I found it hard to think of many occasions in the rural Ariège when one would have an opportunity to wear that kind of outfit without being extremely conspicuous. Had she done any work apart from charity volunteering? ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I’d love to work over here, on a little job of some kind. I wouldn’t mind cleaning and I don’t mind cooking and I’m interested in doing some house-sitting. But I have chickens, which are a great bind. It’s like having children; we have to get babysitters before we go anywhere.’ I had a fleeting image of Elaine bending to scatter chicken feed in a suit and heels.
Just as everyone I spoke to mentioned Elaine, the Ariège English Speaking Women’s Group had also been brought up by many of the Brits whom I spoke with. Although everyone spoke positively of Elaine, the Women’s Group seemed to polarise people. Some were disdainful, such as Tina who described how members ‘sit and discuss how they’re going to plant their bulbs, and they have coffee and tea and all those sort of things,’ she said. ‘But I’m not that old.’ Gerald used it as a springboard to be scathing about the more arrogant Brits, claiming that he’d been put off by a few overly critical members who spoke little French and blamed the organiser for everything. ‘They’d never offer to do it themselves, not even a lunch, but always glad to criticise others.’ But he’d been careful not to over generalise, saying ‘they’re not all like that, of course.’ Now Elaine was describing the group as “stimulating” and a good way to meet English people.
‘It’s been a joy really, they’re very supportive people,’ she said. In fact, every one of Elaine’s references to the English incomers was at the positive end of the scale. A couple nearby were described as having been tremendous friends to her and Colin. ‘I go up once a week just for an hour to speak French together, and it turns into about two hours. She corrects me, she’s very good at French.’ Another English woman had been their “rock” because ‘she knows the French system; she helped us with our first tax form, things like that.’ An English builder and his family were “lovely people”. Gerald was ‘brilliant, he’s one of our friends, we call ourselves the Quality Street Gang.’
Also “brilliant” were a family that Elaine and Colin had invited over after the family had introduced themselves on the forum, saying that they didn’t know many people. ‘They advertised for friends,’ laughed Elaine, acknowledging the slightly bizarre nature of the situation. ‘They just said We’ve moved here but we’ve got no friends. I emailed them and I said we’re not that far away, so if you get that bored and you want to talk to some old folk, then come and see us.’
I perked up at this as I’d been keen to speak with a family. Perhaps Elaine would be a way in to them. ‘I’d quite like to interview them,’ I said. Elaine, ever the organiser, leapt in and worked out the process. ‘I’ll email your email to them. That’s it, that’s what I need to do.’
It was interesting how complete strangers went online and announced their desire to network with each other simply through the shared context of being English incomers. People had been playing down the fact that they generally all knew each other, not wanting to be seen as part of the English clique, but I’d seen for myself how the forum was used by newcomers to promote opportunities for friendship. One newcomer announced that they were a couple with a 4-year-old daughter and would love to meet couples, families etc, anybody!! Two people living nearby gave their email addresses and invited them to get in touch, while another gave out her phone number, stating that she would love to meet up with a new family to swap stories with.
On the surface this all contradicted anthropologist Kate Fox’s portrayal of the English as reluctant to socialise with strangers outside the home. But of course things were very different here in France, where the incomers had not only left their close friends behind, but they were living among foreigners. Clearly, to some of these forum members, a complete stranger who also happened to be English was preferable to checking out your local network, seeking that all-important shared context and mother tongue. All of this was important to Elaine at the wider level of organising the English-speaking groups, but answering the family’s plea on the forum had given her an opportunity to organise things at a more intimate level, coming to the aid of others by offering friendship if they were “that bored” and had nothing better to do. And not only did she step in to offer companionship to the family, but she also came to my aid as she organised my own introduction to them.
I couldn’t help but admire Elaine. She’d left a house she loved and enjoyable work to follow her husband’s dream, turning it into an adventure that she was working through in her own way. There was no sense of resentment, just a constant aim to adapt to the new context in ways that matched her skills and personality. With her organising of the other Brits and her Jaeger suits, Elaine might have provided ammunition for people who complained about the Brits in France not adapting to the new life and clinging to symbols of the old one, but to me she showed much resourcefulness in adjusting her strengths to what was available. In spite of the very vocal sniping among the Brits about too much dependency on English speakers, many of them nevertheless maintained links with each other. Elaine was just more open about it.
Elaine saw me out and nodded to the man going into his house across the road. ‘I can make myself understood now. People listen to me, they’re very patient. When we first came here, our neighbour there, Bernard, he was quite disdainful about us and the fact we couldn’t speak very much French, but now he appreciates that we’re trying.’ She gestured to the green lawn. ‘Look at that. It’s taken a lot of work to get that, a proper green lawn.’ She then pointed out the terraced vegetable plots on the steep slope. ‘We love what we’ve got and we love how we’ve done it. But it’s a constant battle of the weeds because it wants to be a meadow. My allotment in the UK was pristine, I mean pristine.’ The next comment hinted that she saw their future here in the Ariège. ‘There’s no way we’ll be able to walk up that slope when we’re older. I’ve already said, we’ll have to dig up the garden to grow our veg.’
