Three days in the Pyrenees

Jenny, my father-in-law and I spent a short holiday in a lovely little French Basque hotel in a village called Barcus, which is on the D59 near to Oleron Ste Marie in the Pyrenées-Atlantiques (64). From here one has a 360° panoramic view north to the foothills and south to the high snow-capped peaks.

The first day we drove up through torrential rain. However, I remembered from S102 that the latent heat of evaporation from a rising or moist orogenic airstream would produce warm air, the föhn wind. When we arrived at the Col du Somport (which was Summus Portus to the Romans on their way to the city of Augustus, or Zaragoza) the clouds did evaporate giving Gilmore a chance to declaim on the geology of the area. No opposition, only two surprised Spanish cyclists, as Jenny and Wilf had disappeared to caffes con loche. Anyway we had topped the Pyrenées and gone from fertile green France to barren Spain.

There are two parallel valleys, the Gave d'Aspe which is the way to the Col du Somport, and another, the Gave d'Ossau, both carrying heavy tourist traffic, which meant that every geological feature we passed there was simply nowhere to park, so I did a little research with the French Geology Society, and discovered the D126 road which starts at Arthez-d'Asson. This is some 25 km SSE of Pau and despite it being a very busy time for les vacançiers there was hardly a car on this lovely road. The road follows the mountain stream l'Ouzon passing through the Ouzon gorge which is a cutting through the N.W. Pyrenéan Mazurian chain. One can see a good section of Jurassic dolomites in the Amusec valley anticline about 3 km north of a village of Ferrières. We didn't have time to stop but its appearance and name suggest there was an extraction here.

The road climbs rapidly through moraines and at 1 200 m one emerges above the tree-line and the Cretaceous syncline can be seen in the crests of Monbula and Estibête. Fortunately the Cyclisme Federation has regular altitude posts and stopping at 1 200 m one gets a very fine panorama which I've attempted to sketch below.

The Spanish side has improved greatly in so far as the roads are concerned and many places have signs albeit in Spanish only so far. I have included a photograph of a view taken facing east at Puerto de Cotefablo on the N260 which skirts the Reserva Nacional de Vignemale as one example.

The photo-mystère was taken near to Boltana on the same road. A lava sill (?) appears to emerge from old Devonian red sandstone.

Note Griffon vulture and ravens in the background.

Thus there is much to see here and for those who are interested in more than geology, there are alleged to be around sixty brown bears in the area of the Pic du Midi d'Ossau, about the same number of lammergeyers — the European condor. I failed to see any, but I have a friend who spent two weeks in this area with a BBC Natural History team who found three in an afternoon. I did manage to see two wallcreepers and an Alpine Accentor, only thanks to Jenny who asked me what the funny coloured sparrow was which I was about to squash under my feet while declaiming about a hanging valley. It's marvellous to explain geology when you know, for once, you know more than the others! On top of that the 'Law of Superposition' disappears with Devonian rocks on top of Jurassic. Then the flowers: two new specials were the Pyrenean Bellflower and the Pyrenean Merendura.

Mike Gilmore