy and my camera is rubbish on an ISO over 400). I just took loads of photos in the hope and did get some half decent ones I was pleased with. 😀 The main thing was that we got to see them.

Photo credit: Keith Allen

I had never been so lucky before to watch them diving and popping out of the water - they do this continually and they are very fast! This water is really flowing quickly too; it may not be very deep but they must really be strong! When standing they bob up and down as well like a number of other birds which I always find amusing.

Finally we dragged ourselves away from the Dippers and headed in the direction of home. First though, to get out of Ax, we ended up going higher and higher up a very winding road to the Col de Chioula at 1432m altitude, and after a little while we found ourselves in the Pays de Sault. This is the part of our department, Aude, which is in the actual Pyrenees chain. It's a plateau area between 990 to 1310 metres altitude and is very rural with arable fields on the flat areas.

We had decided to head to a large lake, Lac Montbel, that I see on the map south of home, just to see if it was of interest. It wasn’t really, although as it’s a reservoir it was extremely low which is a bit worrying. We could see loads of old tree roots from the drowned trees when the reservoir was created. I think the crumbling tarmac track must have been a drowned road. Someone was swimming but in order to enter the water you had to wade through mud, no thanks! There is a hide or ‘observatoire ornithologique’ marked on the map at the small end of the lake on the other side of the barrage where the water is full, but time was getting on so we decided to leave that for another day. 

Then we headed home, having had a wonderful, scenic and interesting day out!