From Paris, the train takes 3 hours to reach Bordeaux, then another 2 hours to reach the little Pays Basque, in the deepest south-west corner of France. From there, it winds slowly for an hour along the small stretch of the Basque coast to Spain, going through Bayonne (the main city of the Pays Basque), past Biarritz, Getaria and Saint Jean de Luz, and ending up in the border town of Hendaye. There one enters Spain and boards a ‘Euskotren’ to Bilbao.

We’d had some tantalising glimpses of the French Basque coast on our train journeys to and from England, so, after our trips to Santander and Hondarribia (see previous post), we spent a couple of days there, curious to see how Basqueness translated from Spain into France. Unfortunately the weather was pretty terrible, so we didn’t see the place at its best.

We started at the northern end of the Basque coast, in Bayonne (Baiona in Basque), a beautiful city with an imposing, if rather plain, Gothic cathedral, and lots of medieval character:

Immediately, it was clear that French culture and language were dominant here in a way that Spanish culture and language aren’t (by and large) in the Spanish Basque country: there were shops, cafes and so on with Basque names, but relatively few. Unsurprisingly, Basqueness here had more of a French feel than in Spain, too. The food was quite different, with a distinctly French style. The architecture too was quite different, again rather French in style.

Still, there were substantial signs of Basque life here. A lot of people looked distinctively Basque, and the old town had the same slightly gritty and down-at-heel feel of most Basque old towns, with the usual Basque political graffiti in evidence:

Most of all, there was a really excellent Basque museum, covering the history, archaeology, art, language and culture of the Basques. And we even found one of the only two or three ‘makila’ makers left in the whole Basque Country. (A ‘makila’ is a Basque shepherd’s walking stick, made of medlar and often elaborately carved, which has a hidden blade in its base so that it doubles as a kind of spear. They are highly prized, often handed down from generation to generation, and often presented to people to honour them on special occasions.)

We discovered some wonderful cheeses from the Pyrenees, and the herbal liqueur of the Pays Basque, ‘Izarra’:

We also encountered the chocolate of Bayonne, famous because it was to Bayonne that chocolate was first brought to France, by Jewish ‘chocolatiers’ who had fled the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. A number of distinguished chocolatiers still exist in the town…

… and there is still a Jewish community here:

Our visits to Biarritz and Saint Jean de Luz were much briefer, and extremely wet.

Biarritz is a busy, sprawling seaside resort, fashionable (although not the height of fashion that it was a few decades ago) and not terribly attractive, with hardly any discernible Basque character, but a few grand 19th century buildings, and one or two atmospheric corners that indicate its past as a fishing port:

Saint Jean de Luz (Donibane Lohizune in Basque), on the other hand, is a very pretty and atmospheric little town with considerable character, though somewhat over-run by tourists. We were there for three hours and it rained non-stop and heavily for the entire time, so we weren´t able to appreciate it at its best. However, we managed to get a good feel for its distinctively French-Basque style of domestic architecture, and noted that aspects of Basque language and culture were more in evidence here:

It turned out that the town also had royal connections, since Louis XIV married Teresa of Spain here in 1660, and there are some rather grand houses where royalty stayed:

Of course there´s a lot more to the Pays Basque than this little stretch of coast, however pretty it is. By all accounts, the most interesting part of the Pays Basques – and by far the most Basque part – is the mountainous inland part in the Western Pyrenees – the towns of Pau and Saint Jean Pied de Port and so on.  We didn´t have time to get there, unfortunately.

Here on the coast of the Pays Basques, Basque culture and language seemed largely to be little more than a tourist curiosity in a way that we have not encountered anywhere in the Spanish Basque Country – perhaps because there is nothing like the volume of tourism in the Spanish region that we encountered here on the French coast. There’s no doubt that the experience would be more quintessentially Basque in the Pyrenees.

But there’s also no doubt that Basqueness is not as big a deal in France as it is in Spain. Whilst there is some Basque nationalism in France (and, for instance, many Spanish ETA fugitives have found refuge in France) it´s not anywhere near as widespread as it is in Spain. Unlike the Basque Country in Spain, of course, the Pays Basque has no political autonomy: indeed, it does not even constitute a region of France, being only a part of the department of Pyrenees-Atlantique.  There is no government policy to have Euskara taught in schools, and so on.

