Getaria – 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 two – pintxos and running the bulls

With only a month of our Grand Tour remaining, we upped sticks from our palatial pad in Gatika and drove east towards the town considered to be the gastronomic capital of Spain, and certainly the pintxo capital of Basque Country, San Sebastian-Donostia, another town with a Spanish-Basque hyphenated name. The old main road, the N634, took us inland for the first part of the journey, first to Gernika and down to Durango, and then passing through several small towns like Erma, Eibar, Elgoibar, San Pedro and Mendaro. All of these towns are in deep narrow valleys and crammed full of factories, old and new; high density apartment buildings, up to nine or ten storeys high, fill whatever space is left, a somewhat shocking contrast to the natural beauty of the hills that surround them on all sides. The newer AP-8 “autopista” follows much the same route, ironing out the bends with a series of tunnels, bridges and viaducts, as the two roads snake over and under each other, the one, a fast, open, toll road, the other, slower, sometimes constricted, but more interesting. Soon after Mendaro, their paths separated and, after passing yet another enormous stone quarry that seemed to have consumed a complete mountain, we headed towards the sea through Deba, a small town on the estuary of the Deba Ibaia. Then, following a winding road and zigzagging in long loops north and south through pretty farmland, we eventually arrived at the larger port town of Zumaia on the Urola Ibaia estuary, where there was a pleasant older town on the left bank of the river, and a marina and the shipyard of Astilleros Balenciaga on the right bank.

Getaria tucked between Mount San Anton, the sea and the hills

A short 3km drive along a road hugging the coast down at sea level and we arrived at our last Spanish digs, and what a greeting we received!

Our opportunities for living free having dried up, we had reverted back to AirBnB and found an apartment overlooking the sea at the small fishing port of Getaria, with the all-important parking garage. Yet again we found ourselves in accommodation that is even better than its on-line description. The two-bedroom apartment was on the fourth floor of a modern glass-fronted building with floor to ceiling windows, and as we first entered the living room the view took our breath away.

Our apartment was right on the sea-front, in the large blue fronted building

A short peninsular with a large rocky promontory at the end creates two bays for Getarians to enjoy. The fishing port is to the right of the rock as you look out to sea, well protected from the Atlantic swells that push far into the Bay of Biscay, and a sandy beach extends further to the east of the village. To the left of the peninsular is the small bay that we overlooked, exposed to those aforementioned ocean swells, with rocks at each side and a small beach, well washed twice a day by the tides as they pushed right up to the sea wall with long regular waves that were popular with the local surfing community. Huge windows in both the living room and the main bedroom ensured we never missed any of the action twenty metres or more below us, either on the part of the surfers or of the ever-changing actions of the wind-swept ocean itself.

The fishing fleet in the little harbour of Getaria

Getaria is a small community, fishing, vineyards and production of Txakoli, the local wine, and a door fittings factory (owned by our building landlords) being the only obvious industries, though we came to understand it is popular with mainly Spanish tourists in the season. One can easily walk all around the village and the port in an hour or so, although the temptations of the many small pintxo bars and two or three good ‘panaderia’ inevitably tended to slow our own progress.

With so much freshly caught fish available, Getaria also has a reputation for its local restaurants with their outdoor grills upon which that day’s catch is cooked to perfection. So our first stop was to take lunch at “Iribar Jatetxea” where we shared a squid and fava bean salad, followed by grilled monkfish and a dessert of apple tart with cider ice-cream. This gourmand feast was accompanied by a glass of the aforementioned Txakoli, a slightly sparkling, acidic white wine, that needs to be drunk within one year of bottling, and is rather dramatically poured from a height to maximize the effervescence; a pretty good way to celebrate our arrival in this delightful place!

