A walk in the mountains

 Just before you reach Candanchú and the border with France at Somport, there's a very rough car park called l'Anglassé. From there you can walk up and down and round and over rocks and streams along the Canal Roya, which is the start of the Aragón river. Technically, you can cross into the Tena valley but that was too far and too hard for us. In three hours of scrambling and rough walking we arrived at the corrie at the end of the valley, with Anayet on one side of us and theVertiente de Anayet on the other: what looked like a hard climb straight ahead. It was very impressive and beautiful. On a Friday morning mid-September, very few people.

Plantnet identifies this as whitebeam. There were lots of mountain ash trees with their red berries and lots of these, but it's been a bad year for blackberries.

Plenty of cows too.

I've no idea about mushrooms

Just wow!

Snow days

On Saturday we drove to the Tena valley. These views are a frozen reservoir, Bubal, I think,  and Peña Telera

This is Foratata, taken from Formigal, a village that thrives on the ski industry. It was crammed full of cars and buses! the snow came very late this winter and so people are desperate to take to the slopes!

Anayet

Living in the Aragón valley, the journey to the French border in the neighbouring Tena valley is about an hour; you have to go down to Sabiñánigo and then back up towards the mountains. It always amazes me how different one valley is from the others. They each have quite different flowers.
Yesterday we did a long walk to the Anayet mountain lake in the area of the ski resort of Formigal. The online guides I looked at said it was 10.5 km to go there and back, but you have to add another 3km because the Anayet car park is 1.5 km off the main road and the gate is locked in the summer so you have to park in a little area just off the road, let yourself in by the pedestrian gate and walk along a long and winding road to the foot of the ski slopes.
The way to Anayet is well-marked with red and white signs; I was going to say path, but that would be an exaggeration-in some places it's quite a scramble up and down rocky gullies and over marshy places.

This is one of the way markers, here on the way down. There are others where the lines are crossed to tell you not to go that way. 

Anyway, two hours up-at least-because I had to stop a lot and get my breath and strength in my legs. There were quite a lot of people going up and down-the young ones bounding up and down the track, some with big rucksacks-maybe intending to do some free camping.

On the way up we came across a herd of horses. 

This is the beautiful stallion who was with his mares and their foals. I seem to remember that they are Breton breed-broad and sturdy.It was warm and sunny on the way up, but as soon as we got over the last ridge and saw the ibón-tarn or mountain lake, it was cool and the mountains were invisible in the clouds. They did clear a bit, however, and we could see Anayet.

wild chives

lots of orchids.

We ate our sandwiches and had a rest befor scrambling back down. The flowers were amazing! Once back at the car we went for coffee at the border with France, by which time the clouds had come right down and it started raining. Goodness knows what it would have been like at the top then! Lots of the paths would have become running streams.

A host of golden daffodils

After a lovely dinner with friends in Sabiñánigo, we drove up the Tena valley to the border, Le Portalet. There are car parks for skiers next to the road, rather a chewed-up landscape after the snow which covered pretty well everything from November until last month has melted. At the moment there's a strong, chill wind. Up in the mountain pass it was bitterly cold and windy, with dirty snow still piled higher than the cars. Le Portalet has half a dozen bar-restaurants and the same number of border shops; warehouse-like stores full of massive bottles of liquor, chorizos, sweets, turron and cheese. After having a cup of lemon tea and buying Spanish turron and French cheese we drove back down into Spain to find the daffodils we'd spotted from the car. It was a bit tricky but we got there.

maybe Pyrenean ranunculus

orchid?

Pink orchid?