Ainsa

Sat 6th/Sunday 7th January 2024.

Friday night the rain stopped at approx 8 pm and today was as wonderfully sunny as normal, everything felt proper. As usual there were lots of points of interest.

We had a good drive here to Ainsa which is located where rivers Ara and Cinca come together the old town seems frozen in the middle ages.

We paid to go into a wildlife centre dedicated to reintroducing the bearded eagle back to the wild, we walked round the displays and then watched a 15 minute video of the wild life on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees.

Outside they had a pair of eagles that had been rescued from the wild and couldn’t be re introduced to the wild, the female had laid an egg and the parents were taking it in turn to sit on it.

After our evening meal we walked back into town to see it in its evening glory, it was very cold but people were still sitting outside the bars.

Over the past week I have been monitoring the road we intended to take over the Pyrenees and everything seemed fine, however over the past two days it has snowed heavily on the French side of the mountains, vans are driving in here with lots of snow on their roofs. Peter accessed a live video feed at the end of the tunnel we had to go through and it showed the road covered in snow and it is forecast to snow heavily in the coming days.

So rather than risk that route that had steep downhill sections with many bends we have decided to head west along the foothills of the Pyrenees and head back to Pamplona. From there we can skirt the mountains and head back into France.