Casteljaloux: The Spa Town in the Pines and the Lac de Clarens

Required Activities

• Take a session in the thermal pools at Eurothermes and taste or smell the water the town was once called Casteljaloux-les-Bains for — sulphurous and iron-bearing, and used here for stiff joints rather than for drinking

• Go into the Maison du Roy, where the tourist office now is, and find the great chimneypiece in the exhibition room — then ask them which of the two kings the house is actually named for, because the claim rests on supposed visits by Louis XIII and Louis XIV rather than on any record

• Walk right round the Lac de Clarens and find the two ends of a lake that did not exist sixty years ago: the inlet where the Baraton stream feeds it, and the outfall that runs off to the Avance. It was dug from 1974, finished in the drought summer of 1976 and opened in 1977

• Walk the municipal park where Jeanne d'Albret and the future Henri IV were received and work out how much of their château is left: it was half pulled down in 1636 and the keep dismantled in 1653. Then find the surviving stretches of the 14th-century town wall, cut down more than once during the wars of religion

• At the Clarens leisure base, climb the tree-top course in the pines above the lake, then walk out to see the casino built partly on stilts over the water and decide from the shore how much of the building is standing on the lake bed