Basque Country & France
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spain’s green atlantic coast - ribadao
Over the years we have visited Spain many times, but our previous experiences of coastal Spain has never extended further than the ever-popular Costa del Sol and we were quite unprepared for the spectacular Costa Verde (Green Coast) of Asturias. A dramatic stretch of coastline with soaring cliffs, woodland, small sandy coves and long white-sand beaches running alongside the Atlantic Ocean. In stark contract to the Mediterranean coastline, there was a noticeable lack of development as we hopped from one beach campsite to the next making our way from the port town of Ribadeo along the Cantabrian coast and into Donostia-San Sebastion, a drive of nearly 500km.
A common sight all along the way was that of the many walkers and cyclists progressing along the network of ancient pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela or Way of St. James. The Camino de Santiago has been a pilgrimage route for more than 1,000 years, one theory of why it became such is that when St James, one of the original 12 apostles died, his body was placed in a boat which landed on the coast of Spain, just west of where Santiago de Compostela stands today. It’s said that he is now buried in the specially built Cathedral which is still attracting pilgrims from across the world. Of the many route options, the GR65 El Camino Frances or the French Way is the most popular, so called as it begins in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port on the French side of the Pyrenees. A trail of 800km that traverses the Pyrenees before continuing through the La Rioja wine region and along the rolling hills of northern Spain to the burial site of St James. Just as hikers walking England’s Coast to Coast trail carry a pebble from one side of the country to the other, walkers here tie a scallop shell to their bags to show that they are walking the Camino. I don’t know why, but it is always uplifting to see walkers striding along with full packs on their backs and to see so many of them was quite motivational for us and our future plans.
Leaving Cantabria we arrived in Basque country armed with two valuable pieces of advice for local integration. Firstly, don’t refer to the area as being part of Spain, IT IS BASQUE COUNTRY and secondly those little eats that you are enjoying with your local tipple of Txakoli are PINTXOS and NOT TAPAS. The Basque Country is a slice of land that straddles the border between France and Spain, consisting of three provinces in northern Spain and another three in south-west France and is considered to be a separate nation by most of the 3 million people who live there. It is a country with a unique culture, its own flag and traditions that differ greatly from its Spanish and French neighbours. Basque people are widely considered to be the oldest ethnic group in Europe and their language, Euskara, is quite unusual in that it has no known connections to any other language. Traditionally whalers, ship-builders, mariners and explorers, the Basques are a tough people, with a strong, long-standing history of determination to preserve their national character. Their demand for independence from Spain has waxed and waned over the years, the violent Spain-ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna/Basque Country and Freedom armed conflict that started in 1959 ceased in 2018 and the Basques now have more autonomy that any of Spain’s other 16 regions. On the receiving end of a series of benefits from Madrid and an independent taxation system, the Basques currently seem “satisfied” with their lot and content to focus on Jai Alai and a steadily increasing tourist trade.
jai alai - basque sport
Hang on ….. Jai Alai?? Also known as Cesta Punta, Jai Alai is a faster, more dynamic and violent version of squash. Teams of two players take to the court or fronton, which has three walls on its four sides, where they take turns to hurl a pelota, a hand-wound rubber ball covered with hardened goat skin against the walls using a cesta, a curved wicker catching and throwing device about 75cm long with a leather glove sewn to the outside. The balls, which are by the way harder than golf balls, travel in excess of 300 km/h, faster than in any other sport and players will often run and jump off the walls in order to catch them. Despite periods of huge popularity and a few appearances at the Olympic games, the most recent being Barcelona in 1992, this fastest ball game in the world is banned in many countries but in the Basque country is still going strong.
