A circular walk around the second highest mountain in the Pyrenees (and up to the top, of course). [Click on the start of the trails for more details, photos, and to download the route for a GPS]
Posets
August 29th, 2010Strange days in Catalonia
August 20th, 2010
the roof of the Vapor Aymerich, Amat i Jover (architect, Lluís Muncunill)
Terrassa: 214,000 inhabitants and the fourth largest city in Catalonia, but you haven’t heard of it. Forget Barcelona, iced by the modernista architect Gaudí – but with signs, in English, forbidding urinating in public. Forget the quaint fishing village of Calella de Palafrugell, and the Costa Brava – with its multilingual waiters. Terrassa is the real Catalonia, untainted by tourists.
But being authentic has its downside. Think: the Spanish equivalent of Basingstoke. After all, Basingstoke is authentically English – though not many people’s destination of choice. So why did we pick a holiday in suburbia? Because it was free, literally. We had signed up for a house swop, without worrying too much about the details.
On our first day we walked to where we thought the town centre should be, through anonymous housing estates, past tawdry rows of shops and their fast-food “Frankfurts”. Their ubiquity might well explain the excessive number of dental clinics, but fails completely to account for the laser epilation parlours. Read the rest of this entry »
Eyne to Núria and back
August 20th, 2010
Isards in the Eyne valley
An ordinary weekend, walking in the Pyrenees. Completely ordinary but still magic. On Saturday, we climbed the Eyne valley, sauntering through the flower beds, our footsteps bathed in colour. Then we saw the marmotte suburb on the hillside opposite us, their holes linked by a marmotte-sized highway, although only a couple of them were braving the heat. Above, at the pass and on the frontier ridge (2800m) there were long ethereal views down to the plains on both sides. But the real highlight was the isards.
We have just crossed the Pyrenees, from Eyne in the Pyrénées-Orientales in France to the sanctuary of Núria in Catalonia in Spain, and back again. 2200m of climbing over two days, in beautiful weather. Nothing dramatic happened, although in Núria on Saturday evening the watery sausages – believe me, it is possible for sausages to be wet – should have caused a riot.
On the frontier ridge between Eyne and Núria
On the return journey, on Sunday, we had just settled down to eat lunch by the river Eyne when we saw an isard on the slope opposite. And then another, and another. A dozen in all. Old and young. One, clearly a dominant male, with a yellow collar. Gambolling, leaping… and fighting. Close by, ignoring us. More interested in a rival herd, than in us, they were defending a strategic point, though at first we couldn’t make out why. Then I remembered the woman with a donkey who told us that she had just brought a sack of salt up for the cows. We hadn’t seen where she had left the sack, but it must have been that precious taste that the isards were fighting over. We watched the spectacle for more than half an hour.
An ordinary weekend, but still magic.
Thanks to Laurence, Evelyene for the photos; and to Claude for photographing and identifying the flowers.
Botany of the Eyne valley and the frontier ridge (Pyrénées-Orientales) 31 July and 1 August 2010
Aperçu botanique de la vallée d’Eyne et des crêtes, 31 juillet et 1 août 2010
by Claude Premillieu
* Fleurs que l’on a vues dans la Vallée d’Eyne mais dont la photo ici n’a pas été prise dans la Vallée d’Eyne. Flowers which we saw in the Eyne valley – though the photo was taken elsewhere.
Lower part of the valley (1600-2000m) – Partie basse de la vallée (1600-2000m)
Géranium des prés (Geranium pratense, L.) Meadow Crane’s-bill
Lis martagon (Lilium martagon, L.) Martagon or Turk’s cap lily
Renouée des Alpes (Polygonum alpinum, Allioni) Alpine polygonum, Alaska wild rhubarb
Time-bomb explodes 100 years later
June 27th, 2010
Mystery fungus
I am walking in the woods, when I spot it. The size of my hand, bright red, with five prongs sticking out like a starfish, I’ve never seen anything like it before, I bend down to look closer and then reel back. It smells putrid. I prod it with a stick – not a good idea – and the smell bursts into the damp air. Looking as closely as I dare, I think I can identify the remains of insects, their bodies half liquefied in suppurating pools of black gunge. There are no leaves, no chlorophyll, so it must be some kind of fungus, I suppose.
I have no idea what it is so I take a photo and go to ask our neighbours. They have lived in the same farm all their lives, and their ancestors too..
“No, I don’t know what it is. I’ve never seen one in my life,” says the aitatxi (grand-father). “Where did you find it?” asks. Read the rest of this entry »
400 years of witchcraft: still more questions than answers
June 22nd, 2010
The theatre group "Sorgin Haizeak" performed in the village square
Before I went to Zugarramurdi, I had consigned witches to history.
When I was a child, every time I went to bed I jumped in as quickly as possible. I was convinced that the witch which lived in the cupboard underneath would grab my legs. But I stopped believing in God when I was fourteen, and with him, the devil, witches, fairies, hobgoblins, and other charlatans.
Witches, I thought, might genuinely believe that they had exceptional powers or, more likely, pretend in order to gain money or prestige. But true witches had never existed. And clearly fakes were of no interest. Witchcraft was too cutesy for a 14-year-old boy. Too full of clichés for a grown-up man.
