Mont Ceint

Another beautiful, warm day, so we headed over to Aulus........this time for a walk! Mont Ceint/Pic de Girantes is at 2088m with spectacular views onto the mountains that border Spain. Thanks to the prolonged spell of warm weather, the majority of the snow has melted up there which made for easy walking. It was a steep ascent up from the Port de Saleix (the Col on the right hand side of the photo) but under an hour and a half after leaving the car, we were rewarded with fantastic views towards Mont Valier from the summit point, which was only marred by a group of a dozen or so people who had chosen that spot for their lunchbreak. The descent down the back of Mont Ceint was beautiful as we headed down to a high pasture plateau and then eventually through woodland and back to the road. We saw some amazing spring flowers on the walk including an early gentiana verna a white and a purple Hepatica Nobilis,
and an as yet unidentified bluey purple flower...

In under 3 hrs we were back at the car having covered 9.5kms and 735m of ascent - a nice little outing and what's more we have worn the dog out :-)