Ask anyone what they know about the Basque country and their response is likely to be the city of Donostia-San Sebastion, a place most famous for its food, boasting the second most Michelin stars per capita in the world, behind Kyoto, Japan. But away from the fine dining there is another side to the culinary offerings, the famous pintxos, originally a slice of baguette bread piled high with food all held in place with a cocktail stick or ‘pintxo’. As with most things, that traditional idea has evolved into today’s miniature haute cuisine, flavours elaborated and concentrated into tiny, mouth-watering experiences. A pub crawl along the narrow, cobbled streets of the Old Town doing our best to sample as many of the hole-in-the-wall taverns and pintxos bars as possible was woefully inadequate. I don’t think we have every been surrounded by so much quality food and even flushing it through with the local Txakoli, a young fruity white wine, we were defeated after sampling just five out of more than 180 pintxo bars. Oh well, maybe next time!!
People often ask if we get a bit bored travelling and I think they are referring to a lack of the usual daily distractions of family, work, routine and life in general. This question had also crossed my mind before we jumped in at the deep end, sold everything we owned and took up residence in Bob. After an initial period of adaptation during which time the normality of mainstream living was shaken off, it has been a little surprising to find that we seem to be just as occupied as ever, just different subject matters. To give an example….
…… shopping! The most important aspect of shopping is of course food shopping, something that used to be done at warp speed as the required items of purchase were grabbed off shelves in an all too familiar environment. Nowadays, supermarkets have taken on similar characteristics to a black hole, one into which we disappear for ridiculously long periods of time as we try to find what we want amongst some very unusual items and foreign labels. All too often we have reached the front of the check-out line to find that there are no credit cards accepted just cash (Germany, you know we’re talking about you), at which point we have to abandon our hard-won basket and head off to find a cash point – another time-consuming activity. And, just as we familiarise ourselves with the main chain of whichever place we happen to be in we change country and have to start all over again.
Aside from groceries, online shopping is another excellent way to while away a few days and have yourself quite a treasure hunt at the same time. So many online retailers use couriers now rather than the old-fashioned Post Office and said PO is not always willing to accept parcels from these external delivery methods. Poste Restante seems to be a thing of the past and when we have tried this method it has failed spectacularly. So, the method we are adopting now is, once we have sourced whatever it is we need, is to find out who they use as their shipper. We then look for a collection point for that shipper whether it be UPS, DPD, DHL or a multitude of others and believe me there are many! The collection point is decided on by how long shipping is likely to take and how long it will take us to reach said destination. To make things even more interesting we usually tend to do an online shop for a number of items so will end up with one particular town receiving about half a dozen parcels, all of which are being delivered to different collection points. OK, so far so good but then what invariably happens is that we arrive in town excited to collect our parcels only to find that some of the businesses acting as collection points have closed??!! Some are on holiday for two weeks, others tell us that they have no parcel for us until we go back for the third time and insist they have it at which point it is eventually located and others, even with the help of Google maps, we simply cannot find. There really is no opportunity to be bored with all this going on, frustrated perhaps but definitely not bored!
friends in bordeaux
The Basque Country on the French side of the border is not as extensive as on the Spanish side and it wasn’t long before we were in France proper. We followed the Atlantic coast for a while up to the popular seaside town of Biarritz and after observing just how busy things were starting to get we headed inland and up to Bordeaux, the wine capital of France. A friend of ours from Australia had just completed a solo walk of the Coast to Coast and we were meeting her in Bordeaux to celebrate her achievement. It is always great to see familiar faces now that we are travelling full-time and this was no exception. It is a wonderful thing how you might not see someone for a few years but, when you do, you pick up right where you left off and the time between doesn’t make any difference at all. We had a great day cycling around Bordeaux on a rather dry, but nevertheless interesting, tour followed by a generous contribution to the local economy via one of the many organic wine bars.
And then disaster struck….
