Textbook Spanish only gets you so far. ¡Hola! ¡Adiós! ¡Buenos Tardes! ??? Hereabouts, in the Zona Media of Navarra (Estella – Tafalla/Olite – Sangüesa, roughly) – and northwards, the universal hello/goodbye seems to be … Well, until a few days ago, I just couldn’t make out what word or words were being said, by almost everyone, so casually and at any occasion. But then I was in Estella …
Continue reading →Napal is a tiny hamlet at the head of a very narrow valley hemmed in on both sides by steep wooded slopes and cliffs. Above the hamlet there is a remarkable rock formation – a slab of limestone half a kilometre long, fifty metres wide, and perhaps twenty to thirty metres high. The south face is impossibly hot in summer, so now that temperatures are milder, that’s where Catherine and Ion would be climbing today.
Continue reading →In Uist, roofs are kept low, simple and solid : anything else will result in disaster. TV antennae are installed within the roof void. As for Navarra, well anything goes, from higgeldy-piggeldy ancient, to the self-conscious contemporary.
Continue reading →J > It’s already two weeks since I travelled here to San Martín de Unx, Navarra, from the Outer Hebrides. I’ve travelled on my own this time. This year, no-one was availabe to the boots of us both. There’s building work to our house here in Navarra that needs my supervision ; so D has stayed home to look after all the animals (and lots of other things, besides, I hasten to add – before D does!).
Continue reading →J > Here’s Lur with our grandson Enaut (now nearly two years old), waiting for Catherine and I to finish fiddling with phones and set off for our walk up round the old castle ground up at the top of the hill, here in San Martín de Unx. But first we need to put shoes on Enaut!
Continue reading →At the Eroski supermarket in Tafalla – browsing speciality cheeses, especially those from here in Navarra.
But look there! A cheese from the UK ?
Continue reading →In Navarra it’s high summer, very high temperatures, and high time for a fiesta! And at the San Martìn fiestas, as in so many other towns and villages throughout Navarra, high up above the throng of fiesta-goers are the heads of the gigantes – in this case the four kings and queens. Traditionally, the the giant kings walk – or even dance – thanks to a burly-built human inside each of them!
Continue reading →Kilbride Bay is the small sandy beach across the road from the walled garden ; and Littorina obtusata is …
Continue reading →Jonathan & Denise > Here’s the second patchwork of images from our holiday in Navarra – named after the Seat Arona car we hired for the second month. Family This is what we come here for : Torre de Peña – Antiguo Torre is Spanish for ‘tower’, but Peña is from the Aragonese language – and therefore ultimately from Latin, and means a ‘rocky place’. [The Pennines of northern England, and the Appenines of Italy both have the same linguistic root.] The village of Torre de Peña is to be found east of the village of Caseda and south of … Continue reading →
Today we set out to explore, for the first time, the two most remote northern valleys of Navarra : Valle de Roncal y Valle de Salazar .
Continue reading →A gallery of our first visit to our first grandchild, Enaut, and a taste of our first holiday together in many years, in Navarra – November 2017, Spain.
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