Borderland beauty lifts visitors to the heights

You had better not be prone to dizziness, if you cross the Himalayan-style suspension bridge at Holzarte in the French Pyrenees. Under your feet yawns a gorge some 150 m deep, clearly visible in gaps between the slats. And the bridge sways more violently the closer you come to the middle.

Italian carpenters built the structure in the 1920s, when villages in the Pyrenees were isolated. Today, it serves as a starting point for hikes in Basque country and the former French province of Bearn.

The Basque country is known for berets, and Bearn gives its name to bearnaise sauce. But neither attribution is what it seems. Berets actually originated in neighboring Bearn, where shepherds knitted the flat, round caps and then felted them. They became world famous thanks to the Basque people, though.