The Oak of Azanza

This one is a different oak from the others, and the difference is the whole reason it is worth a separate stop. Quercus pubescens, the downy oak, is the dry-country oak of southern Europe: smaller leaves with felted undersides, tolerant of thin limestone soils and long summers, and it takes over from pedunculate oak as you come south and west out of the Atlantic valleys. Azanza sits in the Goni valley on that boundary, in the hills below the Sierra de Andia, and the change in the trees over 20 kilometres of road from Ultzama is the clearest lesson in Navarrese geography anybody could ask for. Navarra declared this tree a Natural Monument in 2009 and, as with all 47, published a species, a place, a year and a coordinate and no measurements at all. That is the honest state of it: an officially protected oak of a species the north of Navarra does not grow, standing where two climates meet, and nobody has said how big or how old it is. If you have measured it, tell us.