Places to go: St Martin du Canigou in Pyrénées Orientales, Languedoc Roussillon

It’s an easy 40 minute walk up the public footpath which climbs 300 meters through a limestone gorge but it’s worth it. Clinging to the side of Mount Canigou, the abbey of St Martin du Canigou perches high above a ravine with breathtaking views over the eastern Pyrenees.

First built as a monastery around the year 1000 for Guifred the Second, count of Cerdagne and Conflent, the site was home to an order of Benedictine monks until 1786. It was abandoned and left empty for the next 120 years. 

Then the Bishop of Perpignan and Elne bought the ruins in 1902. The abbey was restored and extended twice during the twentieth century. 
 
Since 1988 it is home to the Catholic Community of the Beatitudes, a fundamentalist group within the Catholic Church. They’ve been likened to a cult, but they receive visitors, both tourists and also the more serious variety in search of enlightenment and repose.

The abbey itself is closed to visitors in January but offers guided tours throughout the rest of the year, except on Mondays. The situation, complete with a dramatic public viewing point is spectacular anytime.

The short 1.6 km walk to reach it starts from the village of Casteil, 3 km south from the picturesque spa town of Vernet les Bains. For those to infirm to make the climb, one of the brothers will happily descend with one of the holy fleet of Suzuki jeeps.

Not to be missed...

Photos: Martin Castellan

Irénée Cros - an ordinary Frenchman

In June 1940, the French government capitulated to advancing German forces. Defeatists amongst France’s politicians and senior commanders had overestimated Germany’s strength and underestimated their own. 

Hitler had simply bluffed them. In reality, Britain and France together were consuming his forces faster than he could replace them. Angry that France had given up the fight without being beaten, Général De Gaulle decided to continue the war from London. On June 18^th 1940 he broadcast over the BBC a legendary appeal to his compatriots to carry on the fight. 

One of them was Irénée Cros.

Trained as an architect, he found himself in Foix when France surrendered. Foix was the capital of the Pyrénéan département of Ariège. Irénée became Ariège’s resistance leader.

Of course, the Germans did their best to seal the border with Spain but it leaked like a sieve. Mountains hold no mystery for those who live amongst them. Over in Spanish Catalonia, people were involved in their own struggle against facism. Frenchmen and Spaniards alike travelled to and fro as they pleased.

With his friends, Irénée Cros led sabotage missions and directed the struggle against the occupiers. Most importantly they organised the passeurs, those who escorted refugees from Nazi persecution through the mountains. With them too went free French volunteers and allied airmen to neutral Spain from whence they would find their way to Britain to fight again another day. 

Then, on the night of 13^th December 1943, came the long-awaited hammering on the door. An informer, supposedly a friend, had denounced Irénée to the Germans. He wasn’t surprised. Traitors were a bigger threat than the enemy. That's what made the Nazis evil - that they sowed distrust, turned Frenchman against Frenchman. He'd probably expected it since the beginning.

Irénée knew what would come next – interrogation, torture and sooner or later, death. He didn’t open the door. He didn’t try to run. He calmly set about burning all the documents which might lead the Gestapo to other members of the resistance. The last page still smouldered in the grate when the Germans broke down the door.

Furious that they were seconds too late, the Gestapo executed Irénée on the spot. No interrogation. No torture. The end came quickly with a bullet in the back of the neck. All the incriminating evidence was gone. The Germans received nothing for their trouble. Even in death one ordinary Frenchman had beaten them with the power of his will.

There were many like him.

Friends and veterans remember Irénée Cros on 13th December, the anniversary of his death.

(Photo:La Dépêche du Midi)

The TGV Paris-Barcelona arrives. . . almost

A French TGV speeds across Catalonia en route for Figueras.

Photo: Martin Castellan/Sud Media Images

From 19th December 2010, the Catalan capital of Barcelona will be a step nearer to France. French high speed TGV trains from Paris will continue past Perpignan as far as Figueras in Spain.

The twice-daily service will stop at Nimes, Montpellier, Narbonne and Perpignan. Slower Spanish regional trains will take passengers on to Gerona and Barcelona, shortening the journey between the french and catalan capitals by an hour and a quarter.