Even when I walked the GR10 and passed within a frog’s leap of Zugarramurdi, I didn’t make the detour. Then last Saturday I went there and changed my mind.
I only went because it was the first fine day for a week, and we needed to get out. “There’s a midsummer Witch Day,” I said to Veronica. “Let’s go.”
Not chicken muscles
June 13th, 2010
Tribute to Basque strength: harrijasotze
We only go into the butchers in Leítza to buy some muslos de pollo – literally chicken muscles but we leave with directions for a museum dedicated to a different kind of muscles – human ones.
The walls of the shop were plastered with photos of massive stones being lifted by hulky men. These must be harrijasotzaile.
“Who are they?” I ask in my simplified Spanish, pointing to the men in the photos.
“My father and my brother,” explains the butcher.
The stones on their shoulders are labelled 250kg, 294kg; most are rectangular blocks but some are spherical. There is a trophy on one shelf. Looking at the butcher, I guess that he doesn’t participate but I ask anyway.
“Do you do it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I prefer fiestas.” Read the rest of this entry »
Mad axemen bet 6,000 euros
May 11th, 2010
Basque sports derive from everyday rural life
We have each paid 30 euros to watch a man run 89 times round a bullring alone. The other competitor dropped out, but Xabier still has to run the 8.9km to the finish line in order to claim the prize. It is, as the newspaper says next day, un reto descafeinado – a decaffeinated finish.
When the competition started an hour and a half ago, there was much more adrenalin in the air. 6,000 euros is at stake in a personal bet between Ander Erasun and local lad Xabier Zaldua. They are to chop 10 logs and then run 10 km. Xabier is 32 and Ander only 18, which means that as the mid-day start nears, Ander is bookies’ favourite.
And this kind of bet is taken seriously. Deadly seriously. In March Joxe Mendizabal, a former champion aizkolari (axeman), came out of retirement. After the competition – which he lost – the doctor declared that he was fit to go out for lunch. He never arrived, collapsing on the restaurant steps: his heart suddenly stopped beating. Read the rest of this entry »
A walk on the wild side
May 11th, 2010
The hills of northern Navarre have long since been domesticated with drystone walls and impenetrable thicket hedges, but the paths are still resisting. Unlike in England and Wales, they have never been tamed.
One evening, I tried to walk to nearby Zubieta, plainly visible in the valley below. I could see several paths and tracks heading in the right direction, and others which arrived successfully. But joining up the ends proved impossible. Likely-looking routes led to steep escarpments or trundled merrily as far as a barn and stopped. Of course there were no waymarks.
Chastened, the next day I took my GPS with me, only to discover that the tracks marked on the map were mostly fantasies. By dint of persistence I eventually found the way. It was only then that I realised that this is what Europe must have been like two centuries ago.* A typical meadow is dissected by three or four routes. And a little higher up, in the heath, there are tracks of all kinds running in every direction. Sheep, cattle, and humans are still maintaining paths and creating new ones. Read the rest of this entry »
Wolf’s fart mushrooms
April 23rd, 2010
Giant puffball mushroom
Walking in the hills above Zubieta, in Navarra I come across some immense globular mushrooms. They look like giant puffballs to me. Fresh, puffballs have a wonderfully earthy smell. Cooked, they have a nutty flavour and a texture rather like aubergines. In principle puffballs are easy to recognise – no stem and no gills.
Just to be safe, I stop a passing tractor. “I don’t know what they are called but, no, they are not edible,” I am told. At a nearby farm I ask again. “It’s a Bejin de puta – tart’s mushroom. No good.” says the woman, but her father is more circumspect. “You may be able to eat it. I wouldn’t!”
But the more I search on the internet, the more I am convinced that my specimen is indeed an edible puffball. I find various names for it in Spanish (Bejín, Pedo de lobo, Cuesco de lobo), Euskera (Astaputz erraldoi) and French (Vesse de loup). I also discover that Pedo de lobo, Cuesco de lobo, Vesse de loup and even the scientific name for the species Lycoperdon all mean wolf’s fart. Astaputz erraldoi means an enormously vulgar farting person. Why? Because the mushroom propagates by exploding, releasing a cloud of brown spores into the air.
At that stage the puffball is indeed inedible but when young it is delicious, yet nobody eats them. Well, would you eat something called a “wolf’s fart”?
Beware: it seems that small puffballs have been confused with immature specimens of the deadly amanite phalloïde [see wikipedia for good pictures] but this one was definitely mature. It weighed 435g.
Basque farmhouse cheese – queso y requesón vascos
April 21st, 2010
I say cheese and she smiles. She likes making cheese. “It is easy,” says Sagrario, “but hygiene is very important. Which is why I reheat the curds to kill ‘los gusanos.’”
“¿Gusanos, como gusanos de tierra? – Worms, like earthworms?” I have just seen half a worm outside, left on the side of the plate after some bird’s breakfast. It looked more like a sausage than a worm.
“Yes,” she says.
We have come to see our neighbour making cheese in her farmhouse kitchen, above the cowshed. “There are 19 of them. They keep us warm,” she says.
“But I saw you buying milk in the supermarket yesterday!”
“Yes, all their milk goes to their calves. I make sheep’s cheese. The lambs have already gone.”
She grew up here and has been making cheese “since I was this high,” she says, indicating her knees.
