To the Bonny Bay of Biscay-O

The Basque Country (Euskal Herria) in Spain comprises three provinces – Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Araba. Bilbao is the main city of the province of Bizkaia. I confess that until now I hadn’t known that the Bay of Biscay – which has mainly featured in my consciousness through O Level History and those rather gung-ho naval songs we used to sing at school – was named after a part of Spain.

Anyway, this weekend I had my first proper experience (since my original train journey from the French/Spanish border) of the Bizkaia countryside. We stayed with Pietro’s Italian colleague and his English wife and their two (as previously mentioned quadrilingual) little girls, at their house in a village in the hills a few miles east of Bilbao. The main event was a day trip to the coast, to the very picturesque fishing village of Elantxobe on the Bay of Biscay, below the highest point on the Basque coast, Caba Ogone.

We were accompanied on the trip, a little surreally, by the Teletubbies (see picture below) who were carefully kitted out with safety helmets (colour-matched) and seat belts.

I hope they appreciated the very beautiful terrain as much as we did. The mountains around here are relatively low-lying, and we drove through lots of pleasantly rolling land (see pictures below), much of it used for pasture and vineyards (growing the local fruity white wine known as ‘txakoli’).

The farm-houses throughout the area are very distinctive. Known as ‘baserri’, they are imposing chalet-like stone houses, with broad roofs and substantial overhanging eaves, and usually with a large stone porch (see picture below). The Basque house is also known as ‘etxea’, a word that (according to the book I’m reading by Mark Kurlanksy) seems to mean something like ‘homestead’- a sort of mixture of ‘house’, ‘home’ and ‘family’, and is a central concept in Basque culture.

Kurlansky claims that naming is particularly important in Basque culture, and indeed we noted on our journey that most of the houses are named, with the name often written in large Basque letters on the wall below the peak of the roof of the house. It was also interesting to see that on local maps, each of the old houses is named (see picture below, taken from the internet).

Our destination, Elantxobe, is a village on the Urdaibai estuary, about 20 miles from Bilbao. The estuary and the area around it makes up the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve. The estuary is apparently home to many birds, and the surrounding wooded hills culminate in steep cliffs by the sea. The town at the narrowest point of the estuary is Gernika (Guernica), of Spanish Civil War fame, and the two major coastal settlements are Bermeo and Mundaka.

Elantxobe lies below the highest point on the Basque coast, Caba Ogone, and the whole experience was rather vertiginous, especially for me with my fear of heights. We first walked through woods up to the top of the Ogone cliff, and were rewarded with great views of the coast and the mountains (below).

Then, down extremely steep cobbled streets (in the manner of places like Clovelly in Devon, though somewhat more extreme) through the village of Elantxobe to the harbour, where we had lunch in the harbourside ‘taberna’. (The pictures below don't really give a good impression of how steep the streets are).  Interesting to see how people are crammed insanely into these steep hillsides by the sea, whereas inland there are miles of verdant rolling countryside with relatively little habitation. Clearly the Basques saw their main source of livelihood as the sea rather than the land.

Back in the village where we were staying near Bilbao, agriculture was much in evidence. The woman from the farmhouse across the road brought over a massive sack of freshly-harvested ‘pimientos de Gernika’ (small green peppers, very popular here, often fried whole in olive oil.) (Guess what we’ll be eating this week!)

Across the road also is a ‘sagardotegi’, a Basque cider-house (sagarda = cider); very local, no tourists around here! We popped across and had a glass of cider, which was served direct from a barrel. When the valve of the barrel is opened, the cider (always still, not aerated) exits in a long, thin, arched stream and has to be caught in the glass some distance away! Even when served from a bottle, the cider is poured into the glass from above-head-height in order to aerate it.

Now back in the city for a week’s work before the Bilbao fiesta starts next weekend! Of which more soon….

A final image of the Basque countryside... What does it mean? Answers on a postcard, please....