Ice-houses

Wednesday was a beautiful, hot cloudless day so we decided to go and see the ice-houses at Pradelles-Cabardes. These were made to store compacted snow during the winter, which was sold in the summer to commerces in nearby towns. I had read some very descriptive accounts of this activity and we were curious to see the remaining structures for ourselves.

The best site I found describing them is in French at http://villagesperches.free.fr/page606.htm 

I've translated it roughly - if you want to find out more, see the page on the right.

We took a right turn at Lastours and found ourselves on a wonderful road which looked down on the châteaux with superb views.

In this one, you can just see a vast array of solar panels in the middle distance (they look like water)

Not long after this we got lost and found ourselves on ever-diminishing tracks, so we stopped to have our picnic and talk to the hunting dog who had been stalking us for a couple of miles (he's carrying a tracking device)

 

Tame dog

 

Wild man





  Eventually found the remains of the two ice-houses, but no thanks to signing which only existed about 50 meters from them.  Till then, no sign, but we got directions from the village.
Elf and Safety obviously couldn't find them either. The deep pits, partly overgrown, had one strand of barbed wire fencing around them, mostly down at ground level.  There was a dead deer at the bottom of one pit, and I'm sure it would be impossible to climb out if you fell down one.

Unfortunately so overgrown that it was impossible to get a decent picture, but you can see the three stone roof arches and, in the last one, the remaining chestnut beams which would have supported the tiled roof.

These date from the latter half of the 19th century and were defunct by the early 20th century.

 We also had a look at the lovely little church in Pradelles.

      



 On the way back we took in La Tourette-Cabardes with its strange church partly built over the street