Day 77. Friday 23 May.

A bit of a rest day – not only are D &T travel weary, but J has a cold. First task was a trip into the outskirts of Pamplona to pick up some more supplies and some stuff from a Farmacia to keep the symptoms at bay.

We stopped for a coffee on the return trip at Ororbia, a smallish village of 758 inhabitants. We started using some of our new found Spanish words, then English, then Google translate, then sign language. It was only the latter that worked! We were perplexed, but T had a lightbulb moment and out of interest (after the event) we selected Basque. Very different and presume that was the problem, but we haven’t tested the theory as yet.

A quick stroll around a very neat and probably well-to-do village, which we speculated might be close enough to the city to make commuting easy and far enough away for a rural lifestyle. Iglesia de San Julián de Ororbia was all closed up, but we were intrigued by the cross, but have been unable to discover what the Santas Missiones – Recuerdo Ororbia represent.

Google tells us that the church is a Gothic style temple, built in the first half of the 14th century. Not sure of the connection to Julián of Cuenca (c. 1127 – 28 January 1208), also known as Saint Julián, who was a Spanish Roman Catholic prelate who served as the bishop of Cuenca from 1196 until his death. He also served as a professor and preacher, in addition to being a simple hermit. He became a bishop after the Moors were driven from Cuenca and he made pastoral visits to the people in his diocese where he fed prisoners and provided grain for the poor farmers. But he never forgot his desire to live in solitude and made annual trips where he could best find silence before re-emerging to resume his episcopal duties. Ororbia has for some reason claimed him.

Reset Doris for the rest of the journey – she ‘Route Ended’ at Itza/Iza, nowhere near our home. 

Reset again and off we went, ignoring her until we were on a road we thought we recognised (wrong) but were still taken on a mostly new route to home, coming in from the other direction. All good – the roads were in very good condition, albeit one vehicle wide, but thankfully no oncoming traffic.An interesting afternoon drive through very lush wheat fields (?) and then sheer rock faces to be greeted by the welcome sign of our current home.

The rest of the afternoon was quiet: in the evening T and J took a walk into the village, meeting a few locals and some other visitors. The latter included a bunch of men (about 10 and none with any English, but Francaise?… ‘Non’) of a certain age and here for a weekend catchup. The girls were invited to join them for a drink: struggled for a while but declined. The former was a mother (aged 91 and glamorous as… and her daughter). Mum has lived her whole life in Azanza and she has seen a small farming community stripped of services and residents. Her daughter explained with Google translate that everyone has moved to Pamplona, the wheat fields are small holdings that can’t support a family so people work in Pamplona factories… (but someone plants and crops the wheat, T thought).

Dinner. Chicken soup. Delicious. And dinner table stories. And some red. Maybe J will be looking up tomorrow. 🤞🙏