Small as it is, Getaria has a couple of justifiably famous sons, Juan Sebastián Elcano and Cristóbal Balenciaga Eizaguirre. Whilst many people have heard of Ferdinand Magellan, the famous Portuguese explorer who discovered the Strait of Magellan and became the first European to cross the Pacific Ocean, not so many are aware that of his five ships that set out to find a western sea route to the Spice Islands, only one, the “Nao Victoria”, completed the circumnavigation of the globe and returned to Spain. That lone ship and its much-diminished crew of 23 eventually returned to Spain in September 1522 three years after the expedition’s departure, under the command of Juan Sebastián Elcano.

Happy families around Elcano’s statue in the village square

This very able sailor was born in Getaria and, later, much revered, there being no less than three memorials to him; one is a fine statue in the small village square, next to the community Basque pelota court where the children played various ball games every afternoon after school,

and a second statue is on a small terrace overlooking the port, and a few yards away from the site of his home that overlooked the same bay that we were enjoying.

The last and most impressive is a stone barbican at the entrance to the village, topped with a flying angel figure in the Art Deco style, thirty or forty feet high above the main street. The angel figure is a representation of the Virgin Mary in recognition of her role for those at sea, as a sign of hope and the guiding star “Stella Maris”.

The flying angel monument to the crew of the sailing ship “Nao Victoria”

Cristóbal Balenciaga Eizaguirre, however, was cut from a very different cloth. Born in Getaria in 1895 to a seamstress mother, he began work as an apprentice to a tailor at the age of twelve, and went on to become a fashion designer in his own right and the founder of the Balenciaga fashion house. His memory is maintained in Getaria by the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museoa, a very modern museum up the hill above the village. The exterior of the museum is not very fitting to its picturesque surroundings – perhaps a reflection of Balenciaga’s own aversion to following fashion? However, the spacious museum inside is a quite superb collection of his creations displayed to show how this man, who learnt how to cut material at a very early age, was able to translate that experience into his career as a designer.

Balenciaga often took inspiration for his creations from the clothing of local people.

His creations drew inspiration from the clothing of Basque people from all walks of life, offering costumes both stunning and comfortable, and earning him his reputation as a “couturier of uncompromising standards”, much admired, even by other famous designers of the same era such as Christian Dior and Coco Chanel. Naturally Celine enjoyed the exhibition immensely, but even for a dedicated non-fashionista such as myself, the work of this leader in fashion design, and a true artist, was fascinating, especially as many of the exhibits reminded me so much of the clothes worn by beautiful young things in London’s West End in my student days in the 60’s. Perhaps reminiscing for those days, and realizing how ugly today’s world has become in so many ways, I believe the lovely quote in the introductory video we watched before entering the exhibition says it all, “. . . fashion is something we love today and hate tomorrow, art is something we hate today and love tomorrow”.

The port of Getaria is also attractive to walk around, even if history, the world of fashionistas, and delicious food are not high on one’s ‘bucket list’. Built at the bottom of a steep hill, at the top of and beyond which one finds rolling farmland, vineyards, sheep grazing in the fields and the occasional raucous donkey waiting at the roadside to greet new visitors, every part of the village has views over the sea with the large promontory of Mount San Anton in the foreground, and nestled beneath it, the commercial port protecting its fleet of a dozen or more tough-looking offshore fishing vessels and dozens of much smaller workboats, as well as the occasional pleasure craft, moored alongside and anchored within the sturdy stone sea-wall. After our visit to the Balenciaga Museao, we walked further up around the outskirts of the village, then down past the seaman’s club, the Flying Angel, and then further down into the port itself. There, on some evenings, women and sometimes men, would be busy checking through and mending the piles of nets to make ready for the fishermen’s next trips out to challenge the whims of the sea, to return with full holds and the promise of better bank balances, for, romantic as the life can appear to be, to these people fishing is simply a way of making a living, and their very survival still depends on their knowledge of the sea and their ability to harvest its riches in all weathers. We were rarely alone, as we would stroll around the port and along the sea wall, as clearly the locals also enjoyed such simple pleasures as the evenings drew in and the sun disappeared below the surrounding hills. But for our first visit, in the early afternoon, we continued our walk to the base of the large rock, found the entrance to Parkeo San Anton and followed the footpath that zigzagged up the rock’s eastern slope where one is protected from the weather. The big fishing boats in the harbor started to look quite small as we climbed, passing a small gathering of cormorants sunning themselves on a rocky outcrop after their fishing exploits.

