Years ago, Jerry and I talked of a future trip that we called Sea to Sea, fantasizing a journey through the Pyrenees from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. This trip is as close to that dream as we've gotten. We'll only do about half, but we're excited to be experiencing a part of it.
What we didn't realize when concocting that scheme was that any travel from west to east in the Pyrenees is something close to impossible unless one is a mountain goat. All the valleys tend to run north-south. Moving west to east means traversing a mountain pass, if available, or driving back out of the valley one is exploring and then taking a road to the east and heading down another valley one wants to see.
As we left coastal Basque territory, we headed first for the Aldudes Valley. On the way, we stopped in Bidarray. We had to climb up to a plateau to get to the village, which had spectacular views of the steep hillsides and all the pasturing cows and sheep.
As we drove through the Aldudes Valley, we couldn't believe how beautiful the landscape was. Very steep hillsides. Lush and green. We drove through the valley until we suddenly found ourselves at the Spanish border. No fanfare. It just happened. We stopped and took some pictures and stood on the crest of the hill, eating some local ham and crackers and enjoying the utter quietness of this beautiful spot.
At the border.
Looking into the Navarre region of Spain.
Looking back into the French Aldudes Valley.
Looking for a place to stop for the night (we're now into the completely unscripted portion of our trip), we drove up another steep-sided valley along the Nive River to the end of the road. We were only a few km from the Spanish border again, just one valley to the east of the Aldudes. Fortunately, the little logis at this remote spot had a room available. Turned out to be a fishermen's paradise. It is the source of the Nive River. There were a number of very well outfitted fly fishermen staying here. It was a very simple place, but clean and comfortable. This is where we finally found WiFi again. Our first time in 11 days, and we couldn't have been in a more remote spot. What an amazing world!
After dinner, we sat in the lounge and caught up on email and made a blog posting. A couple of the women who had served dinner and were doing cleanup and prep for breakfast were intrigued with the iPad. They stopped by to see what I was doing and to look at pictures. One asked where we were from. "The United States" elicited quite a reaction of surprise. Apparently, Brits are not that uncommon, but Americans are much less frequently sighted here.
Just uphill from our inn were some grazing horses. The young horse was very frisky and a delight to watch.
An unplanned stop, but an interesting peek into a different part of the world.
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