CunningPlan 2024,
Part 1: Le Train d'Artouste (with an animal addendum)
A drive from Limoux to Pau in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, sharp left up a winding road high into the mountains to Laruns. A night’s sleep... and ‘Cunning Plan’, our annual fall adventure with friends John and Gwenda, begins.
And what a beginning: a ride on Le Train d’Artouste, Europe's highest narrow-gauge tourist train.
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Beside nearby Lake Fabrèges, close to the Spanish border, we parked, caffeinated, presented our tickets, then boarded the gondola which takes 10 minutes to climb 1,900 meters to the railway station.
All aboard, then the open-top, open-side Tonka-styled train rattles through a short cave tunnel that spits on you before opening out onto the edge of beauty.
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Fortunately, everyone is belted in, and the train has a top speed of only 18kmh, because we’re also on the edge of a precipice. To the right, a meter or so away, there's the upward steep-sided mountain slope, to the left, sometimes under a meter from the wheels, frequently there's a near vertical drop of heaven knows how many hundred meters...
Yikes!
Anyone who suffers from vertigo should ride right-side out and left-side back.
Mind you, Le Train d’Artouste has been going since 1932 without a serious incident, so all is likely to be well.
The track was originally laid to shuttle workers and equipment for building and maintaining the dam that created Lac d'Artouste, the lake at the end of our journey.
Almost immediately, though, the local Préfecture, seized on its potential as a tourist train… et voila, here we are over ninety years later.
At the end of the ride, there’s a climb (scramble) up uneven rock-hewn steps to the dam and Lac d’Artouste.
The view was ruggedly wonderful. For an hour, we sat on the lake shore with our sandwich baguettes,and scanned the water for lake trout.
​​The way down was a similar blend of beauty, excitement, water-droplet-dodging through the cave tunnel, into the station, and down on a gondola that now faced not a thirty-meter drop to the hill, but a vista stretching hundreds of meters down into the valley.
Back to Laruns, and a good meal at the quirkily named ‘Le Porquoi non?’ Except that wherever we go there seems to be a bonus incident.
This time, we happened to be eating in the street that's on the direct route farmers herd horses and sheep through twice a year: to head up the mountains in spring, down from them in the fall. The result is a treat... and careful placing of feet on the way back to the hotel.
Lovely day. looking forward to Zaragoza, Spain tomorrow.