Lannemezan to Heche til the cows come home

Cute little streets of Lannemezan

On my first day off from teaching English at the summer camp in the Pyrenees Mountains, I was determined to take advantage and thus go hiking. Eloise and I met in Lannemezan to buy some groceries with the kind addition of advice from the bored Casino worker. He suggested we hitchhike to Heche and take the great one-day trail that would afford us a view 'magnifique'.



After several minutes of discouraging looks from passers-by, our luck began to soar. A guy with booming French R&B stopped and not only took us to Heche, but also up the winding dirt road to the trail itself, saving us a 2 hour walk.

The beginning

We shrugged, accepting our strange fortune, and began the trek up a very Lord of the Rings-esque mossy, rocky path into the forest.

If a tree falls in the forest, etc etc

We're comin' round the mountain...

Yellow wolf heads painted on well-positioned trees and stones guided us. We finally decided to stop and set up camp.





It was about this moment when we realized our water supply was no more. So the conversation followed:

The hill without water

E: "I think we should go look for water."
g: "But we have a bottle of wine, I think we'll be okay."
E: "Uh...No. We need water. I'm going to go look."
g: (sighs) "Okay. I'll go with you."
(after 5 minutes of walking, we find a little stream of water)
E: Look, there are cows, let's follow them up the hill."
g: (raises eyebrows) "I don't know. You go first." (finally grudgingly follows)
(after 10 minutes of walking around, getting steadily more thirsty as someone who sits at the dinner table becomes more aware of his stomach, then we climbed through a barbed wire fence and to no avail..)
E: "So....What do you think?"
g: "What do I think?! You're the girl scout! I'm going back to the road.."
E: "Are you sure?"

And so on. We followed the road then, eventually compromising. Every corner was a thirsty hopeful moment, followed by a disappointing set of new hills and rocky terrain. At the last minute, just when the bottle of wine was supposing to be our last liquid substance before we were left in the morning, dried up for the cows....

(these are the cows)

(these are those chairs)

we stumbled upon a strange little empty cabin. A half bottle of cold wine perched upon a large wooden table, surrounded by three old yellowing over-stuffed lazy boys.

The eerie feeling in the cabin sent me scurrying out (after taking the necessary witness pictures), to hear Eloise proudly call, "water!"

The worthy view at Uncle Tom's cabin and its water trough (thanks to the cows and Eloise's hypothesis, we survived the Pyrenees) far surpassed the hour of panicking about our demise, and our eyes gladly soaked in the miles of rolling forestry accompanied by the tinkling of hundreds of cow bells.

La fin