Tag Archives: Port d’Aygues-Tortes

Another magazine: les feuilles du Pin à Crochets

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This French magazine on the Pyrenees – with a literary style & design – published in 2006 an edition on the border aspects of the Pyrenees. Charles Darrieu told me about it and helped me to receive it. Bibliographic data:
Les feuilles du Pin à Crochets numéro 7 – Pyrenées frontières
Pau : Éditions du pin à crochets, 2006. – ISBN 2-911715-32-2 (website: http://www.editionspinacrochets.com)

It contains 7 articles on a variety of Pyrenean border issues and is illustrated by lots of b&w pictures, including old pictures of borderpasses.

One of the articles has a link with a previous post on this blog. It’s about a ‘disputed’ triangular area between the summit of le Grand Batchimale (or Pic Schrader) and the borderpass with the original bm330. That borderpass was originally named Port de Clarabide but nowadays is shown on the maps as Port d’Agues-Tortes. The current Port de Clarabide is a few kilometers to the east.
The article shows lot of map-samples from over the years and also on older maps we see usually the name Port d’Agues-Tortes or similar. Only a few give it the name ‘Port de Clarabide’.

Amazing: the original bm330 rediscovered

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September 14, 2012. Jean-Paul Laborie climbed to Port d’Aygues Tortes in freezing weather. He had a mission: finding the original bm330. We know that this bordercross was engraved in the 19th century at Port de Clarabide and nowadays  there is still a cross 330 at this col. But that cross was engraved in 2003, the previous one was unfindable.
Jean-Paul Laborie is a member of the Pyrenean bordercommittee. Apparently bm330 puzzled him and at some point he got a brilliant idea. Could it be that the toponomy of the borderpasses as shown on the maps have changed in the course of years? And that the original Port de Clarabide was somewhere else? He compared old and contemporary maps. And his hypothesis was confirmed! The contemporary Port d’Aygues Tortes used to be Port de Clarabide. And that’s where Jean-Paul found the original bm330.