It
was near the end of September. Night was falling in the tiny Navarran town of Olite
and I was running on nervous energy. Ahead of us, just fifty metres down an
impossibly narrow street, lay our destination, the Casa Zanito. The way was,
however, blocked by a phalanx of voluble local women and their children, none
of whom showed the slightest desire to get out of the way. One or two wagged their fingers at us. Their disapproval and a total lack of traffic convinced me to leave the confines of the old town, and I reversed ignominiously through
an arch in the town wall.
After an
inconclusive chat with a friendly local man, who even offered to carry our
luggage, I illegally stationed the car near the wall and walked to the hotel. Upstairs,
through a spacious and elegant restaurant of muted lights, polished wood floors
and white tablecloths I found the receptionist, a laid-back ginger-haired man
of about thirty. He explained in Spanish that I might park behind the castle.
And so, below a tree on the edge of Olite, our memorable journey ended.
 |
| Carcassonne |
It had begun
eight hours earlier in the storied French city of Carcassonne. The sun was out, it was pushing thirty degrees, and the traffic was fairly light as we drove north west towards Toulouse. As we made our way
further west a shadowy ridge of high mountains came into view to the south: the
majestic Pyrenees. This jagged and breathtaking wall of peaks became more
perceptible as we neared Pau, where we left the autoroute and changed direction towards Spain.
A little beyond
Oloron-Sainte-Marie, the last settlement of consequence on the French side of
the border, we turned off the main route south and entered a landscape of trees
and meadows. Here livestock was more prevalent than humans, and cars and houses
were a rare sight. I felt the excitement quickening within me as the road
steepened then transformed into a series of hairpin bends, the engine of my
Alfa Romeo screaming as I dropped to first gear to ascend.
We
stopped briefly in a high valley, where my wife went in search of mushrooms,
returning with blackberries. It was wonderfully tranquil, the only sounds
coming from the birds and the rocky brook beside the road. Eventually we
attained the forlorn summit of the Col de la Pierre St Martin, 1760 metres
above sea level. No sign of a border was evident, nor were there any people,
but we did encounter a herd of mountain cows and calves spread out across the
pass. I had paranoid visions of them charging us, so I pulled in close to the
low stone parapet which marked the cliff edge, cut the engine, and listened to
the clanging of their bells as they ambled by.
Signs in
Spanish revealed that we had exited France, and we drove into Navarre, the mountainous
terrain quickly giving way to softer valleys. Pedestrians outnumbered motorists
as we continued on the deserted roads of the Valle de Roncal, where white
buildings with sloping brown and orange roofs could be seen alongside the River
Esca. After an empty stretch of new and incomplete motorway we turned south for
a final time and were tailgated, and overtaken, several times prior to arriving
in Olite, my first real taste of Spanish driving.
 |
| Roncal |
It
was eight thirty; time to eat. We walked through the labyrinth of corridors to
the restaurant. The receptionist, who doubled as a waiter, smiled at me.
“Una
mesa para dos”, I said.
Seeing that I
hadn’t caught his answer, he added in English, “From nine”.
It was my
turn to smile. We had definitely arrived in Spain.