Part of the EU dream of a pan-European transport network, the new link will be part of the Brussels-Barcelona high speed route. A new high-speed line snakes across Catalonia to the Barcelona suburbs. Finding a way through urban areas has proved a tougher proposition with the need to tunnel beneath existing buildings.

The French and Spanish rail networks are different gauges, preventing the French TGVs from continuing their journey on older regional Spanish tracks. Built to the European gauge, the new high speed lines will enable the TGVs to go all the way in 2012 or 2013. Reducing the Paris-Barcelona journey to 5 hours 35 minutes.

To reach Barcelona’s main Sants station, the line will pass under the new cathedral, La Sagrada Familia. Designed by the catalan architect Anton Gaudi, the cathedral, under construction since 1888, is still not finished. Despite a visit by the pope in November to consecrate the building, construction continues as tunneling machines burrow gingerly underneath.

No-one wants to be the catalan who dropped 128 years of Catalan pride into a train-shaped hole. The tunnelers will take their time and do it right. This is one job that will be finished when it’s finished, and that's that.

Spanish village devastated by morris dancing

Health officials race against time to save these Spanish villagers from the scourge of Britain

The World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a level 5 pandemic alert yesterday after Spanish health officials confirmed the country’s first case of morris dancing. So far the outbreak has been contained to the remote Pyrenean village of Lesaka.

Nestling high in the mountains, the community is in a state of shock, unable to understand how such a contagious disease has arrived in this quiet corner of Navarre.

The debilitating illness, which causes uncontrolled muscle spasms most commonly observed in morris dancers, is largely unknown outside the United Kingdom.

In Britain the spread of morrisella, as it is known medically, follows the distribution of real ale. It is caused by bacteria found in a single species of hops which grows only in the county of Kent. Quite how this infection found its way to Lesaka remained a mystery until now.

The village mayor, Señor Innocente Diás, said “we are doing everything we can to reassure the population and contain the spread”. Following perhaps the example of the villagers in the Eyam in Derbyshire during the Black Death, the people of Lesaka have voluntarily quarantined themselves.

No-one is allowed in or out. “We wouldn’t want our neighbours to suffer what we have experienced during the last two days” said one by telephone. “There’s not much doubt – all the symptoms are there - the uncontrolled twitching, the urge to hit one’s neighbour with a stick, the flatulence. It is most distressing to watch. Of course, the victim, himself, is completely unaware of his illness due to delirium. His delusions are such that he firmly believes that he is entertaining people.”

“Worst of all is the noise” says Señor Diás “for some reason the disease particularly attacks musicians. Our normally talented and much admired accordionists suddenly find themselves in the grip of a compulsion. It forces them to play tuneless dirges which follow no known musical form.”

Health officials attribute the outbreak to the accidental fall of barrels of Marstons Pedigree from a truck which overturned en route for the Costa del Sol, an area much frequented by older British tourists. A local farmer, mistaking the loast load for a harmless shipment of rioja, took it home to the village. "Rioja makes us laugh and fall over; I just thought it would be fun" said the farmer, Juan Alvarez. "I had no idea that it was this dangerous stuff".

“If only the lorry had been going to a resort popular with younger visitors” said Dr EmilioTonterías , a prominent Spanish bacteriologist. “They drink lager. Nothing can live in it, but Pedigree, well it is a perfect culture medium”.

In rural Navarre, where everyone drinks the local wine, villagers have no natural immunity to the morrisella bacterium. “Our people are defenceless. It has spread like a forest fire”, said DrTonterías .

“The only villagers spared were Athletico Bilbao fans who once went to a European Cup match against Manchester United.” It is believed that they may have consumed Boddingtons, a brew from the north of England. "Boddy's", as it is called locally, is a natural antidote to the disease since it provokes spontaneous vomiting on contact with Pedigree. Boddingtons' hops are grown only on the south-facing bank of the Manchester Ship Canal and are genetically-engineered to resist invasion by southern hops, especially from Kent.

The debilitating effects of morris dancing - six months ago these men were chartered accountants - they had jobs, families...

WHO and local officials hope that the symptoms will subside over the next 24 hours, now that all the missing Pedigree has been located and destroyed.