Pyrénées-Atlantiques

...... distant saw a walker with the backpack moving on its own beside him. Approaching I found out, that there were actually two persons. A very tall one and a very small one, walking side by side. Later I had met "Emile le Grand and Petit Poulette"......

..had my very first encounter with an aggressive dog near a small place named "Gibraltar". After a steep ascend I saw a flock of sheep, the little "chapelle de Soyarza" under some trees - and the Pyrenees in the back....

....the mountain range on the horizon grew steadily with every hour I walked south...

...a small church with perfect dimensions. Built for the pilgrims in the 12th century and meanwhile way too large for the little parish of less than one hundred. The church has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as a part of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela.

...an old chapel, a few houses and one street. This was slipperey, as it was covered with cow- and sheep droppings..

..the mountains don´t really look "alpine" up here...

A power station of the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Midi, an early railway company that operated a network of routes in the southwest of France. In 1934 the company was merged with the Chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans. It then was the largest private railway in France until it was taken over by the state railway Société national des Chemins de fer français (SNCF) in 1938.

In summer this beach is very popular - and sometimes crowded.

In 2009, I crossed Orthez on foot along the Via Lemovicensis, but back then this shop didn´t exist. This is one of the last companies in France to produce the famous berets in the traditional way - by hand. It was founded 2021. Manufacture de bérets