Mount Canigou (2,784.66 m./9137 ft.)
This mountain has symbolical significance for catalan people. On its summit there is a cross that is often decorated with the Catalan flag. Every year on the 23d June, the night before St. John's day (nit de Sant Joan), there is a ceremony called Flama del Canigó (Canigou Flame), where a fire is lit at the mountaintop. People keep a vigil during the night and take torches lit on that fire in a spectacular torch relay to light bonfires somewhere else. Some estimates conclude that about 30,000 bonfires are lit in this way all over Catalonia on that night.
The Pic du Canigou shot to fame in England in late May 2008, when a group of teenage air cadets, from Tynemouth, UK were involved in a daring rescue. The lives of two stricken Belgian nationals, who had succumbed to injuries due the intense winter conditions and falling several hundred feet, were saved in a rescue mission lasting several hours. The daring rescue concluded with the Securitie Civil air detachment, based at Perpignan, airlifting the injured walkers to hospital for treatment of their injuries and extreme exposure. This rescue received intense local press coverage in the UK, and national press coverage to a lesser extent.
Lots of bamboo in these parts....
A man in a van.....
Wisteria....
I had to have a drink when I got back.....
