Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Time-bomb explodes 100 years later

Sunday, June 27th, 2010
Mystery fungus

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. (more…)

400 years of witchcraft: still more questions than answers

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
The theatre group "Sorgin Haizeak" performed in the village square

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.”

(more…)

Not chicken muscles

Sunday, June 13th, 2010
Tribute to Basque strength: harrijasotze

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.” (more…)

Mad axemen bet 6,000 euros

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
Basque sports derive from everyday rural life

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. (more…)

A walk on the wild side

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

pathThe 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. (more…)

Wolf’s fart mushrooms

Friday, April 23rd, 2010
Giant puffball mushroom

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

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

separating-curds-whey-webI 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.

(more…)

I don’t understand Spanish

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

lekaroz1I have joined a walking club. The first walk is 22km with 1200m of climbing in total. I estimate 7–8 hours. I don’t need lunch, I am told, but I don’t agree, so I take one anyway. We set out at 8:15 from Lekaroz. It is soon hard to keep up. After half an hour, I am getting hot, but nobody understands, so I take off my anorak and shirt and stuff them in my rucksack while walking. I am equipped for a hot day, a cold day, a rainy day. Everybody else has a metaphorical pocket handkerchief dangling from the end of a stick. In any case, if it rains, the droplets will be blown away in our slipstream without wetting us.

After an hour I am thirsty so I fish my bottle out of my rucksack and drink while walking. After four hours we stop to gobble down a maximum of food in a minimum of time. The high point of the day is when we reach the summit of the Unboto (800m) and stop for three minutes. We arrive back at Lekaroz, after five and a half hours of intense walking. (more…)

Spring in the Basque Country (1): ¿Madera? No, leña.

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

We have just moved to the Spanish Basque Country for three months, to learn Castellano.

It is still cold, so in the DIY shop I buy a bow saw and ask, in halting Spanish, where I can purchase wood for the fire. The man behind the counter replies: “¿Madera? No, ¡leña! – Wood? No, firewood!” My first lesson in Spanish

logs“I don’t know,” he continues. Nobody here buys wood. They just cut it down. If you don’t own a forest, you find someone who does.

Finally I discover a timber yard. I am confronted by a gigantic crane, with jaws capable of lifting several complete tree trunks at once, being driven by a man of similar dimensions. “I would like a few branches for my stove,” I explain timidly. No problem. I drive into the hanger and we fill up the back of the car. Kindling, he says, is free.

On a wall of the nearby town of Doneztebe is a poster. Four hulking blokes with their names and ages, four axes, a large pile of leña, a date and a time, and “1500 euros”. The rest of the poster is in Basque, so I have to ask one of our new neighbours to translate. It’s a private bet on who can cut the most wood, with the 1500 euros going to the winner. (more…)

Mediterranean snow

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
Vines in the snow

Vines in the snow

Today, snow has been slathered like sun-cream onto the Mediterranean beaches. In our village, the houses have icicle fangs biting into the wind. The Montagne d’Alaric (600m), the first bastion of the Corbières as they rise out of the plain, sparkles. We can’t go to work because the roads are blocked.

Two days ago, I was in the garden weeding the broad beans, in a tee-shirt.

“In my lifetime,” says Marc, importantly, “I have only seen this much snow three times, and never in March.” Marc is 60 years-old. “It is horrible,” he adds.

(more…)

Map of the GR10 walk GR10 Hendaye to Gabas GR10 Gabas-Luchon GR10 Luchon to Mérens GR10 Mérens to Banyuls