Bonjour Louis

We were visiting our holiday home in the Ariege two weeks ago, and took a walk in the Orlu valley just above Ax-les-Thermes, on the main road to Andorra. This is a National Hunting reserve at an altitude of 1200 metres to begin with. We walked up to 1400 metres to a shepherd's summer hut and photographed several marmots. These are like big groundhogs and were hunted to extinction at the beginning of the 20th Century, but have now been reintroduced. I also spotted two Izard high up. Not sure when the hunting season starts there.

It used to be that the Andorran season started a week before the French season, and that the Andorrans were never very good at knowing where the boundary was. I'm sure that nothing like that happens these days...

Great "Mer de Nuage" photographs - a Pyrenean speciality. Greta Kipplauf, too.

HB