Sculptures carved into the rocks beside the path leading up to the top of Mount San Anton

Some artist from the past had sculpted three life-size figures out of one of the rocks beside the path that led up to the Pharo de Getaria. Halfway up, we rested awhile beside a grassy sward dotted with daisies and dandelions, and then strolled on gently upwards through green glades where camellias were in bloom, towards the lighthouse perched on the seaward side, visible from the village only as a light flashing on the night-time clouds. The rock is a softish sandstone and, where exposed to wind and rain, the elements have eroded and pockmarked the surface so that it looks like a giant sponge in places, with the seagulls enjoying the shelter of the many small holes and crevices, after their aerial sorties over the bay far below. But we still hadn’t reached our destination, a squat watchtower at the very top of Mount San Anton, now unused except as a resting place and shelter for the likes of us, as we savoured the view of our little village 100m below. We descended by a different route, a narrow footpath that initially switchbacks its way steeply down from the top of the hill, and passed by the rusting hulk of a very old diesel-driven road-roller on a pedestal in another grassy clearing, that, according to a plaque riveted to its side, had “served well the department of works of the county of Guipuzcoa from 1931 until 1983”; it was, however, difficult to work out quite how it had reached its final resting place!

Rusty old road-roller parked in a clearing near the top of Mount San Anton

Arriving back at sea-level, we completed our wonderful day by walking back to our glass-fronted eyrie, along the top of the seawall around the edge of our little bay as the sun finally disappeared behind the hills and night arrived, and the gentle whooshing noises of the sea against the rocks continued into the darkness.

An umbrella is a necessary accessory in N.Spain in winter.

The sun doesn’t shine everyday in Basque Country, a fact well demonstrated by the day we chose to drive inland in what began as a light shower, to follow La Ruta de Los Tres Templos. According to the San Sebastian Tourist Office, Gipuzkoa is a land of “religion and spirituality” and is “home to three of the most reputed and important churches in all of Spain: La Santuria de Loiola, the birthplace of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and the cradle of the Jesuits, La Santurio de Arantzazu, and the Ermita de la Antigua which is one of the stages in Saint Ignatius de Loiola’s pilgrimage in 1522 when he left Loiola intending to reach Jerusalem.” Our first stop was at the tourist office in Azpeitia (=Loiola) where we had a very enlightening conversation with a young woman, eager to practice her English.

The Santuria de Loiola, an imposing 18^th century Baroque temple, was closed for the afternoon, in observation of siesta-time, and it had started to rain quite hard, so we opted to dash back to our car and drive to our furthermost goal, the Arantzazu Sanctuary, 700m above sea-level in Oñati. A picturesque drive through the foothills of the Pyrenees eventually led us into forbidding mountain country, and even though the rain had stopped when we arrived at the Franciscan sanctuary, the bitter wind added to the inhospitable feeling of the place making us disinclined to loiter.

The impressive basilica, rebuilt in 1950 with some ferocious stone facing on the outside and lots of wood inside, although not exactly magnificent, was an impressive if unusual structure, probably more praiseworthy to the pilgrims who make their way there, none of whom had made it that far on this grey day. So we soon started to retrace our steps back to the lovely coast, stopping briefly at an Eroski supermarket in Azkoitia for one or two essentials for our pantry, and to grab in their café the usual coffee and pintxos that, in those days, my tummy seemed habitually to demand around late afternoon. Not our most enlightening or interesting day, but we did enjoy yet more of the wonderful countryside that abounds thereabouts, in spite of a distinct lack of nice little roadside cafés!

