Bilbao – Taran's Tales

Our journey home begins in Bordeaux

As we prepared to leave Getaria and say “Agur” to Euskal Herria, or Euskadi, the Spanish Basque Country, we realised what a lovely place we were leaving behind, a ‘country’ full of contrasts, surprises, elegance and history, a landscape that offers mountains and valleys, farmland and forest, vineyards, sheep and cows, secluded beaches and golden sands, rocky promontories and wide inviting bays. And yet this is also an industrial area, where steel production was once of prime importance and still leaves behind a legacy of small industrial towns squeezed into valleys between steep hillsides where sheep graze and the countryside prevails. These same small towns are also full of six, seven, even eight storey apartment blocks, the archetypal architectural feature of so much of the Spain we have seen on this trip. The housing style is also a feature of many of the little coastal towns and villages that still support fishing fleets, the other primary industry of this part of Spain for many hundreds of years. Getaria, with a fleet of a dozen or more modern fishing boats, is typical of these communities, though without having lost the charm of its location that continues to make it such an attractive proposition to prospective new residents such as us. Others, such as nearby Orio, make no pretence of their industrial heritage. And then there are the blatant tourist towns and cities, San Sebastian being the most impressive with the charms of its old town, and the splendid beaches around the Bahia de La Concha; and on a much smaller scale, there was our local town of Zarautz. Bilbao, the first great Basque city we visited, is a fine mélange of fading industrial city, seaport, culture, attractive old town and elegant new town, and is in the midst of beautiful rolling farmland, forests of eucalyptus and Spanish oaks down steep hillsides towards the ever-changing and never dull seas of the Bay of Biscay.

And leaving behind Basque Country, also means saying “Au revoir” to Lapurdi or Labourd, the coastal region of Le Pays Basque Français, wherein we discovered the charms of Hendaye and Saint-Jean-de-Luz, together with their hinterland of yet more green, rolling hills and the well-groomed villages of Urrugne and Ascain. And then there is the spa city of Biarritz on the extreme northern edge of Basque Country, where rocky shores give way to a seemingly endless sandy strand, renowned as a seaside resort since the French Revolution when sea-baths became fashionable. Even Napoleon Bonaparte broke long-standing social prejudices to bathe in Basque Country’s coastal waters. And today Biarritz continues to be a fashionable resort for holidaymakers from all levels of society, even if it is not a place that we would choose to plant our roots anew.

So many lovely locales and so many potential nest-building sites to consider on both sides of the French-Spanish divide, ensured that we were going away from Basque Country with a mass of good memories, and at the back of our minds the knowledge that this is one region we could certainly consider as a place to spend our future years. However, we still have to explore La Bella Italia . . . and give Italy a chance, and nor should we dismiss the claimed virtues of a life in little Portugal, bravely facing the enormous Atlantic Ocean along the western edge of the Iberian peninsular!

Canèle, a Bordelaise patisserie, a bit like a mini treacle pudding!

Our visit to Basque Country brought the nest searching aspect of our journey to an end. But never wishing to be in too much of a rush at any time in our travels, we had given ourselves just over a week to make the 850 kilometre drive back to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, and decided to take a couple of breaks on the way to see more of France’s historic gems. Our first stop was at Bordeaux, famed for canèles, as well as the eponymous wine region. Once again through the services of AirBnB, we had found a small studio apartment right in the centre of the city, also with the all-important parking space; remember, we were driving a brand-new, short-term lease car from Peugeot, and, remembering our experience in Montpellier, had no wish to expose it any more than necessary, to the risks of overnight on-street parking in a large city.

Grande Théatre of the Opéra National de Bordeaux

Arriving in the early evening, we were slightly delayed by our GPS, which, seemingly unaware there is a wide city-centre boulevard called Allée de Tourney, had directed us to Passage de Tourney in a much scruffier part of town; still eventually, the correct address achieved, we were met by an ‘agent’ of the apartment’s ‘owner’. As we later came to understand, we were about to experience the not-so-desirable ‘commercial’ side of renting through AirBnB, where you are not staying in somebody’s home, but rather in a purchased-to-rent property, managed by a rental agency. That became even more obvious as we entered and found ourselves in a starkly furnished studio, with a pull-down bed that occupied most of the ‘living area’, and a TV fastened securely to the wall in a position where it could not be viewed comfortably from either the bed or the couch. Unfazed by this slight disappointment, we were, however, delighted to find ourselves staying in a fine old building on the corner of Place de la Comédie and opposite the Grand Théatre of the Opéra National de Bordeaux; we really could not have been better placed to explore this city that proved to be elegant in a Parisian sort of way. Actually the other way around, it is Paris that is elegant in a Bordeaux sort of way, for Baron Haussmann, an 18th century mayor of Bordeaux, supposedly used the city as a model when Emperor Napoleon lll asked him to re-design medieval Paris into the beautiful city we know today.

People and trams share the pedestrianised streets

We had given ourselves four days to ‘do Bordeaux’, thinking that would be plenty of time to also include an out-of-town drive to get a taste of the wine growing commune of Saint-Émilion. Which just goes to show how wrong one can be, for Bordeaux is chock full of stylish streets, museums and historic churches, being home to some 360 ‘monuments historiques’, as well as some fairly smart shopping, had we been so inclined. The city is spacious with lots of broad open Allées, or boulevards, and large plazas; it is also well pedestrianised which always adds to a wanderer’s pleasure, though one does have to watch out for trams, as they still share the roads with pedestrians on several of the main streets. Hardly any of the city is really, really old, with many buildings being in the Neo-Classical style popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the UNESCO World Heritage List credits Bordeaux as being “an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble”.