…. I crashed my bicycle! At speed! My face took the brunt of the fall which probably wasn’t a bad thing as a recent heavy-handed top up of fillers probably cushioned the blow somewhat and the suspected fractured wrist now seems to be healing well. It was undoubtedly a nuisance though, as any debilitation whilst travelling is frustrating and impacts hugely on the dynamics, probably more so for Ian as, in his mind, he was forced to drive with one of the worst passengers in the world.
abbeye de la bussiere, la bussiere-sur-ouche
We did have something on the horizon to cheer us up a bit though, we had booked a two-night stay at Abbeye de la Bussiere, a 12th century authentic Cistercian abbey in the beautiful countryside of Burgundy. We stayed here many years ago whilst on a cycling holiday from Paris to Monte Carlo and had met the relatively new owner, an English banker who had married a French woman and spent what must have been millions bringing the old place back to life. We have been fortunately enough to have stayed in some amazing places over the years and the Abbeye would definitely be in our top three and so the opportunity to revisit was a highlight. On checking in we were a bit disappointed to find that the Englishman owner had, just 6 months ago, sold the Abbeye to the Americans but that aside the property was obviously getting looked after and we booked in for the gastronomique Gromolu dinner. Being in such celebrious surroundings meant that we needed to get our storage boxes off the top of the car in order to access our decent clothes. Horror of horrors – Ian opened up the large canvas bag which housed our three storage boxes to find that everything was covered in thick black mildew, no doubt a result of the many storms that we had been caught in whilst up in the Pyrenees. The smell and the state of everything was just awful and going through each of the boxes we were left with no choice but to throw most of it away. We left the Abbeye the following morning leaving behind a rather smelly room for the Americans to deal with. An unfortunate outcome which has left us with a capsule wardrobe that would be hard to beat – we really are resembling homeless people more and more. One the one hand, it is great to be travelling so light, but we do need to at least get some replacement clothes which unfortunately means more online shopping!
Our run of bad luck however, had not quite finished…..
chamonix, french alps
….. heading up into the French Alps, partly to escape the intense heat sweeping across parts of southern Europe, we decided that as we were so close to Geneva it would make sense to do another UK run thereby extending our stay in Europe by another 90 days. We took turns to fly into Gatwick returning later the same day, actually much later given the amount of disruption that seemed to be taking place in both airports with lack of ground crew and disrupted flight schedules. However, mission eventually accomplished we drove to a campsite just outside of the town of Chamonix where we planned to spend a few days walking in the mountains around Mont Blanc until I discovered that a further 90 day stay in Europe was not the only thing I had brought back from the UK. Surrounded by some of the most stunning countryside in all of Europe, the next four days were spent sprawled across Bob’s bed with some sort of virus that sapped all energy and demanded an epic sleeping bout of around 75 hours straight. What a disappointing way to be in such an amazing part of France and we were unable to extend our stay as we had a pressing engagement in Italy, but more about that next time.
Feeling much rested, we packed up and then another disaster. Bob wouldn’t start. We now seem to have a problem with the keys, key fobs, immobiliser or a combination of all three. Both key fobs now do nothing, well that’s not quite true, whilst they have no impact on locking or unlocking the central locking system they will turn off the immobiliser light on the dash. However, once the immobiliser light is off, turning the key in the ignition either does nothing at all or turns over the engine for about 2 seconds before it cuts out again. Great, the next four hours were spent trying unsuccessfully to find help, language difficulties, excessive traffic issues during peak season and a location high up in the Alps all conspired against us. Eventually, with the help of the local tourist office, we were able to book a tow truck for the following day, a tow of 70km to a garage who had agreed to try and help. Standing in the rain ready to load Bob onto the tow truck the following morning we were astonished when the truck driver worked some kind of magic and got Bob to start????? Advising us not to turn off the engine, we paid a somewhat reduced towing rate and drove ourselves to the afore-mentioned garage where we spent the rest of the morning watching the mechanic dismiss one possible problem after another. Eventually, he admitted defeat and suggested – using Google translate – that it was either a relay problem or a key problem. It was almost a complete waste of time except that he showed us the trick to get the engine started. Turn the key to position II, press the unlock button to get the immobiliser light to go off, turn key off and fully on whilst holding the lock button on the fob which after the third or fourth attempt will cause the engine to run!!!!!
Okaaaay, on that note Italy here we come!