Dramatic countryside on the drive back from Arantzazu

Statue in Pamplona celebrating the famous San Fermin Festival

Our last trip inland a few days later took us to Pamplona, or rather Iruña if we stick to the Basque names, an hour’s drive along the excellent A-15, a superb road through the foothills at the western end of the Pyrenees, with several high viaducts several hundred metres long as well as many tunnels, as it passes through wild rugged countryside. Probably best known for the San Fermin Festival and the running of the bulls which Ernest Hemingway described so vividly in his two books, “The sun also rises” and “Death in the afternoon”, Pamplona-Iruña turned out to be a fine city in its own right with lots of pedestrianised streets lined by beautiful Renaissance buildings, many of which sport the coats of arms of the great Basque families.

Running of the bulls has its funny side in Pamplona!!

It was a more enjoyable city to walk around than Vitoria-Gasteiz we had visited earlier, and after more than three hours strolling the older and newer parts and, of course, making our usual stops for afternoon sustenance, we came away well impressed. Just a shame that it is nearly 500m above sea-level and prone to a more continental type climate – colder in winter and hotter in summer – otherwise we could easily consider it a fine city to live near, praise indeed for your city-phobic scribe.

Last, but by no means least in this Spanish region of so many delights, mention must be made of San Sebastian-Donastia, one of Spain’s favourite luxury holiday resorts and famed as being the ‘tapas, or rather pintxo, capital of the world’! Squeezed up tight against the French border and tucked into the corner of the Bay of Biscay, this visually stunning city lives up to many aspects of its reputation. It was a pleasant 45 minute drive for us from Getaria, along the N634 which snakes through the valleys past Aginaga and Usurbil on the river Oria Ibaia till we reached Iru-Bide and the start of the industrial hinterland that is an integral part of every large city in this part of Northern Spain. Arriving in San Sebastian, we were immediately caught up in the onerous system of one-way streets and ended up at the far western end of the beautiful Bahía de la Concha, bordered by the small Playa de Ondaretta and the longer Playa de la Concha, two wide strands of golden sand from where one looks across at the Isla de Santa Clara in the mouth of the bay and the Castilla de la Mota on the headland above the old city to one’s right.

Our first stop was the Peine del Viento, or ‘The Comb of the Wind’, a set of three ten-tonne steel sculptures embedded into the rocks at the end of the promenade. The work of Eduardo Chillida, installed and arranged by the Basque architect Luis Peña Ganchegui, the installation includes a series of blow-holes in the pavement as you approach the sculptures, through which the incoming waves vent their force as blasts of cool sea-spray laden air and, if the waves are big enough, powerful water spouts, all of which must be lovely on a hot summer’s day but were not so appreciated on that rather cool February afternoon.

Thence, into the main city centre, where once again the weather really wasn’t very cooperative, it was still winter after all, and after a short walk in the drizzling rain around the area of the late 19^th century Artzian Onaren Katedrala, the Good Shepherd Cathedral of San Sebastian, we upped sticks again and drove across to the old town to seek out one of the many ‘pintxo’ bars. Again the one-way system caught us in its grasp and it took two circles of the east end of the city before we managed to get access to the entrance to the underground car-park on Boulevard Zumardia, cunningly hidden behind lanes in the street dedicated to the buses which managed to squeeze us out of the way every time we thought we were getting close. But the effort was well worth such low-level stress, for the old town was a joy to walk around, rain or no rain. We followed our noses past the market hall and through to Constitucion Plaza with its fine colonnades on all four sides and the old town hall topped by a clock and a fine coat of arms at one end. Three balconies along the length of all the buildings surrounding the plaza, all decorated identically with light blue shutters, yellow painted door frames and white stucco walls, had us puzzled for a while as every room had a large number over the doorway. It turned out that the numbers remain as a reminder of days gone by, when the plaza was used as a bull fighting arena, and every room was rented by the gentry, like boxes in a theatre.