For our first day, we chose to head towards Cathédrale Saint-André de Bordeaux, consecrated by Pope Urban ll in 1096. Very little remains of the original Romanesque structure, but the early thirteenth century Portail Royal with its beautiful stone carvings around the portico, is a striking testament to the stonemason’s art of that era. Even in such elegant surroundings, walking the streets is always a tiring process, especially for me with my deteriorating knee joints, and so we made a couple of rest-stops along the way.

Porte Cailhou, one of the few remaining signs of the city’s original fortifications.

The first stop was at a café near to Porte Cailhou, where we sampled our first ‘canelés’, a sweet Bordelaise speciality, a bit like a small suet pudding with a rum flavor and burnt sugar coating; we were only mildly impressed, though your sweet-toothed scribe did feel it necessary to ‘try’ a second one a few days later – and, since getting home, has discovered them being sold on a small scale in our local Peet’s Coffee and Tea! And to complete the day’s peregrinations, we stopped by ‘Any Teas’, a salon de thé hidden in the smart little Passage Sarget, where we whiled away the rest of the daylight hours supping our tea and coffee and enjoying their delicious apple tart and chocolate truffle with strawberries.

Coffee, tea and patisseries at “Any Tea”

Our second day began somewhat frustratingly, as we were unable to unlock the front door, the door handle being about to drop off and the key seemingly jammed into the lock. So we waited awhile for our agent to obtain the services of a locksmith and an hour later we were gratefully on our way. We did have the last laugh however, for when we got back in the evening and found a fine new lock installed, I realized that the problem with the key was actually partly of my own doing; I had got so used to the horizontal orientation of the keyhole in our previous abode that I hadn’t noticed that in this door lock the keyhole was oriented vertically, in a quite normal fashion if I’m honest. Still our landlord can be thankful to us in one way, as the new door lock was a much more substantial affair, offering the sort of high security we had seen in many French city apartments during our travels in the past, and the new door handle showed no more signs of wanting to drop off the door.

Rue Saint Catherine in Bordeaux is a 1250m long pedestrian shopping precinct.

Undeterred by this delay, we still managed to see a lot, starting with a walk along the kilometer-long pedestrianised shopping precinct that is Rue Sainte-Catherine, towards our first destination, the very elegant fifteenth century La Grosse Cloche.

La Grosse Cloche is attached to l’église Saint-Éloi, and it is very handsome! Built on top of the medieval wall, It consists of two 40-metre-high circular towers and a central bell tower.

This impressive bell, weighing 7,800kg, is housed in a belfry built on top of the remains of the thirteenth century Porte Saint-Éloi; on each side of the tower is a clock face, one of which includes a strange semi-circular dial, and the other, the phases of the sun and moon [to find out more about this interesting time piece visit www.invisiblebordeaux.blogspot.com].

Churches always seem to be on our daily itinerary, for even though neither of us are the slightest bit religious, we do appreciate their beautiful architecture. So Basilique Saint-Michel, said to have a splendid, flamboyant Gothic interior was our next planned stop; but we arrived at Place Meynard to find a rather unimpressive, grubby exterior and the doors firmly closed to visitors for some unstated reason. After a consolation ‘café’, we continued our quest for religious splendour along rue Camille Sauvageau to Église Sainte Croix, annexed to a Benedictine Abbey founded in the seventh century. There it seems our luck would fare no better, for we were greeted by the following handwritten note attached to tape across the front of the open doorway, “Fermé: car il y avait eu un incendie dans le batiment”. Luckily the fire had not spread to the outside of the building, so we did get a good look at the very impressive portico around the front door.

The intricately sculptured facade of the Église Sainte-Croix (“Church of the Holy Cross”) built in the late 11th-early 12th centuries. Wow!!!

Built in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries the stone carvings are a mass of intricately carved figures of artisans at their trades mingling with religious characters; yet another feast of the stone-mason’s art.

Our fervor for religious architecture only partially satisfied, we decided to take a different tack and visit what some guides reckon to be the best museum in town, the Musée d’Aquitaine. We were passing through the “garment district” at the cheap end of rue Sainte-Catherine at that stage, when we happened upon an interesting-looking little ‘vegan’ café called Munchies [Facebook page: “@munchiesbordeaux”] on rue des Augustins. I have to admit I approached the fare with some skepticism, but our meal of a large bowl of four or five different salads with sesame rice, washed down with a fiery ginger beer for me and a kombucha for Celine, was one of the tastiest meals we had purchased during our entire six months of travelling! Thus well fuelled up for our museum tour, we arrived at what was indeed, a superb display of the history of Aquitaine, and of Bordeaux in particular, from Paleolithic times – think Lascaux Caves – through to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. French museums seem to have a special knack for excellent presentation and easily assimilated, detail of information.

The Bordeaux merchants developed trade with the colonies, particularly slave trading in French Guinea which made them very rich!

However, we were surprised to see so much space devoted to the history of slavery, and, indeed, rather shocked to learn how much of the city’s wealth came from it’s ship-owners’ participation in the Atlantic shipping triangle of the 17^th/18^th/19^th centuries, and the all important slave trade that made those voyages so profitable; fascinating yet very disturbing, even though the concept of slavery itself was not new to either of us.

We saved Saint-Émilion for our last day in Bordeaux and the weather gods saved a damp, foggy, misty day for what should have been a sunny drive in the countryside, for we had, of course, ignored the fact that it was still winter.

