Garden Talk

Cross the Pyrenees from St Jean Pied de Port at this time of the year and you risk walking in cloud drip, senses brought into focus by the tocking of cow bells.  If you are on the Camino to Santiago, hurry for the Atlantic squalls have settled on green Galicia. The autumn crocus are out from east to west of Spain and the allotments are pendulous with tomatoes and cardoons are wrapped in plastic for stem blanching. Sunflowers walk the horizon, heads bowed like refugees from a famine-gripped land.  The grape harvest is in full spate. Here are the less good grapes of the area of Rioja.