shewhomust (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shewhomust) wrote2012-01-27 09:54 pm
shewhomust) wrote2012-01-27 09:54 pm
Trivial
The three pilgrim routes across the Pyrenees meet at Puente la Reina. But just before we got there, we came to Eunate.
This is what Edwin Mullins had to say about Eunate:
From here it was no distance at all to Puente la Reina - where Queen Urraca built a fine arched bridge at the end of the eleventh century. The road west enters the town through a narrow arch and - as the Calle Mayor - runs straight between imposing buildings, sheer as cliffs, to the bridge.
Here for once we cracked the lunch code, and sat outside a café in the Calle Mayor with a large beer each and a plate of six randomly selected tapas between us while the pilgrims flowed past us in a constant stream.
Photos of Puente la Reina
When we had admired the bridge from all angles, we drove on through the late afternoon heat, through Navarra and on into La Rioja. The dusty fields of stubble were dotted with squares of vines or olive groves, the patches of green becoming more and more frequent until the area under vines was continuous, ringed in the distance by the improbable silhouette of mountains muted by the heat haze.
This is what Edwin Mullins had to say about Eunate:
The I2th-century chapel of Eunate is octagonal and stands in the middle of a field. It is surmounted by a twin-arched belfry and ringed by an open colonnade set within a low wall to keep the cornfield out. Light squeezes into the building through windows of alabaster, and between each of the walls rise slim columns which become arches and meet in the centre of the roof in an eightpointed star. I have visited Eunate twice in my life: on the first occasion it was desolate and chill, with not a glimpse of life save a golden oriole swooping between the poplar trees. This Sunday, at a hot midday, it was transformed into a Spanish Hampstead Heath. Young Pamplona had emptied upon it equipped with barbecues, wine and the inevitable daytime fireworks. (Is there some law or superstition forbidding £reworks at night in Spain except on civic occasions?) Again I was reminded of the fizzing exuberance of the Navarrais. There seemed no reason why this remote hermitage chapel should have been selected - unless it be a tradition of making Sunday excursions to church, with a party to swill the service down. In any case, that was the stage it had reached when I arrived. About a hundred teenagers were dancing round the outside of the colonnade, dressed in hal£-Navarrais costume of berets and tasselled jackets and half-discotheque gear of jeans and tee-shirts with Mustang Cobra Jets and Elvis printed on the front. Some of them were playing what sounded remarkably like a Scottish air on an instrument that resembled a piccolo; others beat a quick rhythm on a drum, and there was much hand-clapping and hopping about in Highland fashion. There was some particularly lightfooted dancing over a skipping-rope, while the younger men engaged in athletic leaps. The wine was passed from hand to hand, and the smell of woodsmoke and lamb grilling on charcoal drifted over the fields. Eunate was a glorious place to be that Sunday morning, and I guessed they would all be there till evening.I love that "low wall to keep the cornfield out" - and when we arrived, in the baking heat of a September lunchtime, the place was deserted again, the chapel locked against the menace of invading agriculture. But a little garden behind, with toilet facilities and drinking-water taps, were ready to welcome the flood of pilgrims.
From here it was no distance at all to Puente la Reina - where Queen Urraca built a fine arched bridge at the end of the eleventh century. The road west enters the town through a narrow arch and - as the Calle Mayor - runs straight between imposing buildings, sheer as cliffs, to the bridge.
Here for once we cracked the lunch code, and sat outside a café in the Calle Mayor with a large beer each and a plate of six randomly selected tapas between us while the pilgrims flowed past us in a constant stream.
Photos of Puente la Reina
When we had admired the bridge from all angles, we drove on through the late afternoon heat, through Navarra and on into La Rioja. The dusty fields of stubble were dotted with squares of vines or olive groves, the patches of green becoming more and more frequent until the area under vines was continuous, ringed in the distance by the improbable silhouette of mountains muted by the heat haze.
no subject
no subject