Overlooked by the damply forested Pyrenean foothills, Elaine’s terraced garden bore no resemblance to the one that Colin had heard described on his way to work, the one with the millstone table, surrounded by a Provençal vineyard. Yet she seemed contented with what they had. ‘It’s nice living here. We’ve sort of integrated a little bit into the community, and the English Speaking Women’s Group has really been a joy.’
We gazed up at the green forested hills, with the peaks of the Pyrenees changing shape as they appeared every now and then through the low clouds. ‘If you want to be part of the smart set you don’t come to the Ariège. It’s not the Cheshire set here. But the Ariège is what it is. You’ll never change the Ariège people and they are so nice, aren’t they, in their own little way? Simple folk.’
As I drove away, I pondered that final comment, as it suggested that Elaine would always see herself as an outsider in a land that felt far removed from 21st-century Britain. Ariège definitely lagged behind in the race for consumerism and commercialisation, but changes were apparent, and certainly some of these would have been welcomed by the small influx of foreigners as well as the French second home owners. Even the more alternative incomers expect a decent wifi signal as they rant against McDonald’s and disposable nappies. And Juliette’s refusal to have a computer in the house, to protect her children from modern obsessions, rang a bit hollow when the children knocked on my door every night to use my mobile broadband to scroll through images of pouting teens on Facebook. The more she resented the school’s expectation of using the internet for homework, the more the children resented her refusal to move with the times. As the daughter said, affronted, ‘Even the kids living wild up at Ezes have the internet.’
Talk Politely To The Bear
Like other mountain regions, the Ariège Pyrenees are renowned for some spectacular waterfalls. Elaine had recommended a gently rising hike along the GR10 to the cas
cade d’Arcouzan, a waterfall that makes a spectacular 50-metre plunge down from the east face of Mont Valier, and after our conversation I headed out along the track. The ability to stand right beneath the base of the fall made this, to me, more outstanding than another, more famous Ariège waterfall: the Cascade d’Ars, charmingly named after the river Ars/Arse that flows down from the frontier chain and joins the Garbet near the town of Aulus les Bains.
Popular with families and their dogs slogging their way up the forest trail, the Cascade d’Ars, with its three successive drops over 246 metres, is one of the closest things that Ariège has to a tourist honeypot. The following day I set out on a much more engaging circular walk that takes in the isolated étang de Guzet. Climbing steeply up through the woods, I almost failed to spot the tiny green-blue lake just visible through the trees and dropped down to sit at the water’s edge, thinking I was alone until I caught sight of red among the rocks. It was another lone woman whom I guessed was also marvelling at the unbroken reflection that spanned the lake, beginning and ending with the encircling ridge of beech trees and rising in the centre to the twin-clawed summit of Pic de Crabe. Regaining the trail and emerging above the tree line, I wondered who had draped the string of prayer flags around a lone hut perched on a grassy ledge. As I stood looking at it, a couple with two dogs stepped out and closed the door, setting off on the path back down towards the lake.
The rock-strewn path became more tiresome as it skirted the flank of the great Mont Rouge, cutting across avalanche corridors that were scarred with rubble. It was a relief to reach the head of the Ars valley where the bulk of another giant, Pic de Puntussan, loomed over the metal bridge across the river. Anchored deep within my thoughts, I was startled by a loud thump and a splash from a boy throwing boulders from the bridge, watched indulgently by his mother. As she packed up their picnic I nipped past them, wanting to prolong the sense of having the mountain to myself. His cries continued to punctuate the roar of the waterfalls long after I’d left them behind.
Mindful of the failing light, I stopped only once, to examine a small metal square printed with a red bear outline. After a fleeting sense of alarm that it was a warning of bear country, I laughed as I remembered that it was one of the signs that differentiated the various walks up to the waterfalls: blue for easy, red for moderate, black for longer and so on. But the existence of bears around here was not a figment of an overactive imagination.
Bears have a long history in the Pyrenees, and in two Couserans valleys they made a significant contribution to the economy. From the late 18th century until the First World War, bear training was a key profession in the Ustou and Garbet valleys, with a bear-training school established in the village of Ercé. All of this is memorialised with some pride in the village’s museum of bear training, where the trainers are celebrated as courageous men who escaped their overpopulated valley to make their living across the globe, accompanied by their trained bears.
More recently, bears have been the cause of passionate and sometimes violent controversy. The rapid decline of bear numbers from the mid 20th century led environmentalists to call for a halt to the extinction of this indigenous animal. In 1996 a bear reintroduction programme commenced in the Pyrenees, turning to Slovenia for a supply of genetically close brown bears. At the time of writing there are no surviving native Pyrenean bears, but the bear population of the central Pyrenees, which includes both France and Spain, is certainly growing. The Slovenian bears have multiplied to a relatively young and heavily monitored population that numbered around 39 by the end of 2017. Interested followers can monitor the movement of named bears, such as the lumbering Moonboots, by observing footage from remote cameras of the bears rubbing their backs against the trees. One way of estimating where the bears will be is by monitoring the acorn harvests, meaning that in a good year you might want to be extra vigilant in the higher oak forests that bears tend to favour.
