More exploring in Navarra: at the source of rivers

One of the great things about Pamplona is that we are so close to nature. The city itself has a population of about 250,000, and in just a few minutes, you are out among small farms and villages. In less than an hour, you can be in a nature preserve.

With some quarantine restrictions relaxed, we are now allowed to travel within the province of Navarra. So we rented a car on two successive weekends and headed out.

The sacred salmon

About two weeks ago a Pamplona guy bagged a 10-pound salmon within minutes after the season officially opened. He caught in the Bidasoa River near Bera, a place we visited on Sunday (May 24). It's up in the mountains quite close to France.

A restaurant in San Sebastian offered him 500 euros (about $550) for the lehenbiziko (first salmon, in Basque). But David Miranda thought it would dishonor the lehenbiziko. He saved it for a celebratory family dinner. Basque culture and customs run deep here. The writer for the Diario de Navarra newspaper adopted a dramatic, literary style to tell the tale.  The salmon population has been recovering in recent years. Dams have been removed and pollution reduced.

We visited Bera on a Sunday morning a few days later.

The town hall (ayuntamiento) and square in Bera. At 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning, there normally should be a crowd of people coming up to the church. This day, no mass. There were small gatherings of people at cafes and restaurants, tables six feet apart.

In 1813 a small group of British troops "fighting heroically for the independence of Spain" defended this San Miguel bridge against a much larger division of Napoleon's army.

Bera's location near the border has made it a focal point in historic conflicts. During the Civil War, 1936-39, thousands of Republicans fled the Fascist regime to the friendlier France. Bera is the marker farthest north on the map below.

The map shows the places we visited during five days of feverish travel after being confined for two months because of the corona virus.

A nature hike

Among the other places we visited on Sunday was a park called Bertizko Jaurerria Parke Naturala in the town of Mugairi. It has an arboretum, and it is the jumping-off point for several hiking trails. There was one 4-mile route we thought we could handle. For the first mile or so it was all uphill, very steep. Then we traversed a ridge through forest that started out as mainly oak, then European chestnut (castaña in Spanish, used to make castanets), and then beech.

The European chestnuts are supposed to be quite long-lived, some for more than a thousand years. They seem to survive by creating new selves within the old.

European chestnut.

We crossed dozens of little streams along the ridge.

Purple foxglove, one of many wildflowers in Bertizko Jaurerria Parke Naturala

Abárzuza and the Irantzu River canyon

But before we got to Bera that weekend, Cindy picked out a hike up the canyon of the Irantzu River. The trail starts at a historic monastery near Abárzuza, southwest of Pamplona.

In the Irantzu Canyon. The river, at this point just a stream, runs along the left.

In one of the nearby villages, Mués, is a sculpture garden that is a memorial for local people assassinated by the fascist forces in 1936. The sculptures, by a local man named Pablo Nogales, actually seem inspired by some of the wind-worn and water-abraded surfaces of the Irantzu canyon. We saw Nogales sculptures in several of the nearby villages. Some in medieval style, like the one of the pilgrim below, and others more abstract. 

Related:

 

A town in need of some consonants: Aoiz

The north coast of Spain and the birthplace of Ignatius Loyola

Exploring Navarra: the source of the rivers
The walled city of Artajona and ancient burial grounds

 

A pilgrim. Mués is on the Camino de Santiago.

A couple and child (to the right). The texture recalls the rock faces in the Irantzu canyon.