Jonathan > The first day not taken up with building work, I drove up the NA-132 to the head of the valley, and at the summit, turned off to the north and steeply uphill again to the Sierra de Gerinda. Parking by the first turbine and set off along the ridge road through the turbines, and onward into the hills and forests. It was already mid afternoon when I set out, but it was so lovely to be up in the hills that I just kept walking for two hours and more – until the sun had set.

J > This year my time in Navarra has been much cloudier and wet than last year : in fact it’s been exceptionally wet.  But yesterday was a cheerful day of clear skies, warming sunshine, and – if barely above freezing, it was defnitely dry.  Perfect for a day out exploring : I’ve scarcely more than a week left before I must return to Scotland. I headed to the Basque far north east of Navarra, about an hour’s drive away, a land of jagged sierras, soaring viaducts, dry barancos, narrow twisting gorges, vultures, circling overhead, roads switching sides across roaring mountain rivers …

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.

At the Eroski supermarket in Tafalla – browsing speciality cheeses, especially those from here in Navarra.

But look there! A cheese from the UK ?