When the temperature fell below -11 even my Macbook froze. I didn't think they did that, but they do. When I finally thawed it out it had reset the date, for some reason, at 1st February 2008 and wouldn't open my email. But since the internet had stopped working, this was kind of academic.. The satellite dish on our roof had a beard of icicles hanging from it which presumably messed up its pointing system with the satellite.
Well, if you choose to holiday at 800metres in the Pyrenees in February, I suppose you shouldn't be surprised if it gets cold. But not like this. This has been the worst winter for 15 years, according to our neighbours in the commune of Alos, who've been struggling to keep their horses fed and free of frostbite. Normally, the people of the Pyrenees welcome snow to keep the ski resorts working – which have become an important part of the local economy.
And it's very rare for the roads to be blocked as many have been over the past week. This is because they have a highly effective snow-clearing and gritting operation. The big snow ploughs on the main roads tear around so fast they often leave a trail of sparks on the road behind them. Local farmers, it seems, can earn a bit by sticking a snow plough on the fronts of their four-by-fours and driving around the networks of small roads that keep the dispersed community going. And this is a dispersed community.
One of the reasons I love the Pyrenees is that it's what I imagine the Highlands of Scotland would have been like had the people not been cleared from the land to make way for sheep and deer. In the hills of the Ariege, there are lots of people, in hundreds of tiny, low densities communities or “hameau”, often illuminated by a solitary street light. When you look at the surrounding hills at night here they're dotted with what look like constellations of stars, but are actually the streetlights of these hamlets in the sky. I don't know how these hill farming communities have survived, with their tiny strips of pasture, their goats and kitchen gardens, but they do.
