Above and below a small stream, le Bastan, coming from the town, rushing a bit faster than usual due to rainfall. In the photo below if you open it up you can just see a castle in the middle of the picture.
During our walk we passed this lovely church, Notre Dame de l'Assomption, which was in a hamlet outside of Luz called Sassis. The church dates from the 13th century, though the bells were made in the late 19th century and the porch added in the 1920s.
The main river called the Gave de Gavarnie just outside the town was very full! Mountain rivers seem to turn this milky grey colour after a lot of rain.
The following maps show our route on these next few days of our journey. The first goes from St Jean Pied de Port to Luz St Sauveur and just beyond. However, I can't show the entire route on one map because the next stop which is a mountain pass, is closed at the moment, so you cannot force the map to show it as a route! The Col de Tourmalet is shown in pink on the right below and on the left in the map below that. You can see the info better if you click on the map.
This shows from La Mongie, a ski resort just along the road from the Col to our next destination, Aran Park, which is back in Spain again.
We then drove up into the mountains to the Col de Tourmalet (2,115m) which we have driven over before. It's a popular route for cyclists as it is used for the Tour de France regularly, so the road is in very good condition because of that.
These pink flowers which are orchids caught my eye from further away, which brought me over to take a look. It's a very lovely, poignant memorial for people who have, or who have died from, cancer, which is left annually by a Dutch cycling team.
If you click on the photo below you can read more about it - it's just one para written in a number of different languages.
I was so disappointed during this holiday up on most of the high points that we went to because they had all been grazed, so hardly any flowers remained. Occasionally I would find a few sheltered by some rocks or on a steep bit that cows/horses couldn't get to, like these few plants here.
Bottom left is Alpine Chickweed (Cerastium alpinum) and in the other photos are Alpine Clover (Trifolium alpinum), the pink flowers, and what I think is Spring Gentian (Gentiana verna) which are the lovely blue flowers. It is definitely a Gentian even if it is not the Spring one.
A Wall Lizard (Podarcis Muralis) which has lost the end of its tail, which is regrowing as a grey stump.
Looking down at the ski resort of La Mongie from the Col. We had hoped to go up to the Pic du Midi which is an observatory at over 3,000m altitude which you take two cable cars up to, but looking at the live webcam, there was nothing to see but cloud up there. At least K and I have been up there before.
The same thing happened to us in the Basque country where there is a 900m high hill which has a rack railway up it, which on a clear day has amazing views over the countryside, mountains and the coast. We arrived at the station but thankfully before buying tickets, a lady working there pointed us to the webcam and all we saw was white! It's pointless paying good money to go up somewhere with no views. It's also very disappointing.
Coming down the other side of the Col in the direction of Spain.
The following day we headed to Aran Park, a wildlife park with mostly Pyrenean species, just over the border.
Apart from being cold and drizzly, it was a really enjoyable experience. Set on the side of a mountain, many of the animals are kept in really large areas on the mountainside that they can roam in. We walk inside their enclosures. Other small animals are in much smaller enclosures, but in most cases, are suited to their sizes.
The Griffon Vultures below were unable to fly due to injury from flying into overhead electricity cables/pylons, but they seemed content and were able to hop up on these perches. The deer I think is a Red Deer, and the cute animals are Otters.
I loved the mountainside so covered in moss with tree roots very visible growing over and around the rocks.
Top we have Ibex, which are wild goats, below left is an Isard or Chamois, a goat-antelope, and on the left is a Marmot.
Some Pyrenean mountain species have been hunted to extinction or near extinction and have been reintroduced from other parts of Europe (wolves, brown bear, some vulture species), or in the case of the Pyrenean Ibex which is sadly extinct, several sub-species exist in parts of Spain so these were used for the reintroductions.
A Brown Bear which was rather cute when it lay down for a snooze and the anomaly on the right is an American Ground Squirrel. Why they have them in the park (as well as American Red Squirrels) I have no idea. Children were allowed to feed the Ground Squirrels and the Marmots under the supervision of a staff member, so they were rather tame - so maybe they are a part of the attraction for children?
And then my camera battery died, and my spare battery was also dead. In future I will check my spare batteries are fully charged! So the rest of my photos were taken on my phone, and are not worth sharing which is a shame as there were a number of species of wolf, but they were distant.
This was taken somewhere on our way to Andorra, which was our next destination. A new European country tick for us all!
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