As we continued our stroll along the old streets, admiring the renaissance architecture and the handsome wrought iron balconies, we mingled with the rain-dampened crowd and noticed many children, and the occasional adult, prettily dressed in what we took to be traditional costume of some sort. Little boys, similarly attired, carried small cooking pots and sticks which they used as make-shift drums.

Pintxos piled high from one end of the bar to the other in Casa Alcalde

Mystified, we eventually dove into a very busy bar, Casa Alcalde, where the bar was piled high from end to end with pintxos to suit every taste. Designed to be small snacks to accompany a beer or a glass of wine, the most common component to many ‘pintxos’ were ‘anchoa’ (anchovies), though not the excessively salty ones like those you find in a can. Usually served on a small piece of baguette or similar local bread, a veritable cornucopia of delicious flavours go into the building of a pintxo, ‘anchoa’, ‘jamon’, ‘queso’, ‘pimiento’, ‘aceite de olive’, many types of ‘pescados’, ‘huevos’, ‘pollo’, ‘tortilla española’, and goodness knows what else, mostly, though not all, served cold. One we particularly enjoyed was the “Gilda”, a spicy cocktail stick of anchovies, hot green peppers and olives, named in homage to that ‘hot spicy actress’ Rita Hayworth, after her role in the film of the same name! Anyway, as we were enjoying an eclectic mix of four or five pintxos apiece, washed down with a cool glass of ‘cerveza’, a slight commotion outside solved the earlier mystery. The Caldereros Festival, was initiated on February 2^nd 1884 to celebrate the Catholic festival of Candlemas, when a Hungarian carnival group, the Caldereros, paraded for the first time in San Sebastian-Donostia. It is now celebrated every year on the first Saturday of February, which happened to be the day we were there; the commotion outside was in fact the parade of the 18 tribes, or ‘calderero krewes’, groups of children and adults dressed in costume, banging their pots and pans, traditionally accompanied by a bear and a bear cub, though all we saw was a donkey or two, commemorating the arrival of the travelling people to the city. Great fun and a lovely happy way to bring a rather damp day to a close.

Naturally our time in Getaria was not all tourist sightseeing. We were there to try out this little corner of the world as a future place to live and to live like locals in some small way, and so the small town of Zarautz, about three miles west of Getaria played an important part in our considerations. This was also a town that relied heavily on tourism, and yet it had a well-lived in, neighbourly feeling, even if the locals made sure we didn’t forget we were in Basque Country!

We made good use of the local Eroski supermarket with a fish counter where sales assistants made an art form of filleting the very fresh fish, beautifully displayed on beds of ice. And back in Getaria, across the road from our apartment, there was a very friendly grocery whose owner was always happy to give us little tidbits about Basque life in general and the pleasures of living in the village. Everywhere we went, people were friendly and welcoming. These small, but important details all helped to confirm our feelings about the allure of this area.

Sadly, as always, time was marching on, and with only another week before our stay in Getaria would come to an end, we determined to fill the remaining days with visits across the border in French Basque Country, similar to its Spanish neighbour in many ways, but by no means exactly the same, as we were soon to find out.

On finding somewhere to build a new nest . . .

My wife, Celine, and I, a couple of retired European expats, live a life in California that we both feel leaves a lot to be desired. So a few years ago we made the decision to start looking for another country to build our nest anew. As regular readers of International Living, we started our search in a couple of the Central and South American countries that so many writers had been enthusing about, namely Costa Rica and Ecuador. Both had their attributes, but we quickly realised that what we really wanted was to become Europeans in Europe once again, and be back amongst the culture, the history, and people with whom we would have more in common than we do with our Californian neighbours. So, with good memories from earlier visits to the country, and French being our strongest of the romance languages, last September we set off on a six-month intensive study of southern France from Provence in the east across to Aquitaine in the west, with an excursion into Spanish Basque country and short, unscheduled, side trips to the Italian Riviera and Spain’s Costa Brava.

