Ax-les-Thermes and Orlu: The Lepers' Pool, the Wolf House and the Reserve under the Frontier Peaks

Required Activities

• Soak your feet in the Bassin des Ladres in the middle of Ax-les-Thermes — the town's only listed monument — and work out how the water gets cool enough to sit in: it leaves the ground at up to 77 °C, the hottest in the Pyrenees, and has to lose forty degrees on the way to your ankles

• At the Maison des Loups, pick out all five packs — Arctic, Canadian, European, Polish and Mackenzie — and rank them by size on the hoof rather than by label, then book a place in the vision tunnel at the till and see how close the Mackenzies come to the glass

• Walk up the Oriège from Les Forges d'Orlu at 912 m towards the étangs d'En Beys at 1,950 m and look for two of the reserve's residents: the isard on the rock above the path, and the Alpine marmots that were put here in 1958. Then remember what the reserve has logged coming back on its own — a bearded vulture nesting site in 1997, red deer in 1998, a brown bear in 1999 and a grey wolf in 2001, a few kilometres above a park built to show people what a wolf is

• On the way up the Oriège, find the hydroelectric works inside the reserve: the intakes at Mourtès and la Coumette and the dam at En Beys are all within its boundary, and the flow left in the river below them is set by law rather than by the weather