Mendillorri
There are times you are in a city for a while and instead of the touristy area, a good idea is to grab a bus to the end of the line. More often than not that place is a lot different than the center. I have done such during San Fermin Festivals and also in Florence. In both cities I found some amazing suburbs. It's cold in Pamplona now and this day the sun was out, so I grabbed a number 12 bus to Mendillorri and made a bit of a discovery.
Mendillorri is a purpose built suburb and has about 12,000 people. The architecture is modern and I was ready to grab the next bus back, then I saw the hill. Altitude here is around 1500 feet, with about another 200 to the top of the hill. Trouble is you can't go through the woods to the summit, but it is a park with different kinds of trees, including a large Himalayan Cedar as well as others.
I had a bit of laugh at this. Sculptures I can understand, but these look like water pipes, which makes sense because the rest of Pamplona is 300 odd feet lower so the water pressure is by gravity instead of being pumped. I remember how amazed I was when I first came to England and there were about 5 large tanks in all the attics for water and it dribbled out the faucets. My uncle was a senior manager of Ideal Standard and he had installed warm air central heating and an American style hot water heater with a pump, then an advertising agency came round and took the photos for the ads. We finally had a decent shower. Decades later London replaced all the pipes and pressurized the water, I stood in our apartment's shower for a very long time luxuriating in it all.
The park has pathways, but I saw this and headed down hoping for a trail into the wooded area. It was blocked so I had to use the paths. Along the way and at various points are little signs saying what the plant, bush or tree is.
The bridgy sort of thing has a wood walking surface which is slippery magnified when wet, so you must walk on the side with the tread grips. In dry weather the wood will be okay, but it has rained a lot the last month and you have to be careful on even the sidewalks because of the little tiles which are quite smooth—not as bad as Lisbon but trying hard to catch up.
There were other pathways as I wandered around and some led to view points. At one of those I saw this and had a bit of a surprise. Look in the center of the image, slightly to the left and your will see a sort of small tower. That is an elevator and is about 10 minutes walk from where I am living at the moment. The hillside is extremely steep and there are steps down to the road next to it. Continuing the wander I found some routes which led to a road going downhill and took it. It was a guess on my part, but if one of these roads led to the one at the bottom of the hill, I could walk back to my room instead of riding the bus which wound all over the place.
The sun warmed me up and I walked around with my jacket unzipped, revelling in it all.
Mendillorri is a purpose built suburb and has about 12,000 people. The architecture is modern and I was ready to grab the next bus back, then I saw the hill. Altitude here is around 1500 feet, with about another 200 to the top of the hill. Trouble is you can't go through the woods to the summit, but it is a park with different kinds of trees, including a large Himalayan Cedar as well as others.
A view across a very large field. Pamplona is in a valley plain surrounded by mountains. The shoots are out and it's December, so it might be Spring wheat, I don't know, I'm not a farmer.
I had a bit of laugh at this. Sculptures I can understand, but these look like water pipes, which makes sense because the rest of Pamplona is 300 odd feet lower so the water pressure is by gravity instead of being pumped. I remember how amazed I was when I first came to England and there were about 5 large tanks in all the attics for water and it dribbled out the faucets. My uncle was a senior manager of Ideal Standard and he had installed warm air central heating and an American style hot water heater with a pump, then an advertising agency came round and took the photos for the ads. We finally had a decent shower. Decades later London replaced all the pipes and pressurized the water, I stood in our apartment's shower for a very long time luxuriating in it all.
The park has pathways, but I saw this and headed down hoping for a trail into the wooded area. It was blocked so I had to use the paths. Along the way and at various points are little signs saying what the plant, bush or tree is.
The bridgy sort of thing has a wood walking surface which is slippery magnified when wet, so you must walk on the side with the tread grips. In dry weather the wood will be okay, but it has rained a lot the last month and you have to be careful on even the sidewalks because of the little tiles which are quite smooth—not as bad as Lisbon but trying hard to catch up.
There were other pathways as I wandered around and some led to view points. At one of those I saw this and had a bit of a surprise. Look in the center of the image, slightly to the left and your will see a sort of small tower. That is an elevator and is about 10 minutes walk from where I am living at the moment. The hillside is extremely steep and there are steps down to the road next to it. Continuing the wander I found some routes which led to a road going downhill and took it. It was a guess on my part, but if one of these roads led to the one at the bottom of the hill, I could walk back to my room instead of riding the bus which wound all over the place.
Finally I found the road and walked back. It took about 25 minutes and I arrived back after two hours of Mendillorri.
It was good exercise
Dec 27, 2023
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