This was, however, no extended holiday, for we planned to spend four to six weeks in three or four destinations where, as far as it is possible to do so in short-term rented accommodation, we would live like locals, buying our supplies in the local shops and markets, and also scout around the local areas to get the bigger picture.

We arrived without clearly defining what we wanted from a nesting site, preferring to discover what would attract us both. And so we spent six months exposing ourselves to a variety of locales, getting excited by some more than others. Occasionally, we would get perilously close to making rushed decisions about buying properties, whilst totally ignoring our promises to ourselves to do nothing rash, to rent for a year before deciding to buy, to always seek English speaking advice and guidance, and to be absolutely certain how much we could afford before making an offer!

We started our journey with a month in Lyon where we had found a good school of languages to bone up on our French; it wasn’t, however, a potential nesting site due to its rather cold winter weather. Our nest-hunting really began with six weeks in Provence, but they passed by without temptation; we simply never found anywhere that made us want to settle. It was in Ospedaletti, just outside San Remo, the self styled capital of la Riviera de las Flores, at the western end of the Italian Riviera, where Delilah first tried her tricks. We had a week to fill between our pre-booked stay in Lorgues, a Provence village popular with expats, and a three week house-sit in Montpellier, and had decided to spend it exploring the nearest bit of Italy.

We had found an apartment in Ospedaletti, just 30m from the shore with a spacious balcony and a spectacular view over the Mediterranean. We were entranced, and not just with the view. The town itself had a certain faded elegance and charm, and was wonderfully unspoilt after the developmental excesses we had seen all along the French Riviera to the west. We drove into San Remo a couple of times, a city that seemed to tick many of our boxes, culture, architecture, and good shopping, and had the air of an honest working town without the overt touristic ostentatiousness of its French neighbours. The hook had been set and it only took a few words with our Italian landlord, who just happened to be in the real-estate business, before he was driving us around showing us what could be bought for the €350,000 we thought we could afford. And after three ‘duds’, too much renovation required, lousy view, no parking space, and one very nice apartment that, unfortunately, was way outside our budget, we explained to Simone that perhaps we should just ‘keep in touch’. We liked the location but none of his offerings really suited our needs. But Simone was not to be put off quite so easily.

Now that he understood better what we were looking for – somewhat surprising as we still weren’t really sure ourselves – Simone had one more place that he would like to show us which he was absolutely certain would be just perfect. And so the following day, on the morning of our departure, he took us for a short walk along the rocky shoreline, around a slight promontory and there before us was a three storey building set in amongst a few pine trees. The apartment in question was on the first floor, had two large bedrooms, two bathrooms, a decent living room, an adequate kitchen opening onto a small garden, and a long enclosed verandah looking straight at the sea with more or less the same lovely views we had been enjoying for the last week. And the price was pretty well exactly what we had in mind. Of course we thought it was wonderful. Sure we would need to spend some money refurbishing the kitchen, but that was work I could easily handle myself. We would have our own parking space directly beneath the verandah, it was well off the main road, there was no public access to the property, and there were only two other occupants in the building so no housing association complications. There seemed to be some question as to whether or not the windows around the verandah had been the subject of planning permission, but the other two apartments had been similarly modified and no questions had been asked. A friend of Simone’s owned one of the other apartments, and, surprise, Simone also knew the seller very well. It all sounded very good and was our ideal nest in so many ways. To say we were tempted is to put it mildly, until the bombshell landed. The owner had already received one offer at the asking price, but would accept a cash offer if we wanted to seal the deal. Our minds raced furiously as we mentally worked out that we could indeed raise the cash, but at the same time little niggling doubts began to foment.

