One of my favourite ever ‘Strange’ Family holidays was a camping and birdwatching trip to the French Pyrenees when I was 12.
The weather was beautiful, the animal life was spectacular, and we spent much of our non-active time harvesting scraps of information about a major global sporting event that was going on at the time (Barcelona Olympics ’92).
Last week, 26 years later, I had the pleasure of taking my wife on a trip down my personal memory lane by staying in a deluxe caravan in the same village – Luz Saint Sauveur – where I stayed with my family. As with the ‘classic’ ’92 holiday, we had gorgeous weather, there was a major sporting event on which we were keeping a fairly close eye, and the area was absolutely teeming with wildlife (they even have bears now! – not that we saw any). Please enjoy the following photos:
Our caravan and amazing viewGreen lizard joining us for breakfastThe ‘grand cascade’ of the Cirque de Gavarnie, looming over the village of GavarnieA walk up the trail to the grand cascadeJo in GavarnieJo getting showeredA less worn, forested walk back to the carBarbecue outside our caravanA chairlift and a hike led us to the beautiful Lac de GaubeJo by the Lac de GaubeMy Mum recently reminded me that my grandad could go on a walk and name every flower, so in honour of him I decided to photograph some of the fauna.Hard to take a bad picture of a frondy fernButtercupMy experimentation with the 16:9 aspect ratio continues (at the Lac de Gaube)Kestrel spotted on a walk near GavarnieThistlesThe legendary LammergeierFriendly red squirrelA pyreneen icon – Griffon VulturePossibly the most pyreneen photograph imaginableWe watched these guys for agesThe Col des Tentes, on the Spanish border – 50:50 split of ‘bonjour’ vs ‘hola’ greetings from fellow hikersThe icy patches looked innocuous but the paths across them were unsettling enough to make us turn back before completing our intended hikeBig snow patchFrance in the foreground, Spain in the distanceFitting to take in the sight of the Cirque de Gavarnie one last time on our last day
