Cabane du Col de la Pierre Saint Martin

The place

Unmanned cabin at 1800 m near the Col de la Pierre Saint-Martin, on the Franco-Spanish border between the Pyrénées-Atlantiques (Béarn) and Navarre (Larra Nature Reserve nearby). A single bed, a table, a chair and a fireplace — this is the large building, not the pastoral cabin. Around the pass, megaliths, cromlechs, rock shelters and ruins of cayolars (shepherds' huts) bear witness to a very ancient pastoral life. Shepherds live here for nearly four months; cheese is made and matured from mid-June to August. Every 13 July, a highly ritualised ceremony takes place at the border marker on the pass, as part of a historic peace agreement between French and Spanish shepherds.