Pyrénées

Camino III: Over the Frontier

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Albergue Elías Valiña, Canfranc. 15.10.

I’ve made it over the border and into Spain! Canfranc is a beautifully quiet Aragonese mountain town, but it was one hell of a trek getting here from Borce, way over on the other side of the Pyrenees.

I set out a lot earlier than usual this morning, leaving Borce at 5.40am, a full hour before sunrise. I needed the extra hour to make it up the mountain, over the border and back down to Canfranc, the third village down from the pass on the Spanish side.

My intention to bypass the usual stop at Somport wasn’t as mad as it sounds. There were some pretty scathing reviews online about the Albergue, which I’d been tempted to write off as foreign ignorance, but there was also the matter of the considerable descent, which would have required another early start – not to mention the dangerous terrain underfoot should the weather turn foul. So, a full hour earlier than yesterday, I set out into the darkness.

It took me about an hour to reach Urdos, the last French commune before the frontier, and along the way I passed the formidable Fort Portalet, a 19th century fortress carved into the mountainside to guard the pass.

Arguably the most impressive thing about it was the network of bunkers and tunnels that seemed to burrow their way down the cliffside, presumably to allow the French garrison to snipe at any attempted invaders. I don’t even want to think about how they managed such a feat in 1842.

The sun came up just as I reached Urdos, or at least I think it did, because the Lescun valley was shrouded in a thick belt of cloud. The mountains must work like some kind of giant bowl, trapping the cold air inside. The result was a vast moisture net, turning all the vegetation within the valley floor into a living, breathing lake. For at least the first half of the morning, it was very beautiful to look at, and nothing further.

The Camino deviates from the main road a lot – perhaps a lot more than necessary – and one long deviation rides up the eastern slopes of the mountains above Urdos, where one of the tributaries of the Aspe river can be found. It also harboured my first non-Albergue stamp of the Camino Aragonés, in a small pilgrim station set out under a fir tree by a farmstead in the hamlet of Marrassaa. Some kind soul had put out some hot water, a selection of teas and sugars and a notebook with a stamp, along with a few walking sticks, should the Somport-bound pilgrim be lacking.

As it happens, as of twenty minutes before the stop, I wasn’t. Two hazel-wood sticks of near perfect size (one was a few inches shorter than the other) were lying in the road, the last remnant of what must have once been a fence, as they still had a very frayed but intact wire strung between them. Seeing an act of Providence – it would have been foolhardy to attempt the pass without them – I took them (and the wire) along with me, until they had smoothed enough in my hand to work the wire free.

When I was confronted by a far superior collection of sticks at Marrassaa, I was tempted to let the shorter one go, but found that I couldn’t separate the one from the other – it felt wrong, somehow. So I pressed on with my two fenceposts, which I dubbed the Palos de la Frontera – a play on the place I found them, and the Andalusian port from which Columbus set out for the Americas.

Boy, did I need them today.

The descent from the Urdos deviation was… costly. The sodden undergrowth all but drowned my feet, and as I was considering a change of socks, it provided a final challenge: a gauntlet of ankle-deep mud and nettles. I got as far as I could with both feet astride the ditch, until the gap became too wide and too dangerous to attempt. I could either endure the wrath of a tangle of nettles or face the mud. In the end, still feeling the sting of yesterday’s nettles, I swallowed my pride and sloshed straight through the mud. Vile.

Naturally, I washed my socks in the river at the foot of the valley, did my best to dry my sandals, and swapped in a pair of warm hiking socks. Thank goodness I had spares.

After a short stint along the road, the Camino climbed back up into the forest on the eastern side. I may have been cautious about leaving the road again – which wasn’t exactly heaving with traffic – but it was the fastest route to the top, so I stuck to it.

The cloud forest was mesmerisingly beautiful, especially as I hit the cloud level and seemed to be burrowing my way through the mist. The stretches of open grassland, however, were dreadful. Up here, in the thick of the clouds, the grass was even wetter than on the valley floor. I might as well have swum up the mountain. More treacherous by far, the path was so overgrown that it was perilously easy to miss the edge of the path and lose your footing – as I did at least once, very nearly tumbling down the mountainside. The sticks genuinely saved my neck.

It didn’t get any easier until I reached the road at the top of the mountain, where suddenly, as if by magic, the clouds disappeared entirely. It was easier to see why when I’d gone a little further, where the road turned to show me the huge belt of cloud trapped in the valley. Up here, above the clouds, it was as hot and sunny as any Spanish summer morning.

Somport itself was eerily quiet. I thought I’d earned myself a celebratory elevenses-lunch at the Albergue Aysa café, but a glance through the window showed no signs of life at all. The old border gate looked to be gathering dust, too, defunct since the arrival of the Schengen zone some forty years ago. No chance of an early lunch on the border, then – but I did say a prayer at the shrine of Mary, and I did appreciate the spectacular views down the Spanish side of the border.

In a heartbeat, I was suddenly in Spain. It’s amazing how quickly the world changes, national border or no. The lush vegetation of the French side was gone, replaced by a warm and dry boulder-strewn landscape, where the clustered forests gave way to spread-out stands of conifers. Crickets and cicadas replaced the chaffinches and blackbirds that had accompanied me up the other side, and all the hikers said buenas instead of bonjour.

