La Cañada de Roncaleses

[mspath]

Alvaro Barrientos wrote on
Transhumance for AP , August 2, 2023. He evocatively describes a Spanish way of liife now disappearing along the route known as La Cañada de The Roncaleses/The Path of the Roncaleses near Sanguesa in Navarra.

I followed this account with tears in my eyes. Perhaps you, too, will find it poignant.

 

[J Willhaus]

Alvaro Barrientos wrote on
Transhumance for AP , August 2, 2023. He evocatively describes a Spanish way of liife now disappearing along the route known as La Cañada de The Roncaleses/The Path of the Roncaleses near Sanguesa in Navarra.

I followed this account with tears in my eyes. Perhaps you, too, will find it poignant.

We did not see them, but @Vacajoe has posted a video of sheep and goats being moved through Canfranc Pueblo in a similar migration last year. That is in Aragon which borders Navarre and still in the Pyrenees.

We also still have similar migrations here in the US in more remote mountain areas. Phil and I saw a shepherd with his 5 dogs and a very large flock 2 weeks ago in the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming and shepherds still move the sheep in Idaho through Ketchum. It has been turned into a tourist event called the trailing of the sheep.

In Idaho, most of the shepherds had some original Basque roots, but now the sheep are mainly herded by shepherds from Chile who come for 5 or 6 months out of the year for the work. Our nursing students used to visit them as a community health project when I taught in Boise.

Thank you for posting. Navarre is a beautiful state and Phil and I felt privileged to have served near there this year.

 

[TMcA]

There is a Transhumance in France that crosses the Le Puy route in the area of the Aubrac Plateau. As we descended from that Plateau, we were lucky to see a a small herd of cows, some decorated, in Saint-Chély-d'Aubrac. The Miam Miam Dodo guidebook we used noted the approximate time of the event which can greatly impact walkers in the area of Aumont because the event brings large crowds and accommodations are limited in the area. I just read that this event was restarted in 1993, so it's perhaps more of a symbolic affair than the one in Spain.