The charming village of Saint-Émilion was named after the monk Émilion, a travelling confessor, who settled in a hermitage carved into the rock here in the 8th century.

But what better way to spend a grey day than a visit to a UNESCO World Heritage Site – granted in 1999 to both the village and the surrounding domaine of vineyards, as being “cultural landscapes”.

It is a charming village, sitting on top of a little hill in the middle of fairly flat, uninteresting countryside, unless you like the view of never-ending vineyards; it has lots of old buildings, and has been completely spruced up and the cobbled roads relaid; indeed, everything has been done to make the place pleasing to the thousands of tourist eyes that must view it each year.

One of the steep little streets in Saint-Émilion

Except that every other shop is a ‘wine-boutique’, there isn’t a typical French café or even a salon de thé worthy of the title, the Hotel du Plaisance at the top of the village on Place du Clocher is ridiculously expensive (entrées starting at €65 and above, main courses in three figures and rooms costing around €500 per night), and the whole place seems ‘Disneyfied’, totally twee and rather false, having completely lost the charm of a typical French village.

It does however have one redeeming feature, the hour-long guided tour of the monolithic church and the hermitage of the monk Émilion, a travelling confessor who lived in a cave carved into the rock in the eighth century; it was the monks who followed him who started up commercial wine production in the area, although the first vineyards there were planted by the Romans as early as the second century AD.

The monolithic church in St. Émilion was carved out of ONE solid rock at the beginning of the 12th century. From the outside, it is impossible to imagine the volume of this church.

The hill on which the village is built, is on an outcrop of relatively soft limestone, and the very impressive monolithic church is carved directly into the rock. It is the largest such church in all of Europe, being 38m long, 20m wide and 11m high, and was an important factor in the village gaining its UNESCO recognition. It was therefore somewhat surprising to learn that the whole underground complex is privately owned, in spite of the National Heritage signs everywhere, and disappointing to be told that, as a result, photography was not allowed.

Our ‘Cook’s Tour’ of Bordeaux coming to an end, it was soon time to try to re-pack our suitcases in suitable fashion to satisfy airline weight and size restrictions, something we had enjoyed being without for so many months of travel, and to get on the road again for our last stop, the medieval city of Poitiers.

Discovering the Basque Country – part three – French or Spanish Basque?

During the planning stages of our trip we had made firm accommodation bookings for little more than half of our stay and decided we would wing the rest as we travelled, hoping that something suitable would turn up either through Home Exchange.com or Trusted Housesitters.com. With our trip’s emphasis on all things French, our first plan for the Basque Country, our last main locale to be investigated, had been to stay north of the border for six weeks or more in or near Hendaye, Saint-Jean-de-Luz or even Biarritz, and then take the occasional trip across to the Spanish side to sample the tapas scene in San Sebastian, and perhaps explore a bit beyond. Fortune had other plans for us however, and luckily, we only succeeded in finding accommodation along the Spanish Basque Coast, where we discovered all those beautiful places that I have already written about, and would have otherwise probably missed. Thus, eventually, as the end of our journey got ominously closer, we took the plunge and did exactly the reverse of our original plan and made one or two forays across the border in a northerly direction, and again we were delighted by much of what we found there. But sadly, with time running out, we really didn’t give ourselves enough time to explore as thoroughly as we might have wanted.

So, one fine February day with sun and clouds but no rain and 14^oC forecast, we took the now familiar N-634, snaking through the countryside towards the hinterland of San Sebastian and thence to the frontier at Irun, and across the Franco-Spanish border running down the middle of the river Bidasoa. Immediately we were in Hendaye, initially driving past the vast complex of sidings of Gare de Hendaye railway station; it is there that long ago in the days before the freedom of movement across borders that came with membership of the EU, all train traffic between the two countries would stop for border controls, and to get the carriage wheels adjusted for the different gauge tracks on either side of the border. And now that so many tourists arrive by plane rather than train, the station’s more modern opposite number the Aeropuerto de San Sebastian opposite the station across the estuary in Spain, takes most of the tourist load.

Looking west from Hendaye towards Hondarribia in Spanish Basque Country.

Once past this industrial zone, we found ourselves driving north alongside the estuary and looking west across the large Baie de Chingoudy at the mouth of the river, the beautiful setting that makes Hendaye so special for many people. Eager not to waste too much time on being tourists yet again, we soon found a place to park near the Moorish architecture of the original Casino building on the sea-front and wandered back a couple of blocks to make casual enquiries at an ‘Immobilier’, Agence Doribane, where the staff greeted us like old friends, and very quickly had arranged to show us four properties a few days later. So that was good; we immediately had a reason to make us come back and not simply spend our last week staring at the beautiful sea-view from our lofty apartment in Getaria! We then went back into the old town, which we found to be simple, quiet and friendly; but sadly, it was without a single, really old, historic building on which to feast our touristy eyes, the sad result of the military bombardment that effectively leveled the whole community during the War of the Pyrenees at the end of the eighteenth century.

After a nice bowl of soup at a little café across from the Mairie on the Place de la Republique, we continued our drive up the coast towards Saint-Jean-de-Luz, stopping first in the outskirts of Hendaye to take a quick stroll around the gardens of Chateau Observatoire Abbadia. Situated high up on a hill overlooking the lush green woods and farmland that lead down to Pointe Sainte Anne, the elegant chateau, built between 1864 and 1879, was designed in the neo-Gothic style, and incorporates many mysterious features, characteristic of the enigmatic nature of the owner, the explorer Antoine Thomson d’Abbadie.

