Shortly after we bought the house in Thèzan-lés-Bèziers I saw in a web page of a chambre d’hôte in the village that they boasted of a view of the Pyrénées from their terrace. I happily assumed, and told people so, that there was a view of the same mountains from our house. There is indeed a constant glimpse of a mountain from the terrace.

But I wasn’t happy with this, the mountain seemed both too near and too small to be the majestic Pyrénées. It seemed more likely that what I was seeing was the Montagne d’Alaric, a hill really rather than a mountain in the Corbieres, which one drove past on the motorway between Carcassonne and Bèziers.

They used to say in Killarney about the Macgillicuddy Reeks that if you could see the Reeks from Killarney it was a sign of rain, if you couldn’t see them it was raining.

For the last few days the weather has been quite a bit cooler, and fresher, it even rained for a few minutes yesterday.
Last night, on the terrace, Colm, my brother-in-law was admiring the view when he said suddenly; “What are those mountains!”
I followed his gaze and there, emerging for the first time to my eyes and as dramatic as the sudden emergence of a whale from an empty sea, huge, dark and high, were the true Pyrénées.
And then, true to my whale analogy, they hung about for about a half an hour before disappearing again.
In fact this morning I have discovered that they aren’t as evanescent as they appeared last night. Now, as I know exactly where they lie, I can make out their shadowy shape if I look hard at the right place on the horizon. Before their sudden clear appearance last night I had thought that this was a formation of clouds.

A few years ago we rented a house in Ceret, which was just in the small corridor of land where the High Pyrénées do not form a barrier between France and Spain.
The town of Ceret is dominated by the towering bulk of Mount Canigou to the west, an impressive 2784 mts in height, the first of the High Pyrénées.
As we are about 100 kilometres from there I can only suppose that it is the same Canigou, which looms so massively over Ceret, is now appearing and disappearing on the horizon to me here in Thèzan, on far smaller scale but with just as much impact.