Most striking of all were the carpets of English Iris, a Pyrenean flower of singular beauty that grew all over the place in the high meadows. They brought life to the place, which was much needed, as the ski station of Candanchú was little more than a ghost town. No shops, no traffic, no children in the park. All the ski lifts frozen in place where they ground to a halt several months ago. Just the sound of a door slamming shut in one of the apartment blocks I walked past. It was quite eerie.

It took me just shy of two hours to descend to Canfranc-Estación, the first living town on the Spanish side after Somport. Powered on by my fourth Nak’d bar (I brought eight out with me, but I was saving these for today’s trek), I made it down the mountain in reasonably good time. I changed my socks again just before descending, which was a very good idea – I wasn’t going to risk the blisters that might have ensued from a further three hours’ march in sodden feet. My sandals dried out quickly in the heat, which was a small blessing.

Canfranc-Estación is a curious affair, seemingly built around the enormous international railway station in 1928. The monstrous project paid minimal returns, and the station closed down in 1970 after a number of disasters included a fire in 1944 that destroyed almost all the homes in the town, driving the townsfolk to relocate to the village of Los Arañones further down the valley. There’s supposed to be plans afoot to get the station working again, but for now, the building serves as a rather grandiose hotel.

There are a few private albergues in Canfranc-Estación, but I had my heart set on the municipal in Canfranc Pueblo, which was still an hour’s walk away. It was already one o’clock, which is a silly time of day to be walking the Camino in summer, but I was adamant, so I decided to forgo the extremely tempting aromas coming from the asadores in town and press on.

Beyond the grand station, the Camino weaves its way down the mountainside through a series of shady forests and warm meadows. Quite a few locals had set up shop beside the pools created by the many rivers tumbling down into the valley, but I had a schedule to keep – I would have to be quick if I were to reach Canfranc in time for the 14.00 opening time of the municipal Albergue.

Fortunately, I had no need to check my phone to navigate anymore. The yellow trail markers have returned, almost as soon as I crossed the border. These flechas amarillas make it very hard to get lost on the Camino, making it surely one of the most welcoming of long-distance hikes in the world. I’ll tell you sometime about the man who came up with the idea. But that, I think, is enough for today.

The Norwegian couple who run this donativo albergue have offered to make both dinner and breakfast for the four of us sheltered here tonight. And what a donativo…! It’s one of the best set-ups I’ve seen in an albergue this side of Galicia. No wonder it was so highly praised online!

Time, I think, for a nap before dinner. At an estimated 1,300m of ascent and a further 700m of descent over 29km, I’ve earned it. BB x

Camino II: Wings and Stings

/ Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

Hôpital de Saint-Jacques, Borce. 14.42.

Today’s march was only a little under two kilometres more than yesterday, but boy, did it feel every step of them!

I set out from Sarrance just before 7am, conscious once again that I didn’t want to book it to Borce. I had at the back of my mind that it might be sensible to push on to Urdos, if only to save me some mileage during the long climb up to Somport tomorrow, but I’m very aware that I have to keep these legs of mine in decent shape for six weeks, so no unnecessary bursts of speed or marathon days for me, thank you.

Much of the Camino today followed precarious paths along the river or the road. Arguably, the road stretches were considerably safer: rockfalls and erosion have conspired to make the cross-country sections of the road rather dangerous. Some thoughtful soul had fixed sturdy metal cords to the cliff wall for balance, but it’s plain enough that this section of the Camino sees considerably less traffic than the others.

This is most obvious in the jungle of thorns and nettles that grow about the path. For most of the morning I had to tread a jaunty path through the stinging undergrowth (overgrowth might be a better term), moving with the precision of a mountain goat to avoid the worst of them – especially when the alternative was a steep plunge into the rocky riverbed far below. I didn’t get particularly lucky, as the scars and the great red welts on my shins and neck will testify.

Between them and the mozzies, it’s been a pretty rough start to the Camino as far as bites and stings are concerned!

I crossed the threshold of the morning sun as I reached the outskirts of Bedous, disturbing a whole pack of caged hunting dogs as I did so. Their mournful barking must have been audible across the entire valley. It reminded me of a hunt I heard once when traveling through France, with the curious blast of the horn rising over the excited barks of the hunting dogs. This lot weren’t going anywhere fast, but I had a sense of the primal fear they must invoke in their quarry.

A far more pleasant sound became more and more strident as I entered Bedous: the plaintive whistles of kites. There were quite a few of them gathering in the trees around the Stade de Pierre Leyrat, the town’s rugby pitch (definitive proof that we are still in France). I didn’t give it too much thought as to why until I was flagged down by a local man out for a stroll, who pointed the kites out to me and asked me if I wanted to see a ‘spectacle’. I’m not much in the habit of saying no, so I stuck around to see what he was getting at. He was beaming and kept saying ‘ils sont impatients, ces milans… ils savent qu’il est en retard’.