Celine sits surrounded by strange stone animals outside Chateau Observatoire Abbadia

Rejoining the Route de la Corniche, we followed the rocky coastline to Socoa, a small seaside town nestling in the southwest corner of the bay that is the estuary of the La Nivelle river separating Ciboure and Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Once a fishing port, Socoa’s small harbour built in 1624 is now mostly occupied by pleasure craft and is guarded by Fort de Socoa that was built on the point and then rebuilt many times over the ensuing years, generally, as a result of being sacked, burnt or destroyed in some way during the many conflicts that it witnessed right up to the end of the German occupation in WWll. A long breakwater stretching out from the fort and partway across the bay has an interesting design being concave on its sea face. This feature which very effectively catches and dissipates the power of the waves without receiving a damaging direct impact, creating a wonderful wall of spray as the larger waves arrive and are thrown upwards like the ball out of a pelote basket (‘xistera’).

Together with two more sections of the breakwater, one in the middle of the bay and a second reaching out from Pointe de Sainte-Barbe on the far side of the bar, all three sections contribute to protecting the fine beach in Saint-Jean-de-Luz and the houses beyond, which in past years have been subject to some severe floods when the Bay of Biscay has been at its most savage.

Basque corsaire with his admiring ‘groupie”!

The now famous resort of Saint-Jean-de-Luz started its journey towards prosperity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, partly from its association with the fishing industry, but also from the activities of its own Basque corsaires or pirates who attacked and captured passing vessels, resulting in the town being nicknamed the “Viper’s Nest” by English sailors of the time. The wealth that was brought about by these activities led to the erection by local shipowners of two handsome palaces overlooking Port de Saint-Jean-de-Luz. In 1640, Joannot de Hareneder constructed maison Joanoenia, which some years later was to become Maison de l’Infante, and in 1643 Johannis de Lohobiargue built the house now known as Maison de Louis XlV. The event that led to these donations to royalty took place in 1660, when the Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste was chosen as the venue for the marriage of King Louis XlV to Maria Theresa, the Infanta of Spain, fulfilling a consolidating clause in the Treaty of the Pyrenees. This solid-looking fifteenth century church, on rue Leon Gambetta, hides an unusual but truly beautiful interior with five galleries across the west wall, fronted by the organ, three handsome wooden galleries along each side of the nave, and a choir and transept wonderfully decorated on a blue background with many carved statues and architectural details picked out in gold leaf.

The beautiful interior of Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste

And hanging from the rafters over the centre of the nave is a model of a sail and steam-driven paddle boat reminding the worshippers, and others, of the town’s rich maritime heritage.

Nowadays, the corsaires are but a memory, though the locals still know how to extract a few euros from the pockets of passing tourists, and not just the English these days, for it is a very cosmopolitan resort.

Taking a stroll along rue Leon Gambetta, people-watching on the way, we saw many very chic, well-presented, elderly couples among the crowds window-shopping the large selection of smart boutiques, as well as other shops with windows full of delicious looking local gourmet specialities, wines and chocolate truffles. There were plenty of cafés and tea-shops, and we stopped for some afternoon sustenance at Pâtisserie Etchebaster, which has been in the same place since 1909; they served us patisseries and coffee as good as any we’d found in France, but that was not enough reason for them to be almost twice as expensive! So Saint-Jean-de-Luz is not a cheap town, but it is a delightful, elegant town to walk around.

Sea front apartments well protected by the substantial sea wall.

We took a stroll along the seafront looking into the first floor windows of old, three or four-storey apartment buildings strung along the water-front, many sporting a delicate wrought-iron balcony, with their ground floors slightly hidden behind the high seawall. It was easy to hark back to the life of a well-heeled visitor there in the Edwardian hey-days when travel was a more luxurious pastime of the few, rather than the mass tourism of today.

But dreaming of the past wasn’t what we were there for, and as we drove away from Saint-Jean-de-Luz back towards the sun setting behind the Spanish hills in the distance, we carried with us a supply of much-needed organic staples from an excellent Bio store we found on the outskirts of town. We also had a second date arranged with yet another agent immobilier, this time to view properties in the villages in the hills inland from this lovely piece of French-Basque coast. So we would be back at least twice more in our eight remaining days which was a lovely prospect!

And thus it was that on St Valentine’s Day, guided by the very helpful though slightly disorganized and rather rushed Jara, we fell in love with an almost perfect house on top of the hill behind Hendaye, with views towards the Pyrenees in one direction and the Bay of Biscay in the other. Beautifully appointed and ticking pretty well every box on our must-have list, the only reason it became only ‘almost perfect’ in our critical eyes was the oversize chimney of the house just below the property which neatly split the wonderful view in two.

Unfortunately, Jara had not followed the realtor’s mantra “Save the best to last”, and the next two homes we viewed that day were not in the same league.

This slightly quirky house wasn’t very practical, but . . .

Mind you, one of them, a wonderfully quirky, though rather dark and impractical house in the shadow of some very tall overgrown leylandii cypress trees, owned by a very elderly couple who sat quietly in the kitchen during our visit, was packed to the gills with antiques, had a better garden than the ‘almost perfect’ house, and had wonderful views in a north-westerly direction over the harbour towards Hondarribia on the Spanish side.

. . . . it had lovely views of the bay and beyond.

And the third house can only be described as ‘a dog’, with apologies to all our canine friends!

Thus armed with some ideas of what could be found in the area, we explored further inland and visited the villages of Urrugne and neighbouring Ascain. Urrugne was a tidy little town more than a village, with a large church that was a smaller edition of the Eglise Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Saint-Jean-de-Luz that we visited earlier in the week. Continuing our house-hunting, we visited a branch of Carmen Immobilier where we picked out a couple more homes to view in another two days time.

