The Fate of Chestnuts

 We are totally off grid today so it is a day for diversions.  Honestly, we are going here for a reason.  Well, we are going somewhere for a reason, this is just the path to, but not of, reason.  Where was i?

Vilapedre will offer us all the diversion we are going to get.  137 people live here - that is down from the 227 in the year 2000.    The old school house is now used as a community centre and all four reviews are five star.  Opposite is a single reviewed cross and a bus stop.  It appears to have a single bus in both directions once a day.





Let's talk trees.  Or rather, tree.  The epidemic of chestnut blight or canker ravaging across Spain could eradicate chestnut trees from the Peninsula and southern France in the next 20 years.  So, a good news stoty.  Chestnut blight arrived to the Peninsula in 1950 with American chestnuts which were used to replace European trees, themselves decimated by another blight, chestnut ink disease (tinta del castaño). One solution proposed involves inoculating some 20 chestnuts per hectare with a similar but non-fatal fungus.

Chestnuts are found in Spain from Galicia to Navarra, in the Cordillera Central in Salamanca, Cáceres and Ávila. In Andalucía there are chestnuts in Sierra Morena, Serranía de Ronda and Sierra Nevada. There are an estimated 140.000 ha of chestnut forest in Spain. Under ideal conditions the tree can live for 1,000 years.

The chestnut tree is orginally from somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean and was introduced into Spain by the Romans. Chestnuts were a staple of the Galician diet until a terrible plague almost wiped out the tree in 1750’s, when it was replaced by that most Galician of foods: the potato. Chestnuts are still widely consumed in Spain in winter, often in conjunction with festivals, such as for the castanyada on and around All Saints Day in Catalonia.  I have a standard pork and chestnuts dish.  The sweetness of the chestnuts is fun.





Onwards we go.

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