Our first target this morning was the Monasteries of Suso
(upper) and Yuso Lower, both in the village of San Millan de la Cogolla. The
sat nav set a cross-country route and all was going well until Jane said “I
wouldn’t have chosen this route but the roads are very good”. Within seconds,
the wide, deserted, beautifully surfaced road narrowed significantly and the
road deteriorated to a patchwork of repairs. A tractor then appeared and I had
to go off road for it to pass but the dirt surface was just as smooth as the
road. One advantage of the cross-country route is that we were able to see the
Spanish men enjoying their favourite Sunday pursuit – hunting. Ahead we saw a
man running across the road, shotgun in hand, with three gun dogs around him.
Cars were abandoned at junctions whilst their inhabitants trapesed across
fields. In one case we saw men hunting through a vineyard – hopefully they only
do this after the harvest.
After a few miles of very bumpy road, the surface and width
improved considerably and we were soon at San Millan de la Cogolla. We were
about to turn off to follow signs to Suso that a sign said that there was no
parking and we should use the bus from Yuso. Arriving at Yuso, we rejected the
over-crowded car park and used an overflow car park a few metres up the hill.
Yuso monastery was built after Suso became too small for their requirements and
the site was too cramped for expansion. So Yuso and Suso are inextricably
linked and their histories are intertwined.
Visits to Yuso are by guided tour only so we paid our €6
each and, even though it was busy, we were able to start our tour 10 minutes
later. We had an English leaflet and there were some boards with English text
but the tour was, understandably, in Spanish. The most important aspect of Yuso
is the history of the monastery and its importance for the Spanish e.g. the
first record of the Spanish language is to be found here, 11th
century notes made by a monk on a Latin text. This meant that the tour was
heavy on talking and relatively light on sights, an interesting tour but not an
unmissable one.
We decided not to go for the Suso tour and probably wouldn’t
have been able to do so as the numbers are strictly limited and it was Sunday
and busy. We had planned to drive down through the picturesque mountains of
Sierra de la Demanda but the heavy mist and low cloud that had dogged us all
morning was stubbornly refusing to clear and, if anything, had thickened in the
hills above the monastery. We decided instead to go to Navarette, mentioned in
the Northern Spain Eye Witness guide and where there was a campsite. OK, I sure
that the views from the hill above the town would have been good if we could
have seen them but there wasn’t anything else to recommend about Navarette. It
had a very tired, down-at-heal appearance with many houses in a state of
collapse and very little architecture of interest. All of this is rather
surprising for a town on the Santiago route and we saw many pilgrims there. For
a second time we changed our plans. Because we had spent so little time in
Navarette, we had time to get to our next stop, Arguedas next to the Bardenas
Reales National Park. The journey was on fast roads and, with the exception of
the beautiful autumn colours in the many vineyards, the scenery wasn’t that
exciting but as we approached Arguedas, the mist got thinner and thinner until
blue sky appeared and the sun shone.
We drove into the aire and found ourselves underneath
troglodytic dwellings cut into the soft rock of the cliff. The houses are now
abandoned, but only fairly recently and village has created a walkway that
allows people to explore them. A notice on the way says that it is forbidden to
enter the cave house in the interest of safety – a warning that everyone
ignores as the houses are open and still contain trappings of everyday living
such as sinks, cookers and shelves. The evening shone on the cliff,
illuminating the interior of the houses and it was easy to imagine the
occupants in the houses with their animals in the back rooms and cooking
outside in the good weather.
Bardenas Reales
Photos: The ‘Moor Slayer’ doing what he was good at over the
entrance to Yuso monastery; View of the troglodytic houses from the aire at
Arguedas; Two views of the interior of the houses.
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