Saint-Girons is the market town of the Couserans, a green, little-visited corner of the French Pyrenees in the Ariège, and it has the quiet self-sufficiency of a place that has always been on the way to somewhere else. The Salat river runs through the middle, with old houses along its banks and a bridge from which you can see the mountains rising to the south. On Saturday mornings the market fills the main square and the surrounding streets with cheese, honey, cured meat and vegetables, and it is a good place to stock up for a picnic. About seven thousand people live here, so there is fuel, there are supermarkets and the other services of a real town.
A couple of kilometres up the river is Saint-Lizier, an older and smaller town on a hill, with a Romanesque cathedral and a cloister of the twelfth century, and a very old pilgrimage route runs through it. The town is classed as one of the most beautiful villages in France and is part of the UNESCO listing of the Camino de Santiago routes in France. A visit takes an hour and rewards you with a quiet courtyard and a view.
The Pyrenees Cols Route finishes here after a long run of passes, and the last ones are the quieter ones. The Col de la Core, at about 1,400 metres, has a long, open approach from the south, through forest and then meadow, with a road that is narrow and winding, and the Col de Portet d'Aspet, a little lower, has a famous place at a bend on the descent, where a memorial marks the spot where the Italian cyclist Fabio Casartelli died in the 1995 Tour de France. Many riders stop for a moment there. The roads of the Couserans are quiet, wooded and scenic, with few tourists.
This is bear country: brown bears, reintroduced to the Pyrenees in the 1990s from Slovenia, live in the mountains above, though you are unlikely to see one. The local Bethmale cheese, a soft, mild cow's milk cheese, is made in the valley of the same name, and a plate of it with local bread is the right lunch. The weather is mild and humid, with the Atlantic influence bringing rain, and fog can cling to the passes, so ride with care. After the high peaks, the town is a gentle landing.