A walk in the woods

The meeting spot was the bar/restaurant opposite the Argelès gare. RB2, his wife Sylvie, and François waited for our guide Marc, who leads walks through the nearby mountains to fund his home for abused farm animals (donkeys, pigs, goats, etc.) every Monday and Saturday.

The mountains are only a mile or so from the village. Roads turn to paths. Houses, except for a few multi million in any currency homes, the area is all vegetation. Cork trees line the paths. Some are blood red where the bark has been harvested recently. Other trees are in various stage of regrowing their bark.

The air smells of pine and wet dirt from the night’s rain. There is no smell of exhaust.

François kept going off the path to gather mushrooms. We joked how he would prepare us all omelettes for lunch. Mushroom gathering can be a French/Swiss family pastime. Although the pharmacists help identify the good from the deadly, Sylvie is convinced that the safest mushrooms are bought from green grocers or supermarkets.

The scenery included mountains. The Pyrenees are old mountains, folded in on themselves, craggy and tree-filled. We ended up at one point at the goat cheese place where Barbara buys our goat meat. We chose a different path back, one winding through the vineyards. Most of the vines had been stripped of their fruit, but there were a few bunches of grapes, which we sampled.

The walk took three hours. When I returned to the village, I decided I didn’t want to cook lunch. Although most of the restaurants are closed on Monday, there is small one next to a fountain that is open 7/7. After three hours of walking and discussing omelettes with mushrooms, I ordered an omelette with mushrooms, not with the exotic cêpes or morilles we had seen, but plain old fashioned champions des Paris. It was good.