I now know what snowshoeing is all about.

When I was a kid it was walking with tennis rackets on your feet! Then more recently it seemed like a good way to get in to snowy crags. But it snowed here a lot this weekend, dumping a foot of snow even down at Chez Arran, at 550m altitude near the base of the main Ariège valley. I took the opportunity to try out my new snowshoes and found out why the activity (the French call it 'Raquettes') is so popular - so much so that there are numerous guidebooks, marked snowshoe trails and professional guided snowshoe walks seemingly everywhere you look around here.

The freedom it gives you to have fun in the snow is brilliant. I checked out a new path from the house up to the ruined church in the remote abandoned village of Lujat, only about 2 hours away even in deep snow. Keeping to the path was tricky at times, but ducking and diving through tunnels of trees and bushes definitely brought out the explorer instinct. Much more fun than following someone else's tracks on a popular trail.

Then today I tried driving up to the wonderfully named village of Appy, up a little valley just behind the house, but the road was too deep with uncleared snow so our poor car couldn't make it. I got as far as the village of Cazenave and walked up a path from there. The snow was up to 2 feet deep but with snowshoes it was about as hard to walk on as a typical sandy beach. Amazing really. Covered in animal tracks too but I could only guess at what kind of animals they were; some tracks were big enough to be deer, but I didn't see any bear prints - that would have been nice!
Forgive the slightly 'Blair Witch' video clip - not sure how else I could film it by myself  ;-)


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