In Basque, the Pays Basque is referred to as ‘Iparralde’ – the North Country – whilst the Spanish side is ‘Hegoalde’ – the South Country – and of course many in the Basque country would like the north and south to be united.  This is often expressed as '4+3 + 1" (4 Basque provinces in Spain plus three Basuqe provinces in France = 1 Basque Country). Anyone desiring to see a united, independent, cross-border Basque Country is likely to have some time to wait, though.

Before we came out to Spain, we had an idea that we’d like to take the little narrow-gauge train line that wends its way very slowly along the beautiful and often wild north coast of Spain from the French border to Santiago de Compostella in Galicia. It would have taken at least a couple of weeks to get there and back, staying in various places along the way. It never happened. However, we have caught some beautiful glimpses of the coast in Cantabria and the Basque Country, and on up into the French Basque Country – and these are the subject of my next few posts.

At the beginning of May, we spent a weekend in Cantabria, the coastal region to the East of the Basque Country – one of only three forays we have made outside the Basque Country. We stayed with some ex-colleagues of Pietro who now live in Santander, and who were happy to drive us around and show us some of the highlights. We were also lucky in that it was a spectacularly hot and sunny weekend (a rare event in this year’s washout spring!)

We didn’t spend much time in Santander itself, but it is a handsome port city, with acres of beautiful beach, and lovely views from the hill above the city:

The most stunning view is of the snow-covered Picos de Europa mountains in the distance. It was a rather hazy day, so the view was not as clear as it might be, but where else in Europe can you get sand, sea, palm trees and snow-covered mountains in the same view?

One of the most important of Spanish ports in medieval days, the old town of Santander was unfortunately burnt down in a fire in 1941, but the rebuilt version is very pleasant, and much of the old cathedral survived the fire:

The highlight of the weekend was a day out along the Cantabria coast, stopping at the beautiful medieval town of Santillana del Mar, the nearby caves of Altamira (home of some of the most important stone age cave paintings), the strange assemblage of art nouveau architecture in the town of Comillas, and the stunning beach and dunes at Liencres.

Santillana has a reputation as one of the prettiest towns in Spain. It’s certainly very picturesque indeed, and it’s certainly geared up for tourists too (though the day we went was thankfully fairly quiet). We enjoyed wandering the streets…

… but the main event, especially if, like me, you are a fan of the Romanesque, is the church, one of the finest Romanesque churches in the north of Spain:

The carvings in the cloister are particularly exquisite:

Near Santillana are the famous caves of Altamira, with their stone age paintings, which I’ll write about in a separate post. A few miles further along the coast is the town of Comillas, well-known for a collection of buildings in the ‘modernisme’ style (Spanish art nouveau), including this folly by Gaudi:

Finally, we drove through the lovely port of San Vicente de la Barquera (which I didn't manage to get a good picture of), and then back to Santander, stopping for a stroll on the beautiful beach at Liencres:

The coach back to Bilbao took us along the coast back from Santander, a journey on which we got tantalising glimpses of the coastal resorts of Laredo and Castro Urdiales, where many Bilbainos go at weekends to get away from the city.

Immediately after our trip to Santander, we headed east along the coast of the Basque Country, another very beautiful stretch. First there is the coast of Bizkaia.

The area immediately north-east of Bilbao is rocky and cliffy, and not good for one who suffers from vertigo, but has lots of good coves and beaches, for instance in Sopelana and Plentzia. Last weekend, we went further along the coast to the town of Bakio, now a very pleasant beach resort:

... and up in to the hills above Bakio to visit the remote little Romanesque ‘ermita’ of San Pelaio:

... and the beautiful island of San Juan de Gastalugatxe nearby. San Juan has an extraordinary set of steps that goes terrifyingly up to the church at the top of the island. Needless to say, I satisfied myself with the view from the mainland:

After San Juan de Gastelugatxe,  you reach the wonderful Urdaibai estuary where you find the port of Bermeo (which in medieval times was the most important port on the Bay of Biscay), and the beautiful fishing villages of Mundaka and Elantxobe, all of which I’ve written about in previous posts:

All these places are quite down-to-earth working towns which perhaps don’t have the cute picture-postcard qualities of some Cornwall and Devon equivalents, but whose grittiness makes them interesting and picturesque in different ways: unlike Devon and Cornwall, the natives can still afford to live there.

