After taking the train down to Andoain (got caught out by the fact that Easter Monday is a holiday in Euskadi) and hit the Vía Verde del Plazaola. I'd already been up there a few days previous, on Maundy Thursday, when the weather was still relatively warm and sunny, and while the weather didn't hold out, the ride was still beautiful and, once you get a few kilometres out of Andoain, wonderfully deserted.
Wonderfully...in a way: the rivers of the region were still swollen with the run-off from the weekend's rain and snow, and it was a bit unnerving to get within a couple of metres of the rushing water. Eventually, after fifteen kilometres, the trail rises enough that the river becomes a constant companion, but not one that would threaten to wipe out the trail.The problem was that the higher we went, the further up into the clouds we got, hence the snow. It didn't really become a problem until we got to the overpass of the A15 highway and the town of Leitza -- again, with almost of all of its restaurants and shops closed because of Easter Monday, but we did find a place ot have coffee and sandwiches, and people who could give us directions.
And that was the problem. To get from Leitza to Lekunberri, you've got two options. The first is to continue along the Vía Verde, taking the tunnels, including the Uitzi (pronounced WEE-tsi) tunnel, which is almost three kilometres long but subject to floody during rainy periods. The second, which was physically tougher but arguably safer in cold weather, was to take to the highway over the Uitzi Pass. The pass didn't have a lot of traffic, given that it was Easter Monday, but with knee-deep snow and a 6% grade in front of us, it was like having to decide between dying from too much sex and dying from having drunk too much Bailey's Irish Cream.
There comes a time when you realize that pushing a bike isn't as wimpy as it might seem. And when the temperature barely hovers above freezing, your bike's packed to the hilt and and your only other option may involve ending up knee-deep in water, pushing really doesn't seem like such an imposition.
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"Of course the Uitzi tunnel is fine," Íñigo harrumphed with more than a hint of frustration. "I went up there this summer with some heavy equipment and a dozen or so friends and we cleaned it up and fixed it ourselves."
In addition to being a construction worker and the manager of Camping Aralar, which his parents founded over thirty years ago, Íñigo is the secretary of his local Vía Verde association. He remains optimisticallly skeptical about the future of the Vía Verde del Plazaola: while Navarra is working to increase the number of tourists who visit, local residents get the feeling that the Diputación Foral, the regional government, are reluctant to invest money in the north of the area because the people there consider themselves to be more Basque than Navarrese.
Whatever. What I do know is this: the train line extends all the way down into Pamplona itself (I heard from more than one mountain biker that you can ride all the way down to Pamplona provided you're prepped for offroad riding), and there's the possibility of getting land back to re-establish its former connection with San Sebastian, to the north. Why didn't the Fundación de Vías Verdes work harder to get the entire rail line converted, instead of one chunk that only measures 40 km? If you'd like to show your support for extending the line, write the Plazaola people at info@plazaola.org. They'd be glad to hear from you.
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How cold is it out there? Not cold enough to freeze (you can see in this video that the snow had turned to rain by 4PM: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=fpCBPebqt_U). But it's cold enough that the difference between the ambient temperature outside and the central heating inside our room is creating so much condensation that it's actually raining inside the room.
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