Autumn 2024

Arguedas - 12 September 2024

12.09 - Arguedas and cycle to Bardenas Reales Natural Park

Was fairly noisy parked up by the road in Olite last night - but didn’t bother me as I hadn’t slept well the previous night…

My drive today was just under an hour. Saw lots of mobile solar panels, and lots of wind turbines.

Encountered a new sort of ‘roundabout’. The road goes straight through in both directions - if you want to turn off to go to the left, you go around in a semi circle on the outside. Need to watch out for those!

We’re parked up in Arguedas, right in front of the Troglodyte caves. These caves were home to different generations until the 1960s. They would have been cool in summer and warm in winter. Nearly 50 families resided here. One advantage was the people owned their homes and didn’t pay rent. Animals also lived with the people - sometimes passing through other rooms on their way in or out.

They were surprisingly light inside - with fairly large rooms too. Still don’t know how they built homes up and up without collapsing the ones underneath!

We walked into the town and up a hill to a look out over the church. Not a very appealing area for me!

We’d heard about visiting ‘the desert’ - but weren’t really sure how to go about it, even after asking Google!

The Bardenas Reale Natural Park is 42,000 hectares of moonlike, semi-desert landscape which is unpopulated. It has featured in countless movies, including The World is Not Enough and in Game of Thrones.

After lunch, decided we needed to visit the tourist information centre (about 20 minutes ride away) to find out what was possible on a bike. We’d read it would take about 2 hours to drive around the route.

The lady said our options were to ride 34km - about 3-4 hours cycle or 18km about 1-2 hours cycle. She also showed us a picture of the rocks we wouldn’t see by doing the shorter journey!

We’re so glad we cycled - Dave would have grumbled a lot! The first section was tarmac - the rest was all stone dust - bumpy enough on a bike.

What can I say - stunning scenery - hope the photos do it justice!

Rode for about 17 miles, and walked about 8,000 steps. The weather has been indifferent - but it didn’t rain. The blurb says the climate is characterized by hot summers, cold winters and little rainfall.

Apparently there are lots of different birds to see, including birds of prey such as griffin vulture, golden eagle, Egyptian vulture, eagle owl, kestrel etc. We think we saw some type of eagle, but not quick enough to photograph it. Also, didn’t have binoculars with us!