ReportageA huge green plateau surrounded by forests and mountains: the Lescun cirque is like an island in the middle of the Pyrenees. A site of breathtaking beauty, it is also a paradise for hikers and climbers.
We could really miss it, the road leading to Spain via the Somport pass and its parade of trucks still revealing nothing of the scenery. You have to leave the national road and take a very small road to reach this exceptional landscape. There, we are immediately struck by the beauty of the Lescun circus. A soft and powerful beauty, almost unreal. It feels like on an island. A huge green plateau dotted with farms and surrounded by forests and mountains. From Dec de Lhurs to the organs of Camplong, passing by the great needle of Ansabère or the Table of the Three Kings, the mountains of the cirque of Lescun draw a cut-out frieze with in the center the immense Billare, which rises to 2,318 meters.
First shivers at the sight of this rocky lacework which seems to protect the 150 or so inhabitants of the village of Lescun, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. François Carrafancq, a native of the country, has never tired of painting this magical landscape for more than forty years. He enjoys the mists, the lights, the snow, the mineral. He knows all the secrets, all the spells. “It’s a bit bogus to say that, but every day, I am amazed”, tells the one who compares his village to an eagle’s nest.
His studio is on the top floor of a house with thick walls, like all those in the village. He works under a glass roof, in natural light. It is in this old attic that he can spend hours sitting on his armchair “To smoke cigarettes and find the right gesture, the true color. I always wanted to be a painter. When I was 15, I started with oil, but I quickly chose watercolor ”, explains the one Claude Nougaro called “The precise prince of the mists”.
“I want to be more abstract, for that I have to get rid of my quirks, of the detail. “ An almost obvious precision when we know the route of this exceptional climber, who climbed solo and without being assured the Spigolo d’Ansabère in 1985, one of the most famous routes of the circus, so named because of its resemblance to the needles of the Dolomites.
Grooves, hollows and roughness of the cliffs
François Carrafancq, whose parents ran the Auberge du Pic d’Anie, says that he had to be back at the restaurant in the evening for service, after his ascent! The Carrafancq house is fifteen meters from his home, on the village square. The family inn has remained intact, with the charm of the old. In this period of confinement, we are the only customers. A grand wooden staircase leads to the five bedrooms, whose furniture and wall-mounted telephone are reminiscent of the 1960s, like the faded red Formica table on which we dine.
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