Mastersingers in Leran

A couple of weeks ago the Mastersingers from Yorkshire were in town and we got to see them perform. One performance was in the beautiful surroundings and acoustic splendor of the church in the neighboring town of Camon. You can see most of the Mastersingers, minus the drummer and keyboard player. They did four performances and the last one was at Andy and Amanda Attenburrow's house/chambre d'hote/gallerie. The performance was followed by a fabulous dinner catered by Shirley from our the local bar, which now can be called bar and restaurant. Andy and Amanda's place is an amazing combination of a home, a garden, a performance hall and a bed and breakfast all rolled into one. Andy is a filmmaker and a teacher of filmmaking. Amanda is an accomplished artist and art teacher. They make their place available for special events like this. The Mastersingers perform a wide array of music, and from my untrained perspective, (I remember negro spirituals, hymns and some doo-wop covers of Frankie Valle and the Four Seasons), all masterfully done. May I direct you to their website: http://www.mastersingers.co.uk/index1.htm

The second photo is of our houseguests, Jenny and Becky, daughter and friend of one of the singers, occupying the children of another singer during the concert. The third photo is of the singers taken through the beautiful stained glass of the galerie. And the last is a couple of street urchins peeking in at the performance. Nancy got some beautiful pictures and I thought I'd take the opportunity to let you see them.

Pot Calls the Kettle Black

This is Samuel. He's a wee Scot lad. He called Fergus a "cheeky monkey".

Help Wanted: Castrators

28 juillet 2008Ref: 11521-41
-->CHERCHE PERSONNEL POUR CASTRATION MAIS - âge 16 ans révolu, pas de camping possible, période 20 août et plus, 7km de Pamiers, direction Belpech. Tél. 05.61.67.47.98 le soir


Every town in the States has some sort of weekly advertising newspaper, listing garage sales, selling the same junk week after week, used cars, houses and apartments for rent, and a few odd jobs. In Moab it's called the Ad-Vertiser. In the Ariege, we faithfully read Le 09 to find out where the vide greniers, fetes, and marche nocturnes will be. But I find myself browsing through the other listings just to practice my reading skills. I couldn't pass this one up. (It is called "Le 09" because 09 refers to the Ariege's alphabetical order in the queue of departments of France.)


I'm not exactly certain what the job description reads for a "corn castrator"; Doug thinks they are going to de-tastle corn (the male flower of the corn plant). You must be 16, no camping on site, beginning August 20th.So, any of you farmer-types out there....fill us in. Otherwise, our imaginations are running wild. And if anyone's interested, I can get them an application.

The Itsy-Bitsy Spider....

When we arrived back in Leran after our quick jaunt along the Pyrenees, the power was off in the house. We puzzled over it for a bit and reset the switch on the breaker box. Our two young house guests, Jenny and Becky, were leaving after us, so we asked them to turn off the lights and lock the door when they left. We thought it odd that they would turn off the power, but maybe that's how Brits do it. It wasn't until several hours later that it occurred to us that "power off" would include the refrigerator/freezer. The chicken in the freezer was now thawed and ready to cook, but nothing else in the fridge had suffered too badly.

Later that day, Sally called and when Doug mentioned the power being off in the house, Sally cleared up the mystery by informing him about the tremendous lightning and thunderstorm on the night we left. That explained the breaker blowing and no one being here to reset it. Guess those Brits don't do things that differently after all.

The next morning, with so much moisture still on the ground and in the air, the evidence of some rather hard-working spiders were glistening in the sun. Their webs had probably been battered around during the storm, and they wasted no time resetting their nets.

Non Dago Komuna?

Traveling along the Pyrenees gets tricky for those of us with marginal language skills. Flanking both sides of the western-most quarter of the French-Spanish border are about 600,000 Basque-speaking people, most in Spain and a smattering in France. Their language is far removed from either Spanish or French, as is easily evidenced by the signs in the photos. In fact, it is so far removed from any other language that it is called a "language isolate". From Wikipedia, "Little is known of its origins but it is likely that an early form of the Basque language was present in Western Europe before the arrival of the Indo-European languages to the area."

In more modern times, the Basque language has had to compete with Castillian Spanish and French. After the Spanish Civil War, speaking Basque was forbidden for decades. In Basque Country (Euskara), schools are now resuming teaching the language. Had I known that "Non dago komunu" = Where are the toilets? or "Ezdakit eukarazhitz egiten" = I don't speak Basque or at least "Garagardo" = Beer, we might have made better progress.

As we were sitting at the restaurant in Eaux-Bonnes, we asked our multi-languaged server how many others she spoke (besides French, Spanish, Basque and English). She commented that she also spoke the local dialect or patois---Bearn. BEARN??? Was she pulling my leg? When I later looked it up on my good friend the Internet, I discovered Bearn to be a regional dialect of Occitan. Now it makes me wonder if there is a name for the dialect of French spoken in our Ariege region---i.e., the twangy sound of "pang" for "pain".

In my best Basque, "Ikusi arte. Agur." (See you and goodbye.)

A Trip Through the Pyrenees

We came across from Spain via the Col d'Portalet. We passed into France not too far from a ski station and it seemed to me, during the winter you could ski back and forth from country to country. The old border crossing station sat unused by either country. Not too long ago, there would have certainly been Spanish border police there checking on persons entering Spain. If you enlarge the map and look at the lower right corner you can see our route across the Col d'Portlalet and then the Col d'Aubisque. Our overnight stop was at an amazing little town called Eaux-Bonnes or Good Waters. It was a spa tucked into a hanging valley and thermal waters fed a complex of indoor pools and outdoor fountains. You can see the village from above in the first photo. (It's approximate location on the map is next to Laruns, which is just Northeast of the "S" in PYRENEES.) The large building dominating the photo is a casino but we didn't bother to investigate it on this trip. At one time it must have been a bustling village, but now seems to have a large number of unused hotels and other buildings. One thing is for sure, winter in Eaux-Bonnes would be spent without any direct sunlight except for and hour in the late afternoon.

The next day we climbed out of Eaux-Bonnes and over the Col d'Aubisque and down into Lourdes. The road was narrow, winding, steep and rather crowded for a Wednesday morning. Probably, there were as many bicycles as cars (only in France).

From Wikipeda: The Pyrenees are a mountain range that form a natural border between France and Spain. They separate the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of continental Europe, and extend for about 430 km (267 mi) from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean Sea.
For the most part, the main crest forms a massive frontier, with the country Andorra sandwiched in between. Catalonia and the Basque country are the only two territories extending on both sides of the mountain range, with a northern and a southern part on each side.

By contrast, the Rocky Mountains, just in Colorado are nearly 300 miles in length and of a much greater width than the Pyrenees. The Rockies, of course stretch thousands of miles from Mexico to Alaska. The Rockies are much wilder with populations of bears, wolves, elk, deer and other large mammals. The Rockies have large parks and wilderness areas where roads don't exist. They Pyrenees have roads carved out almost everywhere you look and struggle to support a small bear population. Grazing takes place virtually everywhere, even on the highest passes. On the other hand, they support a delightful human culture thousands of years old. And they are incredibly beautiful, cloaked with deciduous trees instead of the conifers we're used to in the US, and steeper too. Glaciation is evident everywhere you look. They rise to heights of 11,000 feet beginning from sea level, unlike the Rockies which have a base of 4,000 or 5,000 feet.





Photos by North of Andorra staff photographer, Nancy Procter.