Yareah Magazine

Years ago, I went to visit some Spanish friends in Pamplona. 

por Ana Morales Lopez

They told me about a nice place on the mountains near the French border: Roncesvalles. They cannot accompany me there as they had to work and I decided to go alone.
I took the bus in the afternoon, it was an old bus and the trip lasted too much. It was completely dark when I arrived at Roncesvalles and I was a little stressed, only thinking of finding a place to sleep.
I went to bed without seeing anything of the village or of the surrounding countryside. Next morning, when I woke up, I opened the hostel window and… Roncesvalles, in its entire splendor, was in front of me.
Typical white houses with red roofs and smoking chimneys, green lands with yellow flowers where cows and horses were grazing and a background of mountains so higher than they crossed the clouds and seemed to touch the sky: Roncesvalles.
Excited, I left the hostel to visit the place. The village was charming but the best was the path that you had to walk to arrive to the church. It was two kilometers long among ancient oaks and silence, it was a paradise of bushes and lavenders, it was the most beautiful place that I had never seen.
The church, in stone, was placed on the way to Santiago. Pilgrims from France daily crossed it, very many of them had religious reasons but other of them only wanted to admire that natural garden and to feel that particular smell of earth, wood and fog.
In the middle age, people only could cross the western Pyrenees through Roncesvalles and it was the symbol of understanding among different countries, a beauty symbol: Roncesvalles, you cannot be nearer of God.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (registered users only)

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Add Comment