Beautiful Navarre

It took me 2 days to walk the 44 km to the walled city of Pamplona, capital of Navarre and historic capital of the Basque Country. From Roncesvalles the route led easily along undulating paths which crossed 3 river valleys ( the Urrobi, the Erro and the Arga rivers) separated by the wooded high ground of the Alto de Mezquiriz and the Alto de Erro. In Burguete, the 1st village I went through, I bought bread and cheese and chorizo sausage, which I ate lying on a patch of grass near the Alto de Erro. It was a remote and beautiful sunny spot in front of a ruined inn (now a cattle shelter) at an altitude of 800m. A cyclist and a couple of pilgrims drifted by. For much of the day the trees had closed in, but from this high viewpoint you could see rolling wooded hills stretching as far as the horizon. Then I climbed down an entertaining rocky path into Zubiri.

Passing a malodorous magnesium extraction plant on the outskirts of this small town, I walked 5 km along the Arga valley to Larrosoana, which I entered over its medieval bridge. The albergue was right in the centre but unusually it had no kitchen (in the evenings pilgrims often prepared their own meals and shared them), so I ate a delicious dinner of Basque food and wine at a bar-restaurant just around the corner. There I saw again 2 lovely Spanish pilgrims, a brother and sister called Fernando and Tere (short for Teresa), whom I'd met in Roncesvalles and at other times throughout the day. I would keep bumping into them for the next 8 days - and with each encounter the delight at seeing each other increased, and the hugging and kissing got more ecstatic!

The Basque Country

I was now walking through the beautiful Basque Country, known as Le Pays Basque in French and Euskal Herria in the Basque language. The Basque Country is a distinct cultural and ethnic area (population 3 million) of considerable antiquity in south-west France and north-central Spain.

There are 7 traditional Basque regions: Zuberoa, Lapurdi and Lower Navarre in the Northern Basque Country of France; and Navarre, Guipuscoa, Biscay and Alava in the Southern Basque Country of Spain. It has little autonomy in the French part, but in the Spanish regions - particularly Guipuscoa, Biscay and Alava, united as the Autonomous Basque Community - it enjoys extensive political and cultural freedom under its own Nationalist government. The ABC has its own police force and its own radio and TV stations. It controls its own education and health systems.

The Basque language, Euskara, is fascinating and unique. It's known as an "isolate". That is a language not obviously deriving from or related to any other language.

Despite many attempts over the centuries - for example during the time of the French Revolution or in Franco's Spain - to suppress and marginalize Basque culture, and integrate it into the French and Spanish nation-states, Euskal Herria is well and thriving. And long may it continue. Incidentally, the Spanish Autonomous Basque Community is one of the wealthiest regions in Spain.

A section of Basque society has always been struggling for complete political independence, for the establishment of a sovereign nation-state. In most people's minds the extreme form of this nationalism is represented by the paramilitary organization of ETA, designated as a terrorist organization by the EU. In 2006 ETA declared a permanent ceasefire after 40 years of fighting for independence. But a year later this was annulled.

Today's amazing fact... 75% of all British people can be traced back genetically to this area!

I took the photo in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, capital of the traditional Basque region of Lower Navarre.