Well, it’s all happening! Our air conditioning wasn’t working so we got a swanky room instead for the same price. The reason I don’t like the classy ones is that it’s hard to leave and explore. But we did leave and ‘ramballed’ (name of the main street) down the crowded boulevarde in the middle of the street. Corrie doesn’t like crowds, and anyway the food was tourist expensive, so we wandered in and out of [...]
We spent the day walking around the outskirts of Pamplona admiring this ‘green’ city. Pamplona went to a lot of trouble to protect itself from invaders over the centuries, and not only built a fort, but waterways and stone walls erected in a way to slow the invaders down. Today, all these defensive constructions have been filled in or enhanced to create green areas. One of these areas has been set aside as a deer [...]
We are staying in Calle San Nicolas a popular bar street in medieval Pamplona where the bar tops are decorated with a bounty of brightly coloured tapas treats. The street is awash with pink decorations to celebrate the festival of La Calle de Rosa, the pink or rose wines that are famous in this Basque region of Navarra. As I was casually watching the workers tying the pink balloons above bar entrances and twisting pink [...]
Well, I read Hemmingway’s book ‘Fiesta: The Sun also rises’ and it failed to give me an insight into the soul of Pamplona. It talked about his unrequited love, other relationships, and his efforts to get to Pamplona to excite his passion, or ‘aficion‘ as the Spanish call it. The book talked about this ‘aficion‘ as something so powerful that bullfighters’ anxiety and nervousness were not seen as weakness as long as they had ‘aficion’. [...]
A little room with a tiny balcony on a narrow tapas street will be our home for a few days as we live in the large controversial shadow of Ernest Hemingway, the author that made Pamplona famous/infamous. His book, which I will try and buy and read tomorrow was very successful and it has been seen as a very good first novel. I’m not too sure whether I will like the book’s theme but I [...]
Our Albergue (called a gite in France) was like a hospital following the walk over the Pyrenees and a further 25 kms. Damaged knees were the main injury and there were 3 in our place alone, being only one amongst 15-20 other refuges. One of our new Australian friends was among the wounded so we shared Corrie’s very successful rehab. solutions - anti-inflammatories, slow right down for a bit, a light massage with good oil [...]
To keep you up to speed, the French route that we were on is called the ‘Chemin du Puy’ and goes from Le Puy en Velay to St Jean Pied de Port at the base of the Pyrenees. The Spanish route that we did last year is called the ‘Camino Frances’ and goes from St Jean to Santiago de Compostela. We are going to Barcelona, need to catch a train, and the nearest station is [...]
We’re 2 hours up the hill, a good start - we’re yearning for a clear day but the Pyrenees doesn’t cater for all and as any mountain climber will know, things work in a different way up there. We were looking forward to gazing at every landform you could imagine ... not to be. Instead we had to settle for fog, rain, strong winds, zero temperatures and no view. I have a saying these days [...]
Back to the good old days - breakfast not included so we caught the sun by surprise even though s/he would have been shrouded anyway. The landscape is starting to change as is the human contribution. The hills are becoming steeper - not the ones we are climbing, and also less productively useful. They are often bare without the usual hilltop trees with sheep hanging to the hillsides like goats, where possible. Behind the hills [...]
The dinner party did not eventuate because the expected couple did not arrive. When you’re off the track in the middle of a paddock this can happen, because a walker may see a gite on the track and stay there. But a young Swiss girl turned up instead after a 40km walk, she wasn’t going to let a walk off the track worry her. We cooked pasta with a homemade tomato mix and ate with [...]