Children singing and dancing in the village square in Urrugne

On the way back to the car across the square, we stopped to watch a display of singing and dancing by a group of thirty or more local primary school children, all dressed up in home-made peasant outfits. It made us think how lovely it would be to watch our own grandchildren perform so charmingly in a pretty little town square in the midst of such attractive lush green countryside!

We arrived in Ascain as the sun was starting to go down and saw the village only briefly. Then we had a very congenial drive back towards the Spanish border through more verdant countryside, rolling hills and small valleys, green fields and woods, dotted here and there with typical Basque houses, their exposed wooden frameworks picked out in red, black or green.

With only four days to go before we started our drive back towards Paris and our flight home across the Pond to sunny southern California, and with two of those days already earmarked for further house-hunting on French side and a last visit for more pintxos in San Sebastian, we decided to investigate the local ‘homes-for-sale’ scene back in Getaria. Single-family, detached homes are a rarity in that part of Spain, for, as we had already discovered, the planning regulations are geared towards concentrated developments of high density high-rise apartments, with severe restrictions on the development of agricultural land.

A good looking single-home on the hill above Getaria; good views out to sea but very expensive apart from anything else

However, we found one home on the hills behind the village with fine views out to sea, surrounded by vineyards, though with the undesirable possibility of lots of chemical spraying, plus an unfortunate view of the roof of the rather ugly factory building owned by the landlord of our apartment block by the sea. These negatives added to make the prospect of the much-needed refurbishment work a less than attractive proposition in view of the rather high list price, the latter, no doubt, a consequence of the scarcity of such homes in the area. So then we thought, well why not have a look at one or two of the magnificent apartments for sale in our building; after all, the views over the Bay of Biscay are indeed spectacular! And that was when we very nearly took another snap decision to purchase a wonderful, three-bedroom, penthouse duplex, with a verandah facing the sea and a large terrace with views over the hills above the village and the fishing port and the main street five storeys below. But, lovely as it was, it left far too many of our boxes un-ticked, and we, probably very sensibly, decided to calm down, think rationally and wait a bit longer. After all, we still had two more countries to visit before such decisions should be made, and we had vowed to follow that sage advice to ‘rent-before-we-buy’!

Thus we spent our last day relaxing ‘at-home’, enjoying our view of the bay one last time, and taking a last walk up to the top of Roche San Anton, so quiet and peaceful at that time of year even on such a fine day. It was enjoyable just watching far below and out on the sea the movements of the fishing boats coming and going from the port, and, as we descended, watching the activities of the fishermen safely back in the port, cleaning, mending and folding the enormous nets, piled on the jetty beside their proud vessels. Then one more delicious home-cooked meal, using up all the leftovers in the fridge before our departure the next morning, and we were ready for the next and final stage of our six month’s exploration.

Discovering the Basque Country –Part one – Bilbao and surroundings

Searching the Basque Country was one of our primary objectives when planning this trip as neither of us had ever stayed in the area before, and everything we read about this land of proud people had piqued our interest as being somewhere to one day build our new home. Known as Euskal Herria in Euskadi, the local Basque language, the Basque Country is located at the southeastern corner of the Bay of Biscay, straddling the western end of the Pyrenees, partly in France and a larger part in Spain. There are seven historical territories in Euskal Herria; Lapurdi, Nafarroa Beherea and Zuberoa are north of the border, whilst Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa, Álava and Nafarroa are on the Spanish side.

Our home-exchange in Gatika. Our apartment is to the right of the well pruned fruit tree.

Our Basque exploration starts in Bizkaia (Biscay in English) where we stayed for ten days on the edge of the village of Gatika, about fourteen kilometres northeast of the capital, Bilbao. Once again, we found our “free” accommodation through membership of HomeExchange.com and were delighted to find ourselves in what turned out to be the most comfortable, homely, elegant digs we had, up till then, had the pleasure to stay in.

Our hosts, Gonzalo and Marian, built this beautiful home about four years ago on land they had purchased more than ten years earlier. Gonzalo is a local businessman with contracting, cleaning and waste disposal operations and the opulence of this home gave every indication he had been successful in these endeavours. Our apartment was a duplex annex occupied by the eldest daughter until she left the family nest. The entrance into our living room was, rather strangely, through the large garage on the lower ground floor at the back of the building; our two bedrooms and the main bathroom were on what is the ground floor for the main part of the building, a French window in the master bedroom opening out onto the large family terrace. The views across the valley towards the hills to the north were full of green fields, many with sheep or cattle, forests on the hillsides, charming traditional houses here and there, a church tower and a small hamlet in the distance and on the valley floor two or three small factory buildings, for we must not forget that we were, after all, in Spain’s “Industrial North”.

Castello de Butron, a few miles from Gatika.

From this charming home, we set out to discover what Spanish Basque had to offer, starting with a walk uphill to the local village of Gatika, a community of some 1,600 people, best known for the eccentric Castello de Butron about six kilometres away. Pleasant enough, with a renovated church, a school and a small sports centre around a grassy park in the centre of the village, Gatika also has a more modern housing development on the other side of the hill, with a selection of single-family residences and two- or three-storey, apartment buildings. The village is set on the top of a hill with views over the surrounding countryside in all directions. To get there, we walked past a small field full of lambing sheep and their young offspring, lots of beautiful music as little lambs bleated to their mothers, and scenes of gentleness as others rested peacefully in the folds of the sloping field or suckled at their mother’s milk. We soon discovered that ‘leche de oveja‘ was readily available in the local shops and it became a staple of our diet in the region.

