Canigou race

Today was the day of the Canigou race, 32 km and 2,180 metres of altitude so not for the faint hearted. At the beginning of the twentieth century, before fridges and freezers, inhabitants of Vernet les Bains used to climb high into the mountain, and cut blocks of ice from the hillside which they loaded onto their backs in order to run back down to the village and sell. The fastest runners had the greatest chance of selling their ice to the posh hotels which were nearly all swept away in the great flood of 1940. It is an international race which usually attracts about 800 hundred runners but the numbers were almost halved this year due to Covid. The blip shows a local girl being cheered home in second place with a time of around four and a quarter hours. The fastest times are around three hours. The weather was sunny but unusually cool at only around 20 degrees, more comfortable for the runners than in most years..