Climbing boars

Perpignan advertises 300 days of sunshine a year. A beautiful old city, “capital of Northern Catalonia.” And the beaches are clean and wide.

Inland, the scenery is incredibly varied over short distances. The rocks along the southern coast toward Spain bring the Riviera to mind. A touch of nostalgia: close your eyes and you can just picture James Bond (the old one, of course) driving a low, fast, sporty little car along those winding roads.

And the food! Fish!
And the wine: Banjuls. Incredible.
And the culture: Céret, with an enormous collection of Picassos. A legacy of the time when this was a haven for artists who had fled Franco’s regime. And then, of course, the old Cathar castles. You can almost feel the history...

And for military enthusiasts, there are the old fortifications.
We visited Fort Lagarde near the medieval fortified town of Prats-de-Mollo. It lies in a valley with practically no way out except for one narrow, winding road. That road leads to Spain and therefore had to be defended, as it had been for centuries. What makes it unique is the covered passage from the town to the fort, which allowed villagers to escape to the fort during an attack without coming under fire.

Tomorrow we will hunt in this valley, in one of the Vallees Sauvages. At least we know the way now. And after a tapas lunch in the little market square, we head back toward the coast.

We decide to “take in a bit more culture.”
Hannibal crossed the Pyrenees here (with his elephants) on his way to Italy. The Romans had one of their most important southern trade routes here, the Via Domitia, which crossed the Col de Perthus. It is one of the lowest passes in the Pyrenees. Fort Bellegarde stands there. It even played a part in the war between Spain and the Netherlands! Wonderful, tangible history.
And a lovely view of the pass on the other side of the fort: Col de Panissas, where you can see the remains of the Roman fort and enjoy a fantastic view of the Spanish plains.

On the way back, we spend a bit of money in Perthus, a little tax haven like Andorra. But back to the point: is there any game?

On the walk to and from the fort, we passed through cork oak woods. It must have been a mast year for those trees. An incredible number of acorns on the trees and on the ground beneath them. And the pigs had discovered them too. They had been rooting everywhere, absolutely everywhere. You could see fresh signs of them wherever you looked, and in a few places you could catch their Maggi-like scent.

And is it steep there! The road has a grade of 18-19%. And it winds its way up the mountain, so straight up or down is steeper still by quite a margin. But that turns out to be no problem at all for the pigs there.
Climbing pigs, that’s what they are.
Sus Scrofa, does it also have a subspecies that specializes in climbing? Sus Ascensu?

I wonder what their climbing ability will mean for tomorrow’s hunt…

©TheoM