It was really just as well that we were leaving later that morning. So as we walked back to Simone’s apartment and he helped us carry our suitcases to the car, we explained our dilemma and agreed we would get back to him that evening, once we had arrived in Montpellier. But in our hearts we knew we had to calm down and not be blinded by such a little gem of a home. We talked about little else during our drive back along the A8 autoroute, and by the time we were arriving in the outskirts of Montpellier as dusk fell, we knew that we had been very close to making a huge mistake. We had not spoken to an English speaking solicitor, we had only a vague knowledge of the Italian system of buying and selling property, we weren’t even one hundred percent sure of the exchange value of our savings in UK and USA. But it had been a real shock for us to learn how impetuous we could be.

Fishing boats on the beach at Calella de Palafrugell

You’d think after that we would have been far more principled in our house-hunting escapades, but you’d be wrong to think that we would control our instincts better. Our next short, unplanned stay was a week in the pretty, old fishing village of Calella de Palafrugell on the Spanish Costa Brava. Your scribe had stayed there with his parents some fifty years previously and was surprised as well as delighted to find that it had not suffered the ravages of over-development that is such an epidemic along much of the Spanish Mediterranean coast. The small beaches in the middle of the village and the many isolated rocky coves where I remembered swimming in the clear azure sea with my father, were all just as delightful as ever. Walking the narrow footpath twisting its way among the rocky outcrops between the coves along the shoreline around the bay and on into the neighboring village of Llafranc, was a blissful way of getting our daily exercise. Even Palafrugell, the town four kilometres inland, where we would have to go for all our shopping and medical needs, was pleasant enough. Open countryside was all around, the handsome city of Girona was only an hour’s drive inland, and the port of Palamos just a few kilometres down the coast. And Calella itself was so wonderfully clean and quiet, actually rather too quiet we realised as the days went by, and the view of the sea from our balcony was again beautiful even though this time the sea was further away. But wouldn’t it be a wonderful place to live, we kept saying to each other. No tourists for nine or ten months of the year, fine countryside all around, we simply had to make contact with the local real estate office, and just see what might be available. And so the process began once more, though we didn’t get quite so carried away this time. Again we chatted with our landlord, from whom we learned that nearly 75% of the properties in the village, were owned by Spaniards from big cities like Barcelona and Madrid, who came to Calella for holidays and weekends. So there was not much chance of having year-round friendly neighbours. But still we ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’, while ‘umming’ at the same time, as we weighed up the pros and cons of life in a small, but very beautiful, holiday community, still without the benefit of local legal knowledge and advice, and once again getting ourselves very excited about a place we had been in for less than a week.

Who wouldn’t want to live near a beach like this – Calella again, seemingly unchanged from sixty years ago!

They say about love that when it arrives you will know about it without question, that your instincts have a very real sense of having found the right life-partner. But, just like loving a person, loving a place still has to be given time to grow and develop gradually. All the same, it is just as easy to fall blindly in love with a beautiful environment, as it is to believe the person with whom you danced the previous night away is quite without fault.

So we determined to spend the rest of our six months being far more pragmatic when looking at properties. But, like “the best laid schemes o’mice an’ men” our good intentions did go a ‘wee bit awry’. Nothing really grabbed us during the next five weeks, on a home-exchange in a very small village in the foothills of the Pyrenees, where the December winds blew overly cool and big city culture was just too far away. But, as February and early spring arrived we found ourselves in Spanish Basque country staying in the little fishing port of Getaria, living in a very smart modern apartment high above a small sandy cove, enthralled by our view of the waves from the Bay of Biscay crashing on the rocks to right and left. There was an awful lot that was right about this environment. The village was tucked below a hillside atop of which began miles of green rolling countryside. The town of Zarautz, five minutes drive along the coast road, had all the amenities we could want, the beautiful small seaside city of San Sebastian was half an hour’s drive to the east and the much revitalized, port city of Bilbao, with all its culture, an hour to the west. The countryside was beautiful in all directions, and French Basque country just an hour away. And, the final Delilah touch, two or three of the apartments in our building were for sale. So we just had to go and see. We actually ended up looking at four apartments in the end. The first two weren’t quite right, and the next two were superb, but, sadly, way above our ‘budget’. And anyway, none of them had a garden, something which your scribe feels very strongly about.

