Pamplona

Before leaving Vitoria we went to the museum of arms, which was in a street of extremely lovely turn of the century houses. In addition to lots of swords and armour, they have Alava’s hat and sword, and a couple of interesting dioramas illustrating key points of the battle. I bet some war gamers had huge fun building those. They seemed quite authentic – well anyway, the Rifles wore green and Picton’s Inniskillings wore green kilts, and that’s about as far as I can judge.

Pamplona isn’t as charming as Vitoria, but interesting to see. By the time we got there, it had stopped raining. The San Fermin festival, with the bull running, is in a couple of weeks, and they are gearing up for it, with special, and pricey, menus that you must book for. We parked near the bull ring, because it was the easiest place to park in the old part, and walked some of the route taken by the bulls. It’s quite a long way to run, actually, so I hope the runners have done a bit of training and are not just drunken Australian back packers. If I were Basque, I think I’d resent all these wankers muscling in on my heritage, and really hate Hemingway, but they can’t do, as there is a street named after the old fool.

Pamplona was an extremely strong frontier fortress. You should just see the fortifications – I don’t think photos can possibly properly convey their strength and size. There are three lines of walls, three deep dry moats, cannon emplacements so that all parts of the walls were covered, and the final wall is immense. Wellington had taken Cuidad Rodrigo with heavy losses, and Badajoz with great slaughter. He failed to take Burgos, not having an adequate siege train, but it made little difference – it was eventually simply bypassed. So he took a similar approach to Pamplona. 

                                                     

Some of the outer defences, with the new part of the town in the background.

The drawbridge forming just part of the defences to the gate
with winding gear intact.

It was blockaded by Spanish troops. The French commander had a garrison swollen by soldiers fleeing Vitoria, and the besieging Spanish would not let civilians leave the city.  In the end they were reduced to eating domestic dogs and cats, and rats. They surrendered at the end of October 1813.

The final wall

The second and third walls, from the second moat.

We also visited the Gothic cathedral. The Spanish in the north seem less obsessed with blood and torture than the ones in the south, so the religious art is tolerable; but, if anything, they are even more unhealthily obsessed with Marianism. Jesus comes a very poor second to his mother round here. The cloisters were nice though.

Then we left Pamplona towards Roncevalles and our hotel. Well, it’s amazing. The previous two hotels have been modern urban chic, and to tell the truth I was beginning to find all the black marble, black slate and chocolate wallpaper quite oppressive. This place couldn’t be more different. It’s a very old Navarran Farm house. Farm implements originally on the ground floor, and then upstairs to the living quarters. The beams are enormous, and all fixed with wooden pegs, no metal. The walls of the rooms are lath and plaster, and there is an amazing kitchen, with a stone fire place in the middle, with huge stone firedogs, and a vast conical chimney above, which rises right through the top floor. There are beams for hanging smoking meat in the chimney and a proper bread oven on one corner of the room.

There’s a dovecote in the front of the building and the owners have collected really old furniture for the rooms. From the windows there are beautiful views of very green hills, and a little further off, the mountains proper. The sun has even come out – a bit fitfully, but still. The address is the best – Camino de Santiago 11. We have seen quite a few pilgrims, mostly looking knackered and /or soaked.

A meadow, as seen everywhere. But no wonder they are so lush - it does rain!