Climb Every Mountain, Ford Every Stream, with Vultures

Sounds like a plot to a movie
well this sunday was a day of adventure, we drove out to just travel into the pyrenees, it is pretty easy as Pamplona sits at the base of the mountains, we actually drove along the same road we go to work everyday and then turned north directly into the upwardly spiralling roads, we went passed the Foz De Lumbier which is the Vulture nesting grounds close to our site and after 15 Km we found another Foz( Canyon), the Foz De Ardeyun, it was bigger and more spectacular and probably had more birds nesting in it, when you drive to it, you arrive at the top, unlike the other which is at the bottom, this is so big and so narrow your not able to walk in it, the signs say inaccessible which is probably not true but it keep out the peasants. It was very impressive and the Vultures really like it as the nesting points must be 300-500 feet up, just as they like it, we were close enough to see the birds gliding in and landing into the nests and these Griffon Vultures and Egyptian Vultures are huge birds, with 10 foot wingspans

The Foz De Ardeyun




We spent a while at this place




The Griffon Vulture



The Egyptian Vulture




Then we carried on driving into the unknown, the roads were surprisingly very good to say these are the backroads to nowhere, we stopped at a place maybe 25Km further down teh road for a drink and to stretch the legs, it was a small town on the Salazar River, it was very beautiful and full of really old buildings, and we found one building that had the date carved into the stone arch over the main door, 1758, so this town was around 250 to 300 years old and looked in good shape for the age, we had a tiny Pincho (snack) one potato croquette each, it was laughable, did they expect 2 grown men to use this as a meal,

Little Town of Oggiachioa, Basque town, the spelling was strange




so we left and carried on with our mission, we drove along and found the road that said "France". we carried on up and on for a while and found we had entered the Pyrenees for real, we could see the snow-capped mountains very close and the vegetation had gone to grass only, and the temperature had dropped from 32 C to 22 C, It was amazingly quiet apart from the constant clanging of the bells of the cows and sheep that were grazing all over the hills wild style, with shite littering the roads. we stopped and took many lungfuls of the clean air and smelled the flowers and heard the birds singing with basically no-one else there, it was amazing and almost awesome, but as everyone who knows me that is reserved for when the aliens arrive. We carried on looking for roads to lead us to a road that would take us back to Pamplona, we went on and on and finally found some brits doing some crazy mountain walking and asked them if they had a map we could check, it showed that we were so remote in the mountains that there were no other roads across the mountains at all, it was north for 100Km until we could take a road to the coast or go back the way we came, so no arguments there then, back the way we came. It was a spectacular drive with some amazing scenery and worth all the time it took, i will of course have to take my wife when she comes next week but that is what being a family man is all about.

The Pyrenees in cloud free glory