Wined, dined and rested.

It’s the second night of our long-awaited summer holiday and we are in our Pyrenees again. SO good to be back.
What can it be about the mountains in the Pyrenees that they just make one happy?

The views are amazing, the people friendly and the worst of the crowds haven’t found them yet….. but it’s deeper than that.

Perhaps I was a mountain isard in a previous life. Which leads me seamlessly to our little hotel, the Auberge des Isards. As I’m sure you know, ahem (I didn’t) an isard is a kind of small mountain deer like a chamois, and apparently there are 260 of them in the environs of Aydius.
I know this is a little off-topic, but is it only me who hears a statistic like that and immediately starts wondering how you go about counting isards? Do they mobilise the entire village and comb through the mountains like a line of police forensic experts? Do they record the sound of a sexy male/female isard and play it through amplified loudspeakers till all 260 red blooded isards have leapt their way down the mountain to try to make love to the speakers? Is there one person known to all locals as the isard-whisperer and he/she is so attuned to them that the number 260 just pops into their brain and we all know it’s right because after all only an isard-whisperer would dare put a number to them? One day I’ll go back to Aydius and ask someone.

 

We’ve visited the valley of the Aspe before, but this was a new village and a new hotel for us. You make your way to a village in the valley, then you climb halfway up the mountain to reach Aydius itself. The road is winding but not impossible and along most of it two cars can pass quite safely. The short journey is worth it, both for the views and the hotel.

The hotel building is owned by the local council and has been done up as a hotel, then given to someone to run so as to encourage people to visit this very pretty village. In this case the building has been refurbished to a very high standard (we have stayed in places where this is not so – I still shudder when I think what was done to the 14th century castle further up this valley), with light coloured wood and clean lines everywhere.

 

The bedrooms are beautiful, almost Scandinavian in their design, reclaimed wood everywhere and with a fabulous floor to ceiling window that wallops you with that view as you walk in, actually making it quite difficult to do anything but gawp at the majesty of your surroundings.

Dinner was well cooked local food, nothing fancy or haute cuisine but very tasty and served by the friendly staff in the dining room with the huge picture window onto the mountains on the other side of the valley. To start I had “garbure”, a Pyreneean hearty vegetable soup with a few pieces of meat – the nice detail was that it was served in a little tureen so you could go on helping yourself if you wanted to.

Then I chose the poached eggs in sauce made with Jurançon wine; I thought it might be a little like my favourite “oeufs meurette” (eggs cooked in Bourgogne wine, a Burgundian speciality) and although it was only a distant cousin a few times removed in terms of presentation it was just as delicious, highly recommended.

In their rush to serve us the kitchen staff hadn’t quite cooked the chips all the way through, but when this was discreetly pointed out the waitress was horrified, the offending items were whisked away and more were brought out that were, well, an improvement.
We had a Madiran (red) wine with it all, from Domaine Bassail, chosen because it is relatively local, produced in the south western Gers area. We always try the local wines, out of simple interest but also you may just make an amazing discovery! Madiran is full-bodied with rather more tannin than we would usually choose, being made from mostly the Tannat grape (to be AOC it must contain at least 60%, and I would say this wine contained more than that) with a little help from both Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. In fact the powerful full fruity flavour was really very good and – of course – it improved hugely after the initial tasting as we left it to come on a bit in the bottle. Apparently Madiran wines are claimed to be the most healthy ones because of the concentration of antioxidants in them – hooray, bring on the medicinal Madiran.

We had a fantastic night’s sleep, at least I did. Somehow I managed to sleep through a Pyreneean storm – quite an achievement, but the beds were really comfortable and we woke in the morning to THAT view….
Recently we’ve been choosing not to have hotel breakfasts since they usually consist of one croissant, one piece of baguette and help yourself to ghastly coffee from that work of the devil, the do-it-yourself hotel coffee machine (eeeek). And to pay €10 for that is just wrong. However something made us choose breakfast here this time, maybe the prospect of eating it enjoying the view – well of course the view is “imprenable” as the French say…….

…….. but the breakfast was SUPERB, one of the best we’ve had! No coffee machine in sight, the real deal, and a whole table of goodies for us INCLUDING freshly prepared fruit salad. Oh my gosh, you have to come here just to have the breakfast.

So thank you, and we’ll definitely be back, Auberge des Isards.  I wonder if there are 261 of them by now?