The environment was the topic and Pablo wrote this story: you will find not only lots of grammar here but also the names of many local species of both trees and animals… Imagine and enjoy….

Pablo de Arce,  3º ESO

THE TRAIN STATION HIDDEN IN THE VALLEY

Mark and John were two English brothers. Mark was the older brother and he loved going hunting. John didn’t like to hunt, he preferred walking through the forest and searching mushrooms. They didn’t have a job and they didn’t find any job in England, so they went to Spain in 1927. They found a job in a mountain valley hidden in the Pyrenees mountains. Their work consisted of helping to build a train station that connected Spain and France. The train station was situated near a village called Canfranc.

A few years before Mark and John’s arrival to Canfranc, some workers in the train station’s project planted a lot of trees on the hillsides to avoid avalanches. They planted coniferous trees with needles like European larches and Norway spruces on the highest parts of the mountains. They also planted in lower zones coniferous trees like Scot pines and European firs, deciduous trees like beeches and trees with flowers like European box. They didn’t plant any trees near the river because there were native deciduous trees like silver birches, aspens, whitebeams with berries and white willows.
When Mark and John arrived at the valley, they saw sloping hillsides covered by small trees and the train station under construction next to the tracks, at the bottom of the valley. They worked helping to build the train station and transporting the materials needed for the construction but, when the winter started, every worker stopped working because of the snow. There was more than one metre of snow on the ground.

The winter was very cold and besides that, Mark and John couldn’t cut down the little trees that were in the forest in order to make fire. This prohibition still exists now. So once a week they went to hunt to obtain food and leather. They walked through the forest. They could see little stoats, squirrels on the tree branches and Pyrenean chamois running up mountain rocks while the bearded vultures flew over them, until they saw wild boars or foxes and Mark hunted them. John didn’t hunt any animals because he didn’t practise hunting as much as his brother.
When the spring arrived, they returned to their work and when the Canfranc’s train station was inaugurated in July of 1928, they came back to England using the money that they had earned with their job.                                                                                                                                        Canfranc was a beautiful place but they missed their home.

Congratulations to his tutor, Miguel Angel Laborda, too!