Safe Return Doubtful

The village of Tella, high up in the Ordesa National Park in the Spanish Pyrenees (ar 1240 metres), has a number of historical sites to see, though the Bear Cave (as I found out only when I got to its locked gate) is closed in the winter. 

The Dolmen de Tella is a megalithic burial chamber dated to the third millennium BC. It is close to where I parked for the night, though the last stop on our morning circuit on Wednesday. It was identified in 1954 when an archaeologist discovered a human skull and teeth. The tumulus that covered it had gone, so only the scattered stones remained, as they still do. It has a cover slab resting on lateral orthostats, located on the east and west sides. The two openings are partially barred by low stones.

There are three other such Dolmens on the trail I took returning from the Bear Cave. 

My route had originally just been to the snow line, which here in the south side of the Pyrenees is very high for the time of year, at about 1600 metres. The skies were clear, though some cloud came in during the morning, and the views exceptional. 

The forecast was rain though, for later in the day, the setting in for the next few days, and with that in mind, we headed through the Cinca valley and then the Bielsa-Aragnouet tunnel into France, having filled up with fuel in Spain beforehand (Spanish fuel remains one of the cheapest in Europe at the moment, about €1.30 a litre). 

As expected, the north side of the Pyrenees held onto much more snow, and was a few degrees cooler. My mission for the rest of the day was to pick up a French data SIM card and find somewhere pleasant for the evening. Not wanting to go into any major city, I settled for Lannemazan, and used the supermarket to stock up. I was after a Lebara sim, which I had read, are the cheapest and easiest; available, I was led to believe, in Tabacs and newsagents. The first few tabacs I came across were all closed, on a Wednesday late afternoon. I think many have closed down in the last few years. I resorted to parking up and wandering around the centre of the town, where the shops seem thriving and busy on a warm (18C) afternoon in early March. There was a Tourist Office, and a helpful woman pointed me in the direction of a book store, where I was successful, and picked up the SIM card and some credit. It’s a similar price to Spain, €15 for 250 GB of data that lasts a month. 

I drove fifteen minutes south into the rural Haute-Garonne to a small village called Balesta. There is an aire here, but it was close to the road, and I preferred to park by the church and football pitch, away from the main road. 

It was a good stopover, though the French church bells tend to chime loudly every hour, and I was directly next to the building. Some villages mute their bells at night, but for most, they continue proudly. The highlight was a walking circuit that Roja and I embarked on the following morning. We followed the information on a board in the village, but lost the path higher up in the forest, and ended up being out for about an hour longer than I had planned, which really didn’t matter on a such a fine morning. 

We then drove two hundred kilometres north past Toulouse to the east and through Montauban to Gramond, still in the Occitanie region, but the department of l’Aveyron. It was Thursday afternoon, and I rejected a few places before finally settling on Gramond. I want to stay put for the weekend, and probably had too many requirements to be satisfied initially; hiking paths, quiet village, cafe, few other visitors, and an excellent 4G signal. Though in the end, Gramond satisfied those things. It’s 640 metres up, and though the weather is partly high cloud, it is very windy at the moment, which brings the temperature down a few degrees. 

There is pleasant hiking around, always beginning downhill, as we are on the top of a hill, but the highlight is the cafe, which is only two years old. It is community owned and used to be medical centre. Basically, the old cafe and medical centre did a building swap. There is now a very basic medical centre in the village, residents having to travel for most things, but a cafe which has in just a short time earned a good name as a restaurant, open just weekends at this time of year, but booked up, and a cafe and bar, open every day. We called in for a beer and were made very welcome. 

I’ll settle in here for the weekend as it’s a very busy time for sport, and move to some lower ground next week when the weather is predicted to turn much colder.