... la transhumance. What a great word, talking - as we do here sometimes - about words.
For the unitiated, it is that time of year when the sheep farmers of the Alps drive their flocks to higher grazing land.
Above Barcelonette, we saw the road ahead blocked by the start of the process (for one farmer) and stopped the car, having little choice. Someone else had already pulled up; a young woman was running up the road, camera in hand.
"Nous sommes commes les moutons," I admitted as I caught up with her, my own camera in hand too.
At our hotel in Pra Loup, we were told a little more about this annual event. The transhumance and the loup are linked, of course. The wolves are not like sheep, but they do like sheep, to eat.
The wolves represent the principal danger to the sheep in the coming three months or so. But if I am right, the sheep have less risk of being eaten by them than of being frightened by them to such an extent that they then jump to their deaths in any handy ravine.
None of this is much appreciated by the farmers. The wolves are protected species, so must not be killed just because they kill (or set in train events that lead to death); if - again - I am right, the farmers are duly compensated.
And they can always laugh at the tourists who suddenly find that as the sheep rise, the flies descend. I am told it is like night following day. It certainly makes for a noisy, touchy-feely reveille as the blasted things buzz around your bed, settle on your face and generally make themselves such a pain that you get up far earlier than you ever intended.
Recent Comments