En el bosque

Today we went up to the Ordesa valley; S describes it as having been "sacrificed to tourism" in order to preserve the rest of the national park. There's a car park with capacity for hundreds of cars a few kilometres beyond Torla, and from there you can walk along well marked paths through the woods alongside the gurgling river to some waterfalls. At this time of year it's quite spectacular. I've never seen so many people lugging tripods and rucksacks full of SLRs and lenses through the countryside (I wasn't; I just took the little camera). And to be honest, I didn't think it was worth setting up a tripod to take photos of the waterfalls, because they were completely in shade, so no sparkles or reflections. Instead I took dozens of experimental photos of leaves, most of which I deleted.

It was a lovely couple of hours' walk. From there, we decided to go and have lunch at the refuge in Bujaruelo (on the GR11), along 5 km of the worst unpaved road yet. The valley gets its name from box, as in the bush, but if you think of box as neatly trimmed hedges, in Bujaruelo they are trees five metres tall. It's quite different from Ordesa, much more open with green meadows alongside the river and a backdrop of mountains covered with multicoloured trees. Fewer people about too, due to the difficulty of access.

We sat on the terrace in the sun and had lunch: typical Spanish hamburgers, massive buns filled with salad, mayonnaise, hamburger, bacon, cheese, and a fried egg. I made mine Slimming World friendly by not eating the top half of the bun and giving half a dozen of my chips to S (who somehow managed to also polish off a large slice of cheesecake, must be all the walking he did yesterday). Just as well we had all that exercise first. At the next table a couple of guys were comparing rucksacks of camera kit, admiring a lens that was probably worth more than both my cameras and all my lenses put together.

Then we walked some of our lunch off by going for a further little circular walk up one side of the river and down the other, amid stunning views. A really lovely day, but I'm quite tired now! You'll find a few photos on Flickr, right from here.