Heading east, you move into the province of Gipuzkoa, passing a number of similar fishing towns, many with great beaches - Lekeitio, Ondarroa, Deba, Zumaia, Getaria and Zarautuz – and many villages. And then you get to San Sebastian, which I’ve also written about previously.

After San Sebastian you get to Hondarribia, our destination on this particular trip, on our way to the Pays Basque in France. Hondarribia is the coastal border town on the Spanish side of the border between Spain and France. We took the train from Bilbao via San Sebastian to the French border town of Hendaye. From there we took a little ferry across the bay...

and back across the border into Spain, to Hondarribia, a ride which gave us great views of the town:

In the middle of the picture you’ll see a monumental castle-esque building. This rather grand place was where we were staying – and it was indeed once a medieval castle, now a parador.

(Paradors are historic buildings turned into hotels through a Spanish government scheme dating back to the 1930s. They are often quite expensive to stay in, but we got a good bargain and decided – for the sake of the experience of staying in such a historic place – to treat ourselves to something a little more luxurious than the cheap pensions we normally go for.)

The castle dates from the 9th century, and the ruins of that original building were immediately outside our bedroom window:

The standing part of the castle was built in the 15th century:

The town itself has a typically astmospheric ‘casco viejo’…

… and some great border-town fortifications:

You may notice that the vernacular style of the houses in Hondarribia is a little different from that of the rest of the Spanish Basque Country: indeed, it is a little more like the French Pays Basque, which it neighbours, and which will be the subject of the next post….

We’re just back from a few days in Burgos, the great medieval pilgrimage city in Castilla y Leon, south of the Basque Country (where Pietro was attending a Virology Conference).

I will write in more detail about this trip soon, but I want to devote this post to a beautiful thing we experienced whilst there.

We were sitting outside a bar in the old town of Burgos when we heard a loud chattering noise above our heads which sounded like a woodpecker. Strange place to find a woodpecker, I thought  - but there were a couple of trees in the church behind me, so I looked up. I couldn’t see anything.  I turned my head to look at the roof of the church and was amazed to see a huge nest containing a stork perched precariously on top of the old stone parapet at the top of the Renaissance bell tower.

As we wandered around Burgos, we realised that there were storks on virtually every bell tower and quite a number of chimneys.

Sometimes there were multiple nests on a single tower, delightfully symmetrically arranged on its various ledges.

It turns out that the White Stork migrates north each summer from its home in Africa to rear its young in Spain and in Eastern Europe. They avoid the Mediterranean as they find it difficult to fly over the sea; some go north-east, over Egypt and Turkey and across to Poland and Germany, whilst others go north-west, over Morocco and into Spain. Apparently thousands of them can be seen across the towns and countryside of Castilla y Leon, nesting in trees and on church towers. Like the medieval Arabs, the ones that come to Spain mostly get as far north as Burgos but not much further: they don’t reach the Basque Country: too cold and wet for them, I suppose.

There is something quite magical about these huge rather exotic birds living their lives at church-roof level above our heads. Every now and again one hears that extraordinary chattering sound, looks up and sees another nest. Every now and again there is a flap of wings and a stork glides gracefully away from the nest into the sky. As we walked around town we were mesmerised by the sight of the adults feeding the chicks, preening themselves, or simply sitting on one leg looking out over the land. (They seem to able to stand totally still on one leg for hours.)

Perhaps the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all year was a single stork perched on one leg on a gargoyle on the massive ornate Gothic front of the great cathedral of Burgos. We stood watching it as dusk fell and then reluctantly went to have supper. More than two hours later as we passed the cathedral in the dark on the way home, it was still there in exactly the same place, still perched on one leg. 

It was there again next morning and returned once more to the same spot next evening.

Every summer in Spain and Poland these statuesque birds arrive as if from nowhere, perch on church towers, produce chicks, and then leave. Is this why folklore has it that that babies are delivered by storks?

