Over the Pyrenees

          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.