Just who it was that was running late became apparent a few minutes later, when a man dressed in a red hoodie and one red glove appeared, carrying a bucket in his hand. Within seconds the kites seemed to double in number. There must have been at least forty of them, or even fifty. I haven’t seen so many in one place since the day of the winged ants in Uganda.

A small huddle of locals had gathered to watch, so I just got incredibly lucky arriving just as the kites were gathering. The man in red only apologised that the vultures were missing: ‘c’est formidable, mais ils manquent les vautours’.

They weren’t entirely missing, though. I could see at least two of them riding the thermals up above the peaks of the mountains. And they’d left a trace of their presence behind on the pitch, because when I went to collect the feathers I’d spotted from the stands, I found one which was far too big to belong to a kite. A feather from quite possibly my favourite animal in all creation: I couldn’t have asked for a greater totem to carry with me on the Camino this summer.

In case that wasn’t enough, a shepherd came down out of the hills with his dog and his flock of sheep. They seemed rather non-plussed by the small crowd gathered to watch the kites, and needed quite a bit of chivvying on from the shepherd and his dog before breaking into a run to catch up to him. Is it really a mountain adventure if you don’t see something like this?

Leaving Bedous and its kites behind, I followed the Camino about forty minutes later out of town and into the mountains. The road cut straight through a formidable gorge before winding a twisting path through via an EDF hydroelectric power station, fed by a pair of huge pipes running right up to the top of the mountains. The place seemed to be in full flow, but the only soul I could see was a woman smoking a cigarette outside the gates.

The following hour or so can only be described as an ordeal. After a brief stop in the woods, the Camino all but disappeared, and I had to improvise a path through several cattle fields. The cattle were nowhere to be seen, so their attendants – the murderous horseflies – turned their attention on me instead. And damn, they were persistent. For the best part of forty minutes or so I had to swing my baseball cap left and right like a medieval flail to keep the buggers off, and still they followed me, swarming about my head and legs through field and forest, determined to get a stab at me.

I think one of them got through, but it was hard work, flailing my arms around for so long. I guess they got as much of a workout as my legs today.

They only left me alone once I reached the cattle, at which point they must have decided that there were far easier targets than the fool with the baseball cap who had wandered carelessly into their lair.

It was quite a relief to see the road again. There wasn’t much traffic because of the repairs they’re making to the road surface, which was focused on the exact spot where the Camino rejoins the road. With any luck, that will mean they’re finished with the section between Borce and Urdos, which pilgrims have been catching the bus to avoid over the last few weeks.

The signs for Borce told a story of their own. It’s believed to come from an Occitan word, bòrça, which means farm or hamlet, but its phonic similarity to the French word for bear – ours – seems to have left a mark in its identity. Bears feature prominently in town, from local artwork and murals to the official signage on the road. And it’s this last that is the most interesting, because on both signs announcing the turnoff for Borce, you can quite clearly see the impact of a shotgun blast.

It could have been an accident, but the fact that it appears on the second sign – and only on the image of the bear – confirms that this is a local act of protest against the reintroduction of bears to the Pyrenees, after the last native bear was shot in 2004. The bears are back, thanks to conservation efforts involving the considerable population of bears in Slovenia, and they’re actually growing in number, but that’s not something that’s been welcomed by everyone.

When I was a boy, my parents took me on holiday to Les Cabannes, a mountain town on the eastern side of the French Pyrenees. There, they’d daubed the words ‘Non aux ours’ – no bears – in huge yellow letters on many of the roads (or rather, as I remember it, ours aux non, as they’d painted it in such a way that you’d read the words as you drove forward).

That was around fifteen years ago. The fury is still raw, with a local 81-year-old hunter jailed for four months for killing a bear that attacked him while he was out hunting in the mountains.

Spain has a similar problem with wolves, with one Cantabrian town leaving the severed heads of a local wolfpack on the steps of the town hall as a warning to those who would try to bring the wolf back from the edge of extinction. It’s been hundreds of years since we drove the wolf and the bear out of their homes in Europe, but the ancient fear we harbour towards these beautiful animals is still painfully present, so long as we try to share their world.

But I’m doing Borce a disservice. The village is tremendously charming, and full of running water – the most important amenity after such an arduous trek. Christian met me by one of the fountains, having lately returned from Canfranc; he and Miguel had caught the bus to the Spanish border this morning to see the impressive station, and Miguel had decided to press on from there, while Christian returned to Borce as his last stop before his journey home tomorrow. The two fellows have been a jolly presence for the first three days of the Camino, and I shall miss their company. Fortunately, it looks as though I won’t be alone for long, as there were quite a few pilgrims in Borce. It must be its status as the first (and last) stop after the train terminus in Bedous before Somport, the starting point of the Camino Aragonés.

So this time tomorrow – with any luck – I shall be in Spain. To celebrate, I had a Borçoise crêpe at the Auberge de l’Ours, following a tip-off Christian had received from the bus driver. It really was quite spectacular, and I couldn’t have left France without having one of these delicious French specialities.

Well, that’s quite enough for one day. There’s no WiFi here, so I’m relying on data to get this through to you. It’ll cost me, I’m sure, but that’s what all the hard work over the last year is for, right? That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway. À demain! BB x