Our nearest small town, with around 17,000 inhabitants, was Mungia, five minutes drive away on the other side of the BI-631, the main road between Bermeo on the coast and Bilbao. We spent a couple of hours looking around the town before shopping at the local Hiper Simply supermarket, coming away with a couple of bagfuls of necessities, after entering with the intention of buying just three items, a regular habit of ours. Extensively damaged by Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War, neither the town, a concentration of fairly modern 4/5/6 storey apartment blocks, nor the large box-like supermarket on its edge were particularly special, though the latter at least served our needs well for our short stay in the area.The next day we visited the famed Castello de Butrón and found it to be closed to the public and rather decrepit. Mind you Kate Middleton, as was, thought it a suitable place to have her wedding to Prince William, an idea thwarted by royal protocol of course, so it must have some redeeming features in addition to the Disney-like faux architecture.

Driving on up to the nearby coast we found Lemoiz, a small village with a little harbor well protected by an imposing sea-wall which we walked along to get our first close encounter with the unruly waters of the Bay of Biscay, a thrilling contrast to the clear, blue, calm Mediterranean Sea. Continuing our exploration eastwards, we happened upon an eerie reminder of yet another phase of the sometimes-violent past experienced by the Basque people. After a few twists and turns through forests of eucalyptus, the road suddenly took a sharp turn inland for a few hundred metres and circled round a deep little valley, at the sea-end of which was a ghostly nuclear power station. Lemoniz Nuclear Plant was built as part of Spain’s nuclear power expansion plan. Although almost complete, its construction was stopped in 1983 after a change in the national government, and serious opposition by the Basque anti-nuclear movement and ETA, the Basque separatist organisation. ETA had successfully planted two bombs in the plant, killing at least three workers, and had assassinated two senior engineers. Protected only by a broken down wire fence, the site now stands empty and forlorn, a stark memorial to those who died there. Strangely, the nuclear plant is not the only blot on the Basque coastline that has caused resentment among the locals. The huge areas now forested with eucalyptus trees were planted in many parts of the Iberian Peninsular, to provide an important cash crop, raw material for the pulp used in paper manufacturing. Disliked by farmers and environmentalists alike, even nicknamed the “fascist” or “capitalist” tree in Portugal, it is said to create wealth for wealthy landowners and industrialists at the expense of poorer locals and their land and the fabric of rural society. The sight of eucalyptus forests was certainly a surprise to those who know it as being a species native to the Australian continent, and it is easy for anyone with a social conscience to understand why one night, thousands of newly planted seedlings were uprooted by the inhabitants of the small Asturian village of Tazones.

Even though we may not have found our local town of Mungia much to write home about, more impressive was the great city of Bilbao, best known in recent years for the audacious Frank Gehry designed, titanium-skinned, Guggenheim Museum. Built in the mid-1990s on the old port and industrial area on a curve of the left bank of the river Nervion, the museum started off the redevelopment of an area destined to become a centre of culture and leisure. However, our first foray into Bilbao inadvertently found us parking under Areatzako Park on the opposite bank. There we discovered, tucked into another curve of the Nervion, the very lovely old city, with its elegant Arriaga theatre right beside the river, the imposing Catholic Catedral de Santiago (St. James) and a very walkable, mainly pedestrianised warren of streets. Lining the streets were many fine, three to four storey, renaissance buildings typical to this region, in which most of the houses have a combination of open balconies and glazed enclosed verandahs, a design which is undoubtedly the architects’ answer to the relatively high rainfall of the region!

What a lovely surprise to find that my favourite British dish, braised oxtail, is also a staple of the Biscayan diet!

With lots of tempting restaurants around and in spite of the region’s reputation for tapas, I steered us into the “Amarena”, a cosy restaurant well populated by what appeared to be local office workers and shoppers, to sample our first Basque €13 mesa de huéspedes or menù del dia. The excellently cooked Sea Bream was not unexpected in this land, famous for centuries for its adventurous fishing fleet. However, the absurdly delicious braised oxtail, was a definite surprise to someone who normally associates such culinary delights with pretty country pubs in England. Fully sated by our tasty repast, we decided to walk it off by climbing hundreds of steps up to Parque de Maloa for a bird’s eye view of the river and city. Down to riverside level again we discovered the Plaza Nueva and its abundance of tapas bars, their counters laden with tempting selections of “pintxos” which we had learnt was the local Basque name for the famous Spanish tapas. A visit to a big city is never complete without a bit of window shopping and the occasional enquiring foray within, one of which resulted in us coming out each sporting a Basque “txapela” (beret), dark blue Navarra style worn to the front or the side for myself and red Pamplona style worn fetchingly over the right ear for my lady. Our only mistake was buying the cheaper models that turned out to be very ticklish, lacking the finely stitched lining on the headband of the more luxurious versions!

A few days later, we returned to achieve our original objective of visiting the famous Guggenheim Bilbao Museo del Arte. It is, quite simply, a museum of modern art, very little of which appealed to either of us, although the one permanent exhibit, “The Matter of Time”, sculpted from enormous sheets of 2″ thick steel, superbly curved in three dimensions, did impress this one time engineering surveyor familiar with the manufacture of heavy steel structures; all the same it probably left non-engineering types somewhat perplexed. The building itself is an artistic masterpiece in its own right and the star of the show, being the building that vaulted Canadian architect Frank Gehry to a new level of international fame when it opened in 1997. A somewhat eclectic mixture of shapes clothed in shiny titanium, it is definitely striking to look at, enhanced outside by some fun sculptures like the giant flower-covered “Puppy” and every arachnophobe’s worst nightmare, a 20ft high steel spider; and the museum certainly produced the required effect of making Bilbao a leading Spanish tourist destination.

