21 December 2012 - the world will end except in Bugarach.

Already host to more UFOs than Heathrow, a remote village in Aude expects record business from visiting aliens during 2012

20110624A The end of the world at Bugarach

The Mayan calendar completes its 5,125 year cycle on that date but this civilisation from Central America neglected to prepare a new one.

The Andean ancients built computers from a granite-based technology - large boulders aligned with the sun on a local hilltop.

Maybe they assumed that no-one would still be using the system five millenia later. Whatever the reason, they never thought about maintenance contracts, software upgrades...or calendar updates.

This was the Mayans' Windows Vista moment.

For many of a mystic turn of mind, this surely means that the world will be no more. It will simply cease to be.

There’s no better place than France to start a rumour or, better still, spread one. This one says that only the village of Bugarach in the Corbière hills will be spared Armageddon. Its secret is the Pic de Bugarach, the 1,230 metre high mountain which dominates the skyline.

By an odd coincidence, this isolated lump of limestone resembles the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming which featured in Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.

Bugarach, population 189, has been receiving “esoterics”, mystic visitors and tourists for the last 10 years or so. Now, the woods abound with teepees, authentic gipsy caravans and more than a few mongolian yurts.

Then there are stories of mysterious archaeological digs by the nazis during their occupation, strangely reminiscent of another Spielberg film “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.

Residents claim to have seen parades of people climbing the peak whilst carrying figurines of the Virgin Mary. A local journalist speaks of seeing others, dressed in white or sometimes naked, carrying a ball suspended by a thread from a golden ring.

According to the village mayor, Jean-Pierre Delord “We are 200. We don’t really need 2,000 to 3,000 utopians arriving in Bugarach”.

Nowadays, automatic counters tally these would be hill-walkers on the mountain. Last year clocked up over 10,000 such mystic mountaineers, all apparently convinced that this is the garage where aliens park their UFOs.

Numbers are expected to double for 2011.

Three weeks ago, one such visitor reached the summit only to be struck down by a heart attack. The French rarely do irony, but Mayor Delord rose to the occasion - “...for him, the end of the world came a little early”.

He went further - “If this turns out like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, we’ll have to call in the army”.

On the bright side, a neighbouring village, Rennes le Château, hasn’t looked back since author Dan Brown mentioned it in “The Da Vinci Code”.

And so it is with Bugarach. Normally closed in winter, local hotels and guest houses are booked out for the whole of December next year. House prices have more than trebled with 15 properties on the market. It’s an ill apocalypse that does no-one any good.

Personally, I think Steven Spielberg’s behind all this. Or is it the CIA?

Whilst Pure France cannot accept responsibility for the end of the world, we do offer an excellent range of holiday rental properties from which to enjoy the outstanding countryside around Bugarach, Rennes le Château and the Corbières.

The Pic de Bugarach offers stunning vues over the landscape from the Mediterranean to the Pyrenees.

There's a selection local Pure France homes in the links below:

21 December 2012 - the world will end except in Bugarach.

Already host to more UFOs than Heathrow, a remote village in Aude expects record business from visiting aliens during 2012

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