Eastern Pyrénées. July 18, 2018

We flew back from Split to Paris to hop onto another plane to Perpignan. We were going to meet our friends from Belgium Véronique and Michel D. in Mont-Louis to start our 4 days walk in Cerdagne and Capcir., high up in the Pyrénées Orientales on the border of Spain.

We walked between 4 to 6 hours a day, taking along our picnics enjoying nature and each others company. The nature in these parts of France is gorgeous and we could not have dreamed of better weather, maybe a tad cooler…

The Soccer World Cup was on our mind and we pushed forward to arrive at our Refuge in Les Bouillouses on time to watch the final of the world cup: France vs. Croatia! And guess what?

France won!!!

Our Belgians friends were happy but still sad they had been eliminated in the quarter finals… We watched the game nibbling on local ham, saucisson, cheese and bread: the best!

The next day, the weather changed and got a bit chilly. We walked in the beautiful Angoustrine Valley enjoying this little chill.

The following day took us around Villeneuve des Escaldes and Girona in Spain. We stopped at a site with a natural hot water pool that we all enjoyed!

We had the best time and a lot of good laughs! Walking was fun, sometimes hard but being surrounded by this natural beauty, old villages and roman churches with very little humans around us was exquisite!

Véronique managed to keep the team on alert. She went ahead without the map, took the wrong turn, got lost and had no-one around to ask for directions. Meanwhile we kept going thinking she was ahead of us. Arrived at the refuge, no sign of Veronique! We got worried, waited a while and as Pierre was going to her rescue, she showed up! We were all relieved….

As we completed the hiking part of our trip we drove around to some nice towns and villages. We visited Llo and her roman church of Saint-Fructueux de Llo with her steeples in shapes of young ladies, a charming place!

Went on for some degustation of charcuterie in Saillagouse and some shopping for our friends in Spain in Puigcerda.

A very emotional time in our travels happened when Véronique realized that she was only couple miles away from where her father, Pierre de Stexhe had been arrested during the war by the Gestapo!

As a young adult, he had joined the resistance and was one of the links in the freedom trail to help thousands of people to escape the Nazis into Spain. He was arrested in January 1943 in Osseja, only one train stop before is final destination in Bourg Madame. He had asked for this trip to be his last as he felt in danger of being suspected by the Gestapo after so many passages he had done. He was 25 years old.

He was sent to the jail of Fresnes in Paris for a year, then to different concentration camps and finally to Dachau… Got liberated in May 1945 by the Americans who opened Dachau doors He always kept an immense gratitude for his liberators!

He got married and had six daughters. Later he became very sick with typhus and tuberculosis.

Veronique’s father was an amazing man with a great sense of humor. In one of the pictures below, you can see him with the King of Belgium who was having a celebration for the survivors of the concentration camps. When the King asked him how terrible his experience must have been, he laughed and answered: “Sire, not as difficult as living at home with seven women!”

It was heart wrenching for Véronique and also for all of us to walk on his path 75 years later…

He passed away a few years ago having for sure lived his life to the fullest. Much respect for such actions!

The next morning, we drove with our friends to their summer house in The Pyla on the Bassin d’Arcachon where we met their new grandson, Gustave, Marie’s and Karl-Eric’s third child after Larissa and Ferdinand.