It’s raining… mice?

Days 7 and 8 - Tour de la Montagne d’Ax

Well, ‘mouse’ to be more accurate, but more about that later.

Day 7 of our Pyrenean excursion and we woke beside our idyllic little lake with mist swirling beneath a crystal clear mountain bathed in the golden light of dawn.

Down - Swirling mist

Up - The golden light of dawn

This day turned out to be probably the best day of the trip. With just one day of food left in our rucksacks we set off with ‘light’ bags and a positive spring in our steps.

It was a glorious morning to be in the mountains and soon, spread beneath us, we could see the tops of the clouds that hid the world below for as far as the eye could see. This phenomenon is called a temperature inversion. The clue is in the name. It’s when the temperature is warmer up than it is down. Cloud tends to form and a beautiful blanket of cloud is seen beneath.

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day
To seek our pale enchanted gold…

Lyrics from Far over the misty mountains cold - Lord of the Rings

Or, in our case,

We must away, ere break of day. To seek a plate of steak and chips. ‘Cos we are proper hungry.

Now there’s lovely.

Temperature inversions usually only last a couple of hours, as the temperature in the valleys rise and the clouds dissipate, but this one went on all day. Nothing but clouds with the odd mountain sticking up in the distance. Stunning. Meanwhile, the view over about 1,600 metres was crystal clear.

Mrs P admires the view while I admire Mrs P

Towards the late afternoon we dropped down into the cloud, where the grass was heavy with dew and the air thick with mist.

It all started to get terribly spooky

What you lookin’ at stranger?

We soon reached the cloud base and met some lovely horses. It was time to look for somewhere to camp. Not near horses or cattle. Too skittish (horses), too inquisitive (cows), too much poo (both of them).

An hour further on and we found a spot near a small cabin, in which we ate our final freeze dried evening meal. Then, as darkness fell, to bed for a well earned rest. Zzz…

Hang on! What’s that noise?

I unzipped the tent door and looked out. In the diminishing light I could see about 30 what look like cattle heading down the hill towards the cabin and our spot a hundred metres or so further on. Bugger!

Fortunately they weren’t cows. Which is good, because cows find tents terribly interesting and extremely lickable. A dozen 500kg cows all believing our tent was some kind of salt lick would have been bad. We would have had to move. Horses should be no problem though, right? We crossed our fingers and tried to sleep.

Every now and then we would hear the young horses galloping in the dark. I REALLY hoped they could see where they were going. We both finally drifted off to sleep despite the regular seemingly impending stampedes.

In the morning the horses were all gone. Not a trace. Maybe they were ghosts? Literal night mares.

Day 8. Our final day and we woke to an outstandingly beautiful sunrise. We packed up…

I think a horse ate our fly-sheet?

…and headed back to the small cabin where we could sit down without any risk of getting covered in horse poo.

Mrs P ‘cooking’ (aka pouring hot water over) breakfast

It was here that a mouse fell from the sky and just missed my head. I was minding my own business, fiddling with the rucksacks, when suddenly something shot past my face and landed at my feet. A skydiving mouse! Seemingly none the worse for its fall it scuttled off at a rate of knots under a gap in the door and back inside the cabin.

The exact spot where I nearly got hit by a stunt mouse

I think it must have made its way onto the (new) roof to get a better look at us not realising how slippery the metal roof was. Before it knew what was happening it was rocketing down, probably hoping it could land in my rucksack and find some chocolate (fat chance of that). I moved away from the roof after that in case I was beneath some kind of mousey fun fair slide.

Mouse related disaster over we headed down towards Ax-les-Thermes on the final leg of our 8 day hike.

Down through the trees. (Can you spot Mrs P?)

And back on the road to civilisation…

I had been dreaming of non-freeze dried food and longing for steak and chips, so the first restaurant we came to we ordered a steak for me and a burger for Mrs P. Delicious!

300g of steak with fries and a side order of cheesy grin.

Then on to a campsite for only our second shower of this 8 day trip.

It had been a wonderful, if tough at times, trip.

We still had two days before our train back to Blighty (England). More hiking in the hills would be done, but at the end of each day there was a hot shower and a meal that didn’t look like baby food.

In my next blog I will talk about the kit we took and list all the items. If that doesn’t fill you with excitement then maybe, just maybe, I will improve on the story of a mouse falling on my head and tell you about how a small child nearly fell on my head on the journey to Paris. Sacré bleu!