A much more satisfying visit for us, was to the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao which included in its collection some really lovely Basque paintings depicting interesting slices of Basque village life of yesteryear. And as a small extra fillip, the museum’s cafe served some very tasty pintxos, slices of Spanish omelette, a not-half-bad apple and custard tart and the usual tasty coffee.

No single photo could do justice to the great art to be found inside the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, so enjoy the pintxos and coffee instead.

Finally, summoning what energy we had left, we walked back towards the river, across the enormous Plaza de Don Federico Moyau, a roundabout large enough to enclose a small park and a fine fountain at its centre, around which traffic flowed, eagerly seeking errant pedestrians, while buses in places drove in the opposite direction . . . a pincer attack on the unwary! Thus Bilbao was a real surprise, a fine combination of a traditional seaport town, a modern elegant business city with handsome architecture, and just fifteen minutes drive to get into the countryside.

Driving further west, and out of Basque Country, we visited the port of Santander, the landing place for so many visitors brought in by Brittany Ferries. The hinterland is very industrial, but the city itself was attractive with sandy beaches, lots of fine architecture and . . . some very tasty anchovy and bochorones pintxos!

Yep . . . another picture for the foodies!

And on the drive there we discovered the lovely old town of Laredo, very Spanish, locals chatting on every street corner and washing hanging everywhere.

Locals chatting on every street corner in Laredo . . .

Spanish Basque Country is much more than a wild rugged coastline and dramatic mountains and so, on our host’s advice, we took a couple of daytrips into the hinterland. The first took us south through the beautiful hills of the Gorbeiako Parka Naturala, to Vitoria-Gasteiz, a city with a hyphened name to reflect both its Spanish and its Basque roots. Unfortunately, we only found out how beautiful the drive was on the way home in the evening dusk because that morning there was heavy cloud hanging low over everything, which took most of the day to clear away.

The Brit stands proudly in front of the statue celebrating Wellington’s victory, while Celine enjoys the ambience of another fine Basque city.

Vitoria-Gasteiz is the capital city of the Basque Autonomous Community and the Spanish province of Araba/Álava; historically it is perhaps best known as the site of a battle in 1813 that put paid to Napoleon Bonaparte’s attempts to colonise Spain, when his army was notoriously defeated by the Duke of Wellington’s combined force of British, Portuguese and Spanish troops. A fine memorial to this “glorious” victory stands in Andre Maria Zurarien Enparantza/Plaza de la Virgen Blanca, overlooked by the 15th century San Miguel Arcangel Church.

Situated on a high plain about 500m above sea level, Vitoria-Gasteiz, a city of 250,000 residents, is an industrial town in the midst of a large farming area, and is ranked second in its standard of living among all Spanish cities, in particular for its green spaces (“European Green Capital” in 2012) and cultural activities. Whilst we got a glimpse of the former in our efforts to find a parking place close to the city centre, we never got to partake of the second, though we did find ourselves in yet another mainly pedestrianised, elegant old city centre with two cathedrals, neither of which were open during our short stay. The newer cathedral, Catedral de Maria Immaculada, only consecrated in the late 20th century was however, quite notable for its exterior frieze of finely detailed sculptures of goblinesque people, mainly artisans and families, going about their daily lives, an amusing change from the usual collection of religious figures that seem to adorn most of the cathedrals around Europe.

Fine sculptures of ordinary folk on the frieze around the Catedral de Maria Immaculada.

The city also had its fair share of churches, and plazas surrounded by restaurants, sculptures and street art, and was altogether a very agreeable place to visit and wander around. Was it a place that we want to live in or near? Probably not, mainly because of the cooler, humid winter weather and low, for Spain, sunshine levels, factors that are proving to eliminate quite a lot of places from our bucket list!

One day we asked our charming landlord where he would live if he hadn’t got himself settled in his lovely home in Gatika. “Elorrio” says he “I already have an apartment there, you’ll love it”. So, in total contrast to Vitoria, our second sortie away from the coast took us on a forty minute drive southeast from Bilbao, initially along a fairly busy highway through several small industrial towns along the valley of the river Abaizaba, a tributary of the Nervion, as far as Durango, and then following a prettier route through the countryside to the delightful small town of Elorrio, population about seven thousand.

Elorrio, a small town in the countryside, surrounded by green hills; seemed really quite liveable!

Even small towns like this one pedestrianise their centres and it makes such a difference to be able to wander round admiring all the old architecture without having one’s life threatened by traffic; all the same, scooters still thrive by a law of their own when it comes to traffic signs. We arrived just in time to catch the end of the morning’s market, and purchased from Señor Miguel Angel some smoked pork loin and a tasty roll of sheep’s cheese, ignoring the ‘buzkantzac’, not realizing that Elorrio is renowned for this local version of our favourite, black pudding. The gastronomic diversion completed, we started on our tour of this old town that back in 1964 was declared to be a “Centre of Historical and Artistic Importance”; it has in its midst, twenty-four palaces dating from 16^th to 19^th centuries, sixty-nine heraldic coats of arms on the walls of buildings and nine 16^th and 17^th century stone crosses, some of which were beautifully carved, placed at strategic points around the perimeter of the town to guard the citizens against a variety of dangers including the sea, somewhat surprisingly, the sea being forty kilometres away.

