Thursday, 17 October
Billy and I have reunited! We're together for several months in Spain and hope to do some hiking, improve our Spanish and embrace the Spanish way of life.
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| Rooftop view of Barcelona towards the Art Museum from Patxi's apartment |
We arrived in Barcelona by overnight train from Paris and spent a few days enjoying the city - wandering the cobbled narrow streets of Gotica and preparing for our first section of hiking; through the Spanish Pyrenees.
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| Owner of the 100 year old map store |
We started in Sabinanigo (which took
as a few days to be able to pronounce correctly, try “Saa-bin-nyaan-eego”), a
town of around 10,000 people in the province of Huesca, Aragón, Spain.
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| Starting out in Sabinanigo |
It was exciting to walk out of town,
knowing we had more than two weeks ahead of us to explore the rural trails through
the Spanish Pyrenees mountains. We were hoping to follow the red and white
markers of the network of Grand Recorrido long walking trails that wind their way
across the Pyrenees (and most of Europe).
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| GR16 along the Rio Gallego Valley |
Within the first few hours of walking we
were a bit surprised to encounter a new golf development along the apparently
rural Grand Recorido (GR16) trail, and wondered how the 20 or so residents of
the nearby 12th century town of Latas felt about this development,
landing alien on their green fields. It appeared abandoned and the advertising
sign indicated that it was probably a pre-GFC project.
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| 100% finance? In hindsight, not such a good idea |
We passed through the small, stone built
towns of Latas, Larrede and Olivan, each with their own Iglesia (church).
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| San Pablo Inglesia, Larrede |
Intrigued by the sound of a “deshabitado”
town, Susin, we climbed up a small rise to discover a ramshackle monastery,
slowly being absorbed by the surrounding countryside. We found a small shelter,
previously the home of cows, goats and sheep in which to cook dinner, and sat
listening to the cows jangle their bells as they munched on the grass in the
fields. It was a perfect place to spend our first night hiking in Spain!
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| What a great campsite for our first night on the trail! |
Friday,
18 October (Billy’s birthday!)
The cows that charmed us with their bells
the evening before continued to clang all night – not as charming! But the soft
sunrise over the old towns below was stunning to wake up to.
We started out along the dirt trail of the
PR3, imagining the carts that would have followed this route between the rural
Spanish villages for hundreds of years. A small oversight saw us clambering up
a mountainside following a barbed wire fence, then tracing an even more ancient
stone path along the mountainside looking for the town of Anielle. It was
Billy’s birthday, and I don’t think he could have imagined anything more fun!
I was getting pretty hungry as our
pre-breakfast walk extended past 3hrs. Luckily we found a trail not marked on
our map that pointed in the right direction! 1pm and time for breakfast! We
stopped for birthday ginger pancakes overlooking the abandoned ruins.
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| Cooking Billy birthday pancakes at Anielle |
The rest of the afternoon’s walk was easy –
traversing through the golden birch forest few kms to the next town.
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| Trail to Otal |
We arrived at the abandoned town of Otal
around 5pm and were surprised to meet two Spaniards, Arto and Javier, from
Zaragosa, who were lying out on the grass enjoying the view. It turned out that
they were visiting Otal for the week. Artho had restored part of one of the
crumbling old buildings into a living space, and the two invited us in to stay
the night and share dinner.
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| Arto cooks us his Mum's rice dish |
We spent a wonderful evening talking about
our travels and life in Spain – food, politics. Arto cooked up a grand pot of
rice with sausage, peppers, onion and apple (one of his Mum’s recipes) on the
fire and shared it around. The room was dark, lit by a few candles in bottles,
a solar light, and the fire. The walls of the room black from centuries of cooking.
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| Everything you need for a great meal |
A small window revealed a starry night, but
inside we were in another, almost ancient world. It was an unexpected and
spontaneous travel experience – one you can’t plan or create. As we sat around
the fireplace, cooking food on the grill, I thought about how families would
have been doing the exact same thing, in the exact same place, for more than
600yrs.
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| Otal at night, we stayed in the building to the right of this photo |
A newer experience to Otal was the cooking
of a chocolate honeycomb birthday cake (complete with candles) on the fire!
Happy Birthday Billy! What a unique celebration. A birthday we won’t forget.
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| Happy Birthday Billy! |
Saturday,
19 October
We felt like we were leaving Otal too soon
this morning. It was such a wonderful place to explore and just be. But it was
the beginning of our journey, and we felt compelled to keep going.
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| Stonework at Otal |
Leaving the valley, we started climbing up
the grassy slopes towards a high pass, Puerto de Yosa (1,966m) that was the
entrance to the next valley and small town of Broto. A few terraced fields
provided short moments of flat ground and respite, but otherwise, it was a
solid slog uphill.
I walked slightly buckled over, under the
weight of my heavy pack and watched my feet take one step at a time,
momentarily looking ahead to find the next red and white marker and see how far
up the slope Billy had progressed. Not unhappy, nor happy, it was time to just
walk.
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| A long, uphill walk! |
It felt great to drop my pack at the top,
pull out the snack bag, sit with Billy and admire the view of our new valley,
stretching out below us beneath a band of clouds. We could see a few towns
speckled below and were energized by the thought of a hot dinner and a few
beers or a bottle of wine.
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| The valley below and town of Broto from the pass |
It took a few hours to make our way down the
GR15 to Broto, and it felt like such a contrast to the raw and genuine feel of
Otal the night before. A few tourists walked the streets in bright coloured,
designer ski jackets. The buildings looked like new versions of an old alpine
style. But it was cosy too, and we grabbed a small, comfortable apartment room
in one of the basic hotels on the main street.
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| Down to the towns of Oto, and Broto |
We warmed to Broto after a couple of days
getting to know the personalities in town. There was our hotel proprietor,
whose mother was coincidentally from Otal and had moved to Broto when Otal was
abandoned. Nostalgic photos of the town adorned the hotel walls and also
reminded us of our great experience there. The supermarket owner spent his days
at the register, but joined his family at the restaurant next door for lunch of
the day. This was a great place to eat as we discovered over a typical 3hr meal
with bottle of wine!
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| Menu del dia in Broto. Delicious! |
As comfortable as life was, it wasn’t long
before we were dreaming of the Pyrenees and the stunning mountains that lay
before us. It was time to climb again.
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| Dreaming of the Pyrenees |
