B. The mountain house where PIRI was hiding when bad things happened to her: Piri's mother's family hides her from her father's pledge to a fellow chief that he can have his daughter as wife, and she is seriously hurt when they come to take her by force. First she comes south to Ullastret. Then she goes into the wild country of the Pyrenees in the northwest where she is in a secluded valley of a neighboring, primitive tribe near a small village.
Her hosts are a successful farmer couple, pioneers from her mother's tribe, with a staff of about seven people, but who are getting on in age.
Her home is larger than this current structure in the above photo, and it is accompanied by several other homes of this small size, and the location was picked to make access difficult from the river bottom where the paths are. The nearby village lies in the wider part of the canyon to the northeast, just barely around this bend.
Crops and cattle feed were grown in what are now just meadows next to the river.
In fact the meadows stretching to the northeast adjoined meadows owned and worked as farm fields by villagers who lived just around the bend.
Meadows continued to the south, but were not as wide and fertile as those lying to the northeast, so they became cattle grazing areas, mostly, and were where one had to walk with a bucket to milk a cow.
The little lake served as a water reservoir in very dry months. A bucket was lowered into the water via a rope and a small wooden chute that needed constant repair. When broken, one had to walk down, no problem, but then back up with a heavy bucket.
The little lake served as a water reservoir in very dry months. Its small boulder dam needed occasional rebuilding after a very large storm event.
Today a paved highway runs past the place, taking away its former isolation, but not its beauty:
There is a convenient pull-out on the highway to allow people to see the little lake and cottage, as we have just done!
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