Fine old houses with their family crests prominently displayed need soldiers to defend them . . . and soldiers always appreciate the company of a pretty lady!

The Basilica de la Purisima Concepcion also appeared on the outside to have had some defensive purpose in mind, but maybe was simply built that way to safeguard the most sumptuous display of gold leaf that we found inside. Churches are to be found everywhere in this strongly Catholic country and we were both becoming pretty well “churched out”, but were extremely glad that we allowed ourselves to be beguiled inside this particular edifice, for it would have been truly sacrilegious to omit it from our itinerary. Promenading around towns and inspecting fine churches makes one hungry, so coming out of the church and finding ourselves across the square from “Porra Taverna” was heaven-sent, and to find inside yet more delicious pintxos, and to learn that the town hosts a successful local rugby team, were added bonuses. During a final stroll to help us digest our excellent meal – which cost the princely sum of €11 including coffees for the two of us – we also discovered that the town was renowned in the 15^th century for manufacturing fine steel swords.

Durango, an industrial valley town with a warm heart.

Taken altogether, Elorrio was a very attractive and interesting place, an impression that was further reinforced as we looked back from the Necrópolis de Argenita, on a hill high above the town. For even on a cloudy day, with its small perimeter of the ubiquitous Spanish high density housing, Elorrio began to look like somewhere we could live one day! And Durango, the nearby industrial town through which we had passed by without a second glance on the way out that morning, proved to have a quite attractive old town at its centre, which we strolled through as the sun started to disappear behind the surrounding hills, enjoying the early evening activity around the old church and marketplace, as children played and parents chatted and the shops started to re-open after the afternoon siesta.

The start of our second week in Basque Country, greeted us with clear blue skies and a bright sunny day with only a small threat of showers, and we decided to explore some more of the coast to the east of Bilbao. Our starting point was Gernika-Lumo in the valley of the Oka river, where in pre-Franco times there was a thriving old village, before it was infamously obliterated by aircraft belonging to Nazi-Germany’s Condor Legion during the Spanish Revolution. Gernika is now a fairly uninspiring modern town, full of yet more high density housing to the west of the river, and an equal area of light industry on the east, though it remains historically the seat of the parliament of the province of Biscay.

Mundaka, proudly flying the Basque flag.

Not wishing to waste such a glorious day, we quickly drove northwards towards the Bay of Biscay and stopped off briefly at the Centro de Biodiversidad de Euskadi, an ecological park from where we got our first views of the wide green estuary of the river Oka, before arriving after a short drive further north, at the delightful small town of Mundaka.

A fleet of inshore fishing boats moored in the small tidal harbour of Mundaka.

A small tidal harbor opens onto the river estuary, the Iglesia de Santa Maria stands on the waterfront, a pleasant mix of old and new, three or four storey apartment houses, bars and restaurants grace the town centre, and the 19^th century Baseliza de Santa Katalina faces the sea on a grassy peninsula of the same name, jutting out into the mouth of the estuary from where you can look towards Isla de Izaro and the Bay of Biscay beyond.

A kilometer further north, and directly facing the vagaries of Bay weather, was Bermeo, a town more typical of this region with lots of high density housing, a small fishing port with a fleet of tough sea-going fishing boats, and a boat repair yard.

Driving westward the coast again becomes fairly wild and heavily forested, though with several large clear-cuts and quarries which severely deface whole mountainsides in places. The ugliness of these is, however, well countered by several lookout points along the road that give beautiful views down to the rugged shoreline below, and the small islands of Akatxa Irla and Islote y Ermita de San Juan de Gazteluatxe. The latter is accessible by a rocky path and a stone bridge, parts of a dramatic man-made causeway connecting the island to the mainland, one of the tourist must-do’s of the area that sadly we failed to do . . . but as we were learning, you can do a lot in six months but apparently you just can’t do it all! And while talking about the attraction of some of the small ports along this coast, a couple of weeks later we happened upon the interesting small town of Mutriku, midway between Bilbao and San Sebastian. Founded in 1209 by the Castillian King Alfonso VIII, Mutriku is built on a steep hillside at the end of a small inlet where what is claimed to be the oldest man-made harbour in Basque country protects a small-craft marina. In more recent times, it became the site of the world’s first multi-turbine, breakwater wave-power generating station. With it’s narrow streets climbing up the hill away from the harbor, and steep hills down to the water’s edge on both sides, the town has a rather sombre appearance, but the interesting history makes it a place that should be on anyone’s itinerary to the area. We ended up our afternoon there, people-watching at a café in the old main square, at that time of day when all the families seem to congregate when school is out . . . lively and great fun.

On our last full day in Gatika, we spent the morning enjoying our delightful temporary home, catching up on e-mails and the like. Finally cabin fever set in, but only mildly “in view of the views”, and so we set off on one last walk around the neighbourhood. It was a cloudy day as we set off down a little footpath towards the valley below where we met a very amiable local and his five retrievers, and we chatted away together, neither party really understanding much that the other was saying, until the threat of rain sent us back up to the house.

We then took a drive to Erdigune across the valley and explored a bit more of the area, stopping to look at a couple of renovation projects, sadly, or perhaps luckily, without For Sale signs in view of our tendency to jump when we find ourselves in such beautiful surroundings.

A quick last look at the development potential across the valley in Erdigune!

It is certainly a very likeable part of the country, and with low crime rates and good property prices, we prepared to depart thinking it was definitely a place we could live, though it is still not quite ‘the perfect place’!