I’ve written about Gernika in a previous post. We’ve now been four times to this very poignant and interesting town, and to the nearby fishing village of Mundaka. On our recent visits to Gernika we went to see the memorial park on the hill above the town, which we had not had time to do previously.

The park (opened in 1987 for the 50th anniversary of the bombing) is known as the Parque de los Pueblos de Europa, and is intended to act as a memorial to the bombing of Gernika and other bombed cities by celebrating the post-war European peace. The summit of the park is marked by a graceful, though unfortunately somewhat graffiti-ridden, Henry Moore statue called ‘Large Figure in a Shelter’:

There’s also a Chillida sculpture called ‘Our Father’s House’ (‘Gure aitaren etxea’), whose main 'window' looks out towards the Oak Tree of Gernika: not Chillida at his best, but nevertheless an interesting monument.

Here too are some more pictures of the Oak of Gernika, now that Spring has come and the leaves are out:

And here are some more pictures of the nearby beautiful village of Mundaka on the Urdaibai estuary:

Only three weeks to go before we leave Bilbao! I have so much more to write, however, that I will probably end up posting for a few weeks once I’m back in Britain…

The weather here has been terrible, as it has almost everywhere in Europe it seems. May was pretty much a washout. It wasn’t so much the rain that was the problem: that can be expected at any time in Bilbao. It was the low temperatures and unmitigated greyness which were unexpected and unusual for this time of year. However, things are looking up now, and this week the weather is glorious.

On Sunday, we went on a day trip to La Rioja, in the very south of the Basque Country. We’d been through it on the train from Bilbao to Barcelona last year and had been stunned by its beauty. This is what it looked like from the train

... so we had determined to try and get there for a day this summer. Despite the mixed weather – the day started in fog and rain and ended in beautiful sunshine – the place looked as beautiful as we had remembered it.

La Rioja is a huge plain, surrounded by mountains and entirely covered in vineyards, through which the River Ebro runs. The Ebro forms the southern border of the Basque Country, with the region of Castilla y Leon on the other side of the river.  On the north bank of the river, in the southernmost part of the Basque Country, is one of the most beautiful parts of La Rioja, known as La Rioja Alavesa  (the part of La Rioja in Alava, the southern province of Euskadi). Some of the finest Rioja wines are Basque wines, made from the grapes of La Rioja Alavesa.

To get to La Rioja, you drive to the very southern edge of the Basque mountains until you reach ‘El Balcon de la Rioja’ on the Herrera Pass - a stunning viewpoint from which you can see for miles across the whole of the plain to the mountains of Castilla. Or at least you can when the weather is good. The road then drops dramatically down the mountain to the plain. There was dense fog at the top so we were denied the full view but as we descended, the fog cleared and we still managed a pretty good view.

Once down in the plain, one negotiates a spectacularly beautiful landscape of vine-covered glacial hillocks, with occasional rocky outcrops with hill-towns built on them. One such hill-town, the main centre of the area, is Laguardia, a medieval town with views across the plain in all directions.

Laguardia, like all the towns and villages in La Rioja, is full of wineries (‘bodegas’): there are hundreds of them across the region, and the area is very much geared towards wine tourism. Several of the wineries have spectacular modern buildings which are the work of internationally distinguished architects. The two most famous are the extraordinary Marques de Riscal Bodega  designed by Gehry (of Guggenheim fame), and the Ysios Bodega, designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, who also designed the beautiful new bridge across the river in Bilbao.

We only had time to see one of these. We didn´t go to the Gehry, but here is a picture of it pinched from the internet:

We did, however, go to Calatrava’s Ysios winery. We had an interesting tour of the winery workings, and a tasting of a couple of nice Ysios wines, but the building itself is the major attraction:

Close up, it seems to imitate the mountains behind it, and provides a spectacular backdrop for the vineyards.

The main entrance is stunning.

Looking in one sees lovely reflections of the vineyards:

Looking out from the tasting room, the hill of Laguardia is framed by the surrounding vineyards:

One short day only gave us a glimpse of what must be one of the most beautiful wine-growing areas in Europe. It’s clear that one could spend a delightful couple of weeks pottering around wineries and medieval hill-towns here, and eating and drinking extremely well, and seeing some great architecture. And maybe one day we will….