Pyrenees Trip June 2024 - Part 9 Luz St Sauveur, the Col de Tourmalet and Aran Park

We then drove a fair old way to Luz St Sauveur which is about halfway along the Pyrenees. The town wasn't anything special, just fairly typical of one close to the mountains with the usual sports shops and ski hire places, and we walked through it on a circular route from our camp site.

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 a Prairie Dog from America, which is a kind of ground squirrel, like marmots. (Edited with thanks to Marianne for telling me what it was called). Why they have them in the park (as well as American Red Squirrels) I have no idea. Children were allowed to feed the Prairie Dogs 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!

French Friday: the zoo at the Chateau de la Bourbansais

Somewhere along the line I picked up a leaflet for this place, and having not visited a zoo or wildlife park in at least a decade, I thought it might be rather fun to go when my brother came over. This chateau is not far from Combourg so only about half an hour's drive from home.

So a few weeks back we had a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon spent here. I was quite surprised by the chateau itself, which is quite a big 'posh' one for these parts!

You can pay extra if you wish to have a guided tour of the chateau (which we didn't) or just pay to visit the zoo and the attractions. A whole afternoon is needed if you want to make the most of it. You could eke it out to a whole day if you take a picnic as there are picnic areas and a large playground area for kids with bouncy castles etc (I wasn't allowed - not by the staff I hasten to add, but by my OH!).

Foodwise - well the leaflet said there was a restaurant, so originally I thought we'd go and eat there. Until I discovered the menu on their website. OK, if you really fancy ham sandwich, ham salad, ham and chips, sausage and chips or saucisse galette then fine. If not, take a picnic!

I'm not going to show lots of animals and birds here. Suffice to say, there is plenty to see, and we were pleasantly surprised that the areas/compounds that the animals were in were large and well landscaped, with plenty of moats around keeping some of the animals in rather than cages - hence so many fairly tame moorhens about, which I showed on this blog a few weeks back!

My favourite by far were the Meerkats though! They seem to do a mixture of posing for the camera, snuggling up together, playing and digging. Their run was sand and boy do they dig - some seemed to be desperate to dig their way out and were making deep holes at the base of the thick wooden stakes lining their run and I could see paws and snouts coming through the gaps between the stakes! Great fun and I could have watched them all day.  

The leaflet mentioned a new aviary which you could walk into and experience various birdlife from South America, but it was a bit disappointing with only 3 different species of bird. However the lemur enclosure was great fun. A huge open space that was well caged around the outside which you enter via double doors and there you can walk amongst all the different kinds of lemurs who will sit and pose for you, even beside you! (I do have a photo of my brother sitting beside one but I won't post it as I know he would not be pleased about it!)

There are other things to see as well as the main bit of zoo. This year they have started a new potager project - as you can see it is very much in its infancy but is a huge walled area that should look stunning and very productive in a few years time, with espaliered fruit trees, veggies and flowers side by side. There was only one guy working there when we visited and I could see it would take a team of people to look after (I was secretly rather pleased to see lots of weeds - and blighted tomatoes!).

Various displays are on several times a day, such as the flying display of (mostly) birds of prey which we were interested in, and a display of hunting dogs (spaniels of some kind, probably Breton, and beagles) which we were not. Later in the afternoon there's 'feeding time at the zoo' but we didn't stay for that. They have a huge variety of birds of prey which was interesting to watch but each bird's display was rather brief. It wasn't as good as the show at Rocamadour which we'd visited donkey's years ago where my OH took a photo of a hawk of some kind sitting perched on the top of my head! But it was still good fun. 

Don't ask me what all the birds are - I think the first one here is a vulture and there were various birds swooping in from here, there and everywhere including owls. The ones at the end are storks, beside the guy doing the commentary. My OH took these photos as he had the big camera with the telephoto lens - personally I'd rather just have my little pocket camera to slip into my bag whilst we are out and about, but realise now comparing photos that at a zoo a decent camera with TP lens is quite necessary.

Front view of the chateau from the moat. The drive way went on a long, long way beyond this! I didn't think much of the chateau's gardens though - this is pretty much the extent of interest, apart from those triangular topiary bushes in some of the bird of prey shots above, which were in a garden off to the side.

One last thing, having said (in not so many words) not very nice things about their 'restaurant' menu, there is something that was wonderful! At the snackbar beside the restaurant area they had an ice cream machine that looked a bit like a Mr Whippy type machine, dispensing gelato! It wasn't called gelato (or Mr Whippy; this is France after all) but if you've ever eaten real gelato in Italy you will know how different it is to normal ice cream - somewhere like a mix between sorbet and ice cream. Anyway, it was delicious and I'm so glad I had one.

There's another snackbar over by the children's play area and bouncy castles as well, so plenty of places to get drinks, ice cream and snacks.

The entrance fee at €18 per adult was quite pricey but I guess everything costs these days, and these are not things we do often, so it was well worth it, in my opinion.

Opening times, prices, location and all the information you need at their website:

http://www.labourbansais.com