The programme was controversial from the start. The farmers’ argument was that too much had changed in recent years to make it a simple process of reintroduction. Not all shepherds live among their sheep on the summer pastures, it being more common to drive up on quad bikes or in 4×4s, but of course this leaves the sheep vulnerable to bear attacks. Resistance from the shepherds has been met with offers of compensation for damages to livestock, and grants to install both electric fencing and a traditional Pyrenean sheepdog – a Patou – to guard the livestock. Yet the majority of shepherds continue to protest at what they see as a threat to their livelihood. Anyone driving or walking the back roads could not fail to notice the anti-bear graffiti, with Non aux ours frequently spray-painted across the tarmac.
On the other side are the ecologists and the locals who welcome the rewilding. One argument is that the threat has been exaggerated, with protesters using the bear as a scapegoat for all of the other mountain perils. Pays de l’Ours-Adet, a pro-bear association bearing a cartoon logo of a smiling bear, claims that the bears’ role in livestock destruction is nothing compared with mortality caused by diseases, storms and stray dogs, and especially that other Pyrenean pest, the wild boar. But what about the risk to humans? Adet plays this down too, stating that bears are “not particularly dangerous”, and although they will approach habitations at night time, they will flee any perceived human presence.
The mayor of Massat has thrown his support behind Adet by labelling his area as commune du pays de l’ours (a bear country commune). Judging from the anti-bear graffiti on the roads, this isn’t a sentiment shared by all inhabitants. The Adet website makes light of any danger by recalling the advice once given to children: if you meet a bear, you should avoid annoying it by talking to it politely. I suppose it helps if you recognise which bear it is and remember to use the polite “vous” form: Bonjour Moonboots! Comment allez-vous?
These days, hikers encountering the animal are advised to depart quietly without signs of aggression, and above all to avoid the temptation to break into a run. In fact, visual sightings are rare. Out of 1055 presence indicators in the French Pyrenees during 2016, the most numerous type was that of bear hair (380), while discreetly placed remote cameras accounted for 228 sightings. Other indicators were bear dung, tracks or prints, but there were just 18 face-to-face encounters. One group of hikers on their lunch break watched a mother with her three cubs in the Couflens region, and another group in October observed a bear at 30–40m near Aulus. If any members of the public are sufficiently interested or concerned, they are able to consult a regularly updated online spreadsheet showing bear presence indicators by date and commune.
Yet all is not well in bear country, with a mounting assertion that bears and modern farming are incompatible. Parallel with the increase in bear population is, sadly, a growing number of attacks on livestock, particularly in the Ariège, which has become the département most affected by bear attacks. 124 of the total (158) attacks in the Pyrenees during 2016 took place here. These attacks have been seized by the press as well as users of social media, with images of ripped-apart livestock shared across sites. All of this has been fuelling the debate to high levels of emotion.
The conflict between the farmers and the bear enthusiasts worsened even further in 2017, partly flamed by one particularly shocking incident. A flock from Couflens that was grazing high up close to the Spanish frontier went into panic when one of the lambs was killed by a bear; the consequent stampede led 208 of them to plummet to their death in Spain. The fact that so many French sheep ended up dead in a neighbouring country made it sound even worse; chased not only over a cliff, but into another country. No one appears to have witnessed the actual stampede, but the link was made when the corpse of the lamb was discovered upstream. According to Steve Cracknell,28 who spoke with one of the owners at a meeting to discuss the problem, the financial loss is bad enough, but slaughter on this kind of scale involves a loss of decades of selective breeding, since the livestock have built up knowledge of the mountainside that’s be
en passed down through generations.
The anger climaxed in August 2017 after yet another Ariège incident. Thirty or so protestors turned up, masked and armed, to threaten the state experts who had come to assess the damage. The argument made by the protesting shepherds was that they now had no choice but to respond with threats and violence; the menace of the bears meant that they were no longer able to carry out their occupation in a peaceful manner.
At the time of writing the situation remains volatile. Despite armed shepherds threatening government experts who come to assess incidents, the programme continues. The option of a kind of separated coexistence is being mooted as one way forward, despite little idea of how it might work in practice.
Just A Stepping Stone
True to her word, Elaine contacted the brilliant family, who with some discernible reluctance agreed that I could come over and talk to them at the only time that they were available – 9am that Friday. It was a novelty to set the alarm and get up in the dark, driving before the sun had found its way into the narrow Couserans valleys. It was also unusual to sit formally around a table inside the dark interior. Not only did it feel more like an interview than any of the other chats, but I felt that I was the one being interrogated by the pair facing me across the table. The atmosphere was guarded, as if Carol and Ray were suspicious about the whole thing. I probably wouldn’t even be sitting here if it hadn’t been for Elaine’s intervention.
A House at the End of the Track Page 15