Still, it was early days, and as we had several more days in the area we decided to investigate the property market in more depth; and that was when we discovered that single-family homes with small gardens are somewhat of a rarity in that part of Spain. It’s something to do with planning regulations, which severely restrict the sale of agricultural land for development, a virtue for one who loves the countryside more than bricks and mortar, but it does explain the Spanish obsession with high-rise apartment buildings that tend to spoil so many of the small fishing villages along the coast. You understand, by this stage we were starting to think a lot more carefully. But then again, if we were to sell our condo in California, then we could actually afford the loveliest of the penthouse duplex apartments in our building, and it did have a terrace large enough to grow quite a lot of plants and vegetables, and the views were beautiful, and it was such a friendly village and . . . and . . . so on.

The Getaria apartment building that really tempted us – the big blue glass fronted box at the right of the bay. Magnificent views out over the Bay of Biscay, and the sound of the Atlantic surf!

Yes, the tentacles of temptation were slowly drawing us in once again, and dangerous thoughts were becoming ever stronger. Something inside of me was beginning to feel a slight sense of failure, that our six months was drawing a blank; even after visiting and seeing so many beautiful places, we seemed to be unable to find that ideal nesting place. Would we ever do so?

There was still French Basque country to explore, which we were able to do from our base in Getaria. Hendaye and St.Jean de Luz were two small towns very close to the frontier, each of which in their own way, proved very attractive, and so we wasted no time in visiting two or three local ‘immobilieres’ (real estate agents). Their response was very positive, especially now that our ‘budget had risen to €500,000! We found the French Basque housing market to be very different from the Spanish. The concept of single-family homes is very much the norm and we were immediately able to visit four or five homes, all of which could have possibilities, but just two of which really made us stop and think very hard. The first, up one of the hills on the outskirts of Hendaye, was in many ways the most suitable property we had seen. Three spacious bedrooms, two bathrooms, a large open-plan kitchen/living room, beautiful Spanish mosaic floors everywhere, except for the oak floors in the bedrooms, a large southwest facing balcony with views towards both the mountains and the sea (unfortunately split by the outsize chimney of the house below!), a fair sized garden, an enormous undeveloped basement, large enough to subdivide into a dance floor, a workshop and a garage, a conversion-ready loft, and the price was within budget. By this stage though, we were being ultra-cautious, we needed to know more about living in Hendaye, in fact we needed to stick to our guns and rent for at least six months before we made a decision to purchase. So, rather dejectedly, we walked away from it.

We also visited St Jean de Luz and decided that it too was every bit as charming as we had read, but property prices in the town itself put it out of the range of even our ‘new’ budget. All the same, we continued looking, met a very helpful estate agent in Urrugne, a commune a few kilometres inland, who showed us a couple more houses, one of which was a beautifully built home in the countryside with a well kept garden and views of the mountains, being sold by an elderly couple who had built the home themselves some thirty years earlier. Again we had to turn away, and console ourselves with the knowledge that we had at least found an area we would happily return to one day and try the nest-renting process.

But then again, perhaps we should look at Italy more closely, and what about this little country of Portugal, which everyone says is such a fine place for retirement? And that, dear readers, will be another story.

Footnote: Looking for illustrations for this post has made me realise how difficult it is to take photographs that effectively convey the true sense of a place. We took a few thousand photographs during our travels but hardly a single one adequately shows you why we were so tempted. So when this article was published by Live and Invest Overseas I was quite relieved to see that they used stock photos. They also edited it in places, quite effectively if I’m honest!