Toussaints vacation: Bedous

From Pau, we drove south into the Pyrenees to a little town called Bedous, which is only about 15 miles from the Spanish border. The drive to Bedous, part of which is shown in the picture, was beautiful.

Near Bedous, we visited the Mill of Orcun, the only operating mill left on the gave d'Aspe ("gave" seems to mean "small river"). It has a single, horizontally mounted mill wheel -- when we asked the guide why it is horizontal and not vertical, he told us it's because you don't need any gears that way -- that drives a big grinding stone. It was a great tour. Below is a video that shows the guide first dumping grain into a hopper, then pulling the stopper to start the stone turning. Looking down below, where the water drives the wheel, it makes a lot of sense how the thing runs: It's less like the idyllic mental image we had of a stream flowing over a big paddle wheel and more like a hydroelectric plant, with a small dam that produces a high-pressure stream at the bottom under several meters of water.