Day 1 - Biescas to Panticosa - A day of History

Ermita Santa Elena

The real reason we had visited Zaragoza was to do 6 days walking in the Pyrenees, I mean Zaragoza is not really on the tourist map. These were such great 6 days, man if I could do 6 days of walking like that every year I think I would be pretty happy. We ended up with 107km walking and 4.6km elevation gain over the 6 days. I don't think I had ever been so sore. But I also have never slept so well. It was a really well organised 6 days, staying in these great little villages along the way.

After Zaragoza we were driven about an hour and a half to Biescas. This was the biggest village we stayed at during the week. And it really wasn't that big, two little streets were the main town though there were some nice places to eat. This was where the route through the Valle de Tena was to start. You are really at the start of the valley here, so you can't see the big mountains yet. They come later on.

Not yet in the big mountains.

A dolmen - neolithic stone structure

The first day was 20km, each day we were given options as to how long and how high we wanted to go. We had decided to go long and hard each day. It got pretty hard further on in the week, but I think it was definitely worth it. You could really feel your metabolism speed up as the week progressed, by the end you could have a bottle of wine with no hint of hangover the next day, definitely useful with all the wonderful Spanish wine.

We didn't have great maps, there was a fairly large scale one of the mountains further on, but nothing really on the first couple of days. So we were relying on walking notes. I'm never a massive fan of notes without a map to back them up. For the first couple of hours we were never entirely sure we were following the right path. And it's entirely possible we weren't, but since we made it to our destination there was no harm done. The walking notes had things like "after 10 minutes you pass a pack of huskies to your right", well I didn't see or hear any huskies, and they are something I was on high alert for too.

Dave and the waterfall under Santa Elena

To be honest the first day's walk wasn't super inspiring, there were some good views, but it was quite long, it had a bit of a feel of a filler day - in that it was easiest to start at Biescas so they had to kind of make up the distance. This day was quite historical though, which was a bonus. In that today we saw the most historical sights out of the whole week. The first part of the day was a bit of a slog through quite thick trees, which was a surprise for Spain. Then we came across this big meadow, there we saw a dolmen, it was unfortunately destroyed during the civil war, but reconstructed in 1975 using the original stones. When they excavated the area they found human bones and various other neolithic artifacts. Apparently this area has one of the greatest concentration of neolithic stone structures in the Pyrenees. I can get why neolithic people would want to live here, it's so lovely and warm, and not too wet. Man I would live there too if I could. There was also this neglected natural calendar, this was a bit sad, but a nice idea. There are plants in different segments of a circle that are meant to flower in different months. Not much was flowering when we came past though, and it just looked generally neglected.

After the dolmen we climbed up to the church of Santa Elena, this is a sacred site from prehistoric times, there is a spring that flows intermittently and is meant to have healing properties, it wasn't really flowing when we were there. The church was built on top of the cave where the spring originates, to try and Christianise it I suppose. It does mean that you can no longer access the cave, which is a shame, but I guess that's the church for you.

Looking back towards Biescas - with the dam wall. We were down at the
dam before ascending to the current height.

Below the church there is this great waterfall and another cave, which you can crawl in and then look out from behind the waterfall, that's pretty cool. It was also a nice relief from the heat.

We were so lucky with the weather, though maybe that's just Spain, in that it didn't rain on us once the whole week. And we were basically walking in shorts and short sleeves the whole time. It made a nice change from walking in the UK, where every expedition is a bit fraught with the possibility of exposure. Here the biggest decision was whether we should carry our sunscreen with us each day, as terrible sunburn was going to be the biggest danger.

After returning from the church up at Santa Elena we carried on towards Panticosa. Along here were really obvious fortifications built in the 1950's. These apparently stretch the length of the Pyrenees as Franco was paranoid that he would be invaded from France. They were heaps around Santa Elena, and looking at the scenery you could see why, the valley was quite narrow here, and you could see for a long way north towards France.

Some big mountains in the distance

Just a bit further on there is the start of a via ferrata, that's the other way up to the church of Santa Elena. A via ferrata is a bit like a designated rock climb, but a lot easier and all the anchor points, steps and hand holds have been attached. It seems that you are meant to do them with ropes and harnesses though.

It was also here that we first noticed the Spanish approach to going to the toilet whilst in the bush. I had always been taught to go away from the path and always make sure you are something like 100m from the nearest watercourse. It seems that's not what is taught in Spain. Apparently the track is a perfectly legitimate toilet. There must be a very different attitude to the toilet in Spain, since regardless that it's pretty disgusting to go to the toilet on the track, or right next to it, there's also just the embarrassment factor that you are quite likely to have someone walk up to you whilst you are in the middle of your business. Maybe they are just a lot more comfortable with that then us English. Gotta say I wish they had a bit more of the Victorian prudishness in them though, since it's not so nice to see toilet paper along the trail.