A friend writes that while Y was holidaying in Switzerland and writing about it, recently, he was driving over 2,000 miles in France and Spain, and visiting friends south of Andorra. He says that it would be difficult for us to think of a village in Ireland without a shop, but that is the case in Figeoles, a tiny community in the Pyrenees just south of Andorra. The nearest town is Tremp and everything can be bought there, and there are grand little restaurants.
His journey was to visit a small stone-built farmhouse which Joan and Michael Boaden, progressive farmers from near Coolgreaney, North County Wexford, are successfully restoring for their holiday use. The visit was timed to coincide with the annual village festival, where dancing took place in the colourfully-lit village square. Locals who had emigrated over the years to other places in Spain, generally make a point of returning for the festival, at which wine was freely distributed and drunk from those squirt-type bottles that are held away from the mouth so that the wine comes in a steady stream.
Our correspondent writes that his friends bought the cottage on the recommendation of another "runner-in", as he puts it, from Ireland. Although the price was low, Figeoles is well away from the beaten track. If you are not a car owner, you have a two-hour bus journey from Barcelona to Tremp, then a taxi for the last seven miles. But once there, the toils of travel are quickly forgotten. Huge mountains, he says, with valleys and a deep gorge; kites and vultures gliding above; wild pigs and goats roam freely. When he asked why there were so few small birds, he was told that the drought, which has destroyed many crops of sunflowers, had sent them temporarily to more fertile, moist areas. Eagles are occasionally seen. Lizards are common.
His friends, the Boadens, find the place a delightful contrast, and, being farmers with a hobby of growing unusual vegetables and making liqueurs and wines for themselves, visualise exciting times ahead. Our friend brought back acorns of Pyreneean oaks.
All of this - or much of it seems to be one with the Pyrenees Orientales Department of France: the valleys, the wild-life but with some additions on the French side - the sea, of course, the lovely little town of Collioure where so many of France's painters came to work; but just inland, so many neat thriving villages among the vineyards. Good luck to the pair of housebuilders. Y finds it hard to get France, and especially the Pyreneean side of it, out of his mind. Y