The Oak of Orkin

This is the tree people in Navarra mean when they say the big oak. It stands at Orkin, in the Ultzama valley north of Pamplona, and it is habitually described as millenary, which is a reputation built on its size rather than any measurement: Navarra's register gives it a species, a place, a declaration year and a coordinate and nothing else, so nobody has published a girth, a height or an age for it. What is described consistently is the shape. It has been pollarded, cut back repeatedly over generations in the way Basque and Navarrese villages managed their oaks for firewood and charcoal, and the result is a broad rounded crown on a trunk that flares at the base into a mass of roots big enough that animals den in the gaps under them. Ultzama is wet Atlantic country, beech and oak and pasture rather than anything Mediterranean, 20 kilometres and a different climate from Pamplona. Navarra declared it a Natural Monument in 2009. If anybody has put a tape round it, we would like the number.