269. Summer afternoon *

31st July. We've just had a few days away in the mountains in order to escape the massed crowds attending the Fêtes de Bayonne - and also to breathe some fresh mountain air after the weeks of heat and humidity we've had on the coast here. We'd planned to drive up and across to the Jura to visit my wife's aunt who is 92 - but given the canicule (heat wave) we thought better of it - we'll go there in October instead. In the end, we went to Montory, a small village in the foothills of the Pyrenees about 10km from the border. This (above) is the former stable - now the rustic dining room of the country hotel that we stayed in. We spent our few days there exploring local villages via some spectacular roads and stunning scenery. We enjoyed largely empty roads during our stay in this beautiful area - even in the high season as most tourists are content to remain in the beach resorts.

Approaching Sainte-Engrâce one day, we turned a corner to see 3 or 4 people looking at a very large bird (a good three feet high) standing in the road nearby. It may have been hit by a car - but it suddenly took fright when it saw our car approaching and it started running awkwardly towards us, with its scrawny neck jutting forward and beating its great wings before taking off over our heads. It was a griffon vulture (vautour fauve). Not one of Nature's triumphs - at least from an aesthetic point of view!

This area has featured regularly in the Tour de France due to its many hills and mountain passes - and there were groups of cyclists out there grinding up the hills - and they all seemed to have that same cyclists' physique - lean with skinny arms and legs. I can never understand where the power comes from (quiet in the cheap seats!).

Returning on Monday, we decided to route home via a tangle of small lanes that brought us through numerous sleepy hamlets and villages. We made a coffee stop at La Bastide-Clairence (founded in 1314) - and one of France's most beautiful villages - on the way home. It certainly merits its inclusion in that group. This is somewhere that, in almost 30 years, for some unknown reason we've only visited twice! (photos here) (AirBnB listings here)
This view (looking south towards the Pyrenees) was close to Ainharp - and this was rural Pays Basque at its best with its white-painted farmhouses dotting the rolling wooded landscape.

24th July. When all the fireworks went off to mark the start of the Fêtes de Bayonne a few moments ago, it sounded like the start of "Saving Private Ryan".. they do like their fireworks to be noisy.  No finesse, no carefully timed displays in time with classical music - no, just a constant bombardment of chest-rattling explosions until the box is empty. Here's how it looked - and sounded!
Two places of natural interest lie just to the south of our intended destination this weekend: the Gorges de Kakuetta and the Passerelle d'Holzarte. It's one of those inexplicable quirks that, despite it being almost 30 years since we first visited the Pays Basque, we've only visited the Gorges of Kakuetta once - and we've never been to the 180m high suspension bridge at Holzarte.. You'll find them here:
So - Boris Johnson is to be the next Prime Minister. His time in office may be long or it may be short - but one thing's for certain: it won't be dull! Here are some examples of the wit and wisdom of Boris Johnson. Fasten your seat belts!

23rd July. Tomorrow sees the opening of the Fêtes de Bayonne.. and I can see that the influx of people has already started. To escape the hordes, we'll be having a few days away in a sleepy no-horse village in la France profonde - about 2 hours away to the south east of here - in the foothills of the Pyrenees. What is la France profonde? There's a paragraph in this link that almost gets it - although I think the author is a bit harsh on his native America:

"As an American, to visit a French provincial town or city is to see a way of life that is deeply enviable. Small shops, cafes, town squares, churches — the hustle and bustle of pedestrian life that one has not seen in the United States in decades, if one has seen it at all. It is vivacious, but it is also gentle. It is human, in a way that our built landscapes in America no longer are, and in most places never were".

For me, la France profonde is a place or an area where life continues to be lived as it always has been - with its customs, traditions and values more or less intact. Down here in the far south west, it's still possible to find places that qualify - and for that, I'm extremely grateful.

The forecast is for 39° in the shade today - so I can see us spending the day largely indoors - except for periodic visits outside for the dog! I took him out early this morning and it was already 25°.

At around 8pm this evening, we had a mad scramble as the wind suddenly got up and trees in the garden were bending this way and that. The howling wind threatened to blow the solid inch-thick shutters upstairs at the back into matchwood.  We'd just had them loosely latched to try and keep the house cool but on seeing the sky suddenly darken, it looked like a good time to put umbrellas and chairs safely away. The minute I stepped out in the garden and had an armful of umbrellas, all hell broke loose upstairs as all four of our heavy shutters broke loose and started banging to and fro from stop to stop. We managed to fasten them shut securely before any damage was done. When I'd finished, I looked up and saw thin low cloud was scudding over at 500ft.. There is a localised meteorological phenomenon here known as a Brouillarta.. a sudden sustained gust of wind (akin to a line squall but without the rain). I suspect I saw the tail end of it passing overhead.

Et voilà - I just found a warning about it in today's Sud-Ouest.. that's exactly what it was - and they got the timing spot on too!

Here's a speeded-up video that shows a Brouillarta hitting the coast south of Biarritz in 2016.. 
Take some time out to relax with this great old tune - beautifully played here by Kimiyoshi Akiyama:

Here's another very creditable version of that same song. 

22nd July. Yet another 'make or break' moment in this mission. If for whatever reason, this manoeuvre had been unsuccessful, and in the absence of any other means of transferring the two astronauts into "Columbia", that was game over for them. Every one of these technologies had to work perfectly first time and the astronauts had to get join-ups like this right first time too. The "Eagle" spacecraft re-appears at 2:07 (top right in the video)..

(by the way, 36,000 feet per second = 24,500mph or Mach 33). Here's a video that really gives an impression of the work load during Eagