Weather: mainly sunny, 20º C

Mileage: 290 Km; Total 2,130 kms

Heading for Pamplona today but first stop was Guernica. Earlier in the blog we included a painting by Picasso by the same name. This was painted in Paris during the Spanish Civil War and exhibited worldwide during Franco’s years in power. After democracy was restored the painting came to Spain (1981). We suggest you go to the following link to understand why the painting holds such a significant place in Spain.

http://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.js p

After parking the car, at no charge, we easily found the Information Centre and necessary map of the town. Being Monday, the market which was adjacent to the Information Centre, was open so we went there first. It was your typical market of clothing, jewellery and fresh food. Made some purchases and would have headed for the museum except that being Monday it was closed. This is the case with most museums in Spain and we must plan around it when we can.

Now to the Assembly House where the Basque council meets for various activities. Guernica is not the capital city of the Basque region but is significant so quite a few activities are carried out here. The Assembly House and the Tree of Guernica (an old oak tree nearby) represents the living symbols of the Basque people. As the oak trees die they are replaced by new ones. The last one lived for about 140 years. It was replaced by the latest tree in 2004 and its significance remains.

Apologise for so much detail here but visiting the Basque region and learning a little bit about their history has been extremely interesting.

Coffee and tapas for lunch then back on the road. This time we have gone to great pains to make sure we stayed off major highways as much as we could to get more of a feel for the countryside as we headed for the village of Elciego.

During the trip we went though hilly areas, mountainous areas and plains (without rain). We climbed as high as 1,100 metres and drove through trees, scrub, wheat fields (we think) and grape fields. In the hills and plains we saw quite a few villages, often very close to one another. They each have their own churchs in prominent positions. This part of the trip reminded us a bit of our 2001 holiday in the Provence province of France.

As usual the countryside has many wind power turbines. Today at one point we could see over 100 along or near the ridges of the hills. For the first time we also saw fields of solar panels that we presume were also for the generation of electricity. Spain appears to have been heavily investing in alternative renewable electricity generation.

Ahhh – the sound as we enter the wine province of La Rioja and our destination of the village of Elciego. We came here not just for the wine but also to visit the Marques de Riscal Winery and the hotel on the winery that was designed by Frank Gehry (designer of the Guggenheim). We did not manage to get inside the building but it was impressive and unusual enough on the outside. We also bought some wine that we will save to have with David and Lesley whom we are meeting in Barcelona. They comment edearlier in the blog that our ability to produce the blog might be impacted by their presence. I suppose us bringing wine will help support their view.

Billy (and Bruce) behaved quite well today.