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66 Petites Histoires du Pays Catalan

Posted: Fri 02 Feb 2018 07:24
by Sus
I recently picked up this small book, it is written by a local librarian and contains short interesting bits of history about various places in the PO. Anybody heard about le Prix Jean S. Barès from the Touring Club de France? Quite a price to win as below...

"Les conditions d'attribution de ce prix sont assez originales. Il faut être guide pyrénéen ou veuve d'un tel guide, habiter à plus de 500 mètres d'altitude et être le père ou la mère d'au moins sept enfants vivants et tous nés à plus de 500 mètres d'altitude également."

... not perhaps surprisingly, the price no longer exits!

Posted: Fri 02 Feb 2018 13:51
by martyn94
Back in the day, there was not much else to do, after dark, when you were 500m up the Pyrenees.

I got a “closedâ€￾ scholarship at University which was primarily for sons of widows of CoE clergy with a parish in Westmoreland. If that class was empty, the rules were successively relaxed until they found someone who qualified: I got in at about level 6 which was, roughly, “not Catholic, and born north of Watfordâ€￾.

I had previously sat the exam for an “openâ€￾ scholarship, and failed dismally. I already had a place on my A levels, and the last thing I wanted to do was burnish my (“publicâ€￾) school’s marketing materials.