Contrasts

103.45 miles hiked, 4 Cultural Events Attended

This morning at Heredad Beragu, breakfast arrived and it was so perfectly plated, Pam had to take a picture. It tasted as good as it looked. We’ve been eating big breakfasts and dinners with small lunches through the trip. Even though we are doing a good bit of walking, we both can feel we are gaining weight. Vacations are for letting loose, so it’s fine. We’ll go back to normal later (we hope 🤞).

Spanish breakfasts are pure art. The suffering we go through to bring you these stories is terrible. 😹😹

I’d found a hike that goes through the town of Gallipienzo, the town we are staying in and climbs along the spine of the mountains behind it, before dropping down into the valley on the left side and back to the town. Originally, I had suggested a longer hike that crossed the valley in the picture above and climbed the big mountains on the left. That was about 3,500 feet of elevation gain in nine miles, but Pam gave me that look, and I wisely backed off and suggested the one we did. I may be an introverted geek, who can’t read people well, but even an alien could have read Pam’s mind on the original hike suggestion.

We walk out of one of the most beautifully restored building we’ve seen in Spain, which is at the bottom edge of this town built on a hill. As soon as we turn into Gallipienzo, the contrasts are stark. The town’s not that big, but it’s obvious the long decline has been going on for a while. Many buildings in the narrow medieval streets are for sale, but are in such poor shape, I’m not sure they can be saved without a very large investment.

The town itself seemed to have peaked in the 1400’s. In 1910, the population was 759 and today has a population of 96. The medieval part has people living in it, but getting any vehicle into that area is difficult, if not impossible. To buy and restore one of those medieval buildings would be doubly difficult because supplies would have to ferried by an ATV to the site. Most of the residents live in a newer section along the main road into the town.

The town government is trying to bring tourists, and besides Heredad Beragu, there’s another good looking guest house, Casa Rural Zulotxo. This tiny town also has two churches. At the top of the town is the dominating Church of San Salvador and in the lower part of town the Church of San Pedro, which seems to be three quarters the size. The Spanish Wikipedia entry says both churches were built at the same time in the 1640’s. Why the town needed two churches is beyond me, but they had a long running feud involving lawsuits from 1640 to 1785 over which was the parish church. The bishop of the area finally said the Church of San Pedro was the only parish. The whole debate strikes me as pointless. But then again, I don’t understand religion.

The Church of San Pedro is the better restored of the two, which I wish we could have seen the inside. I never could capture a picture of the Church of San Salvador, because its only distinct feature is its size. It’s been in the slide to ruin for a while, with a few small trees growing out of the bell tower. The path to the church is rough, grass covered, and is littered broken stones.

A cross within a cross at the Church of San Salvador. Is this double luck?

Several times on this trip, and on previous trips to Spain, I’ve seen signs saying “SOS Save Rurel Areas.”  We have the same problems in American rural areas, but the Spanish rural areas have a rougher go of it. Their towns are compact so the decline looks worse and there’s always a big decaying church, or two, involved. Add in possible defensive walls or towers, and the cost of stabilizing, let alone restoring, increases astronimically.

For these areas, the only realistic future is tourism. It’s a slow hard effort, but with places like Heridad Berugu, change can happen. I didn’t ask how many people they employed but they seemed to have 5-6 full time employees and that’s a good start. When we, and you, make a trip to these rural areas, we are helping in the best way we can. Of course, there are trade offs. A place can try too hard and end up like Pigeon Forge, TN, which is my personal version of hell. (Feel free to disagree.) But if we all can seek out areas like Gallipienzo on our vacations, we can each contribute. While the readership of this microscopic blog won’t save a town, if we all tell others about these cool rural places we’ve found, we can make a difference.

Gallipienzo from the steps of the Church of San Salvador. The big building at the end of the town is the Church of San Pedro.

We started the ups after leaving town, but they weren’t too bad. It was getting warm, but there was a gusty breeze from the valley and views forever.

Pam at our first rest stop. The olive orchard in front of her burned in a fire. The Church of San Salvador is visible in the middle distance.

As we hiked up, we’d seen the one burned orchard, but as we got higher, we saw all of the olive orchards on the mountain were burned down in 2022. That must have been a huge blow to the local economy.

Everything from the foreground to the valley was burned in 2022.

Proof that we climbed to the top of Beragu, which our glorious hotel is named after.

Pam’s happy we climbed to the end of the range at the peak of Zaldinaga. It’s not as tall as Beragu so doesn’t get the concomitant worthy sign.

The route took us down the valley Pam is facing in the photo above. It was a steep-ish downhill into a much wilder valley. This part of the hike was a pure slog. It was along a dirt road that climbed back to Gallipienzo. Not only was it a long, slow up, there was no shade from the blasting sun, and we didn’t have the breezes we had on the ridge. We rated that part of the hike “officially not fun.”

The hot, dry, shadeless up. Ugh.

The feral greeting party when we got back to Gallipienzo. Momma is in the front, with her three black voids behind here. If you look closely, Momma’s tail has one inch of pure white at the end. There was no petting here, but at least they didn’t run away. Maybe because it was too hot.

Pam was very happy to get back to the Heredad Beragu with three hours before dinner to relax. We spent the time in what we called the “reading room.”

Every time we walked past this room, the fuzzy stool scared us because it looked like a dog. The glass part of the floor shows the rock the house is built directly on. They also included various ancient artifacts they found when renovating. I could write in this room forever!

Dinner again was an experience of joy. We started with a lovely cold white garlic soup. Pam opted for the duck thigh in red berry sauce, and it was fantastic. On James’ recommendation, I went for the roasted lamb and totally won dinner. For dessert, I tried the traditional Basque dessert Gouxua (we are in Basque country after all!). It’s my ideal of a perfect desert. Here’s the recipe.

Thanks for reading! Where’s the coolest rural areas you’ve visited that you wish others would go to so we all can help them?