Saint-Lary-Soulan

Saint-Lary-Soulan lives two completely different lives depending on the season, and we’ve now seen both, a year apart, which felt like visiting two different towns wearing the same stone houses. In winter it’s one of the bigger ski resorts in the central Pyrenees, gondola swinging skiers straight up from the village square. In summer the same gondola carries hikers instead, and the whole valley turns into a staging ground for the Néouvielle nature reserve above it.

A funicular from the village square

What sets Saint-Lary apart from most French ski towns is that the lift system starts right in the middle of the village rather than up at some purpose-built station car park — you can walk out of a boulangerie with a croissant still in hand and be on a gondola within five minutes. We rode it up on a grey February morning mostly to see the view, since neither of us skis particularly well, and the ridge lines opening up above the tree line made the trip worth it even without poles. The resort itself, spread across Saint-Lary and the linked village of Vielle-Aure, has kept enough of its old slate-roofed core that it doesn’t feel like the concrete ski factories you find elsewhere in the range.

Thermal water and a reserve of lakes

Saint-Lary also has its own thermal baths, smaller and less grand than Bagnères’ but built around genuinely hot mineral springs used since Roman times, and after a day on the slopes we went straight there instead of a bar, which tells you something about how tired we were. The bigger draw for me, though, is what starts just past the village: the Réserve Naturelle Néouvielle, a granite wilderness of more than seventy glacial lakes scattered across a landscape that looks more like Scandinavia than the Mediterranean-adjacent France most people picture. We only managed a short loop near the Lac d’Orédon on a later summer visit, but the water was that improbable turquoise you don’t quite believe until you’ve seen it, ringed by bare granite domes with barely another hiker in sight.

When to go: December through March for skiing on generally reliable snow at this altitude, or July and August for the Néouvielle lakes, when the high trails are finally clear of snow — just book accommodation early, since the town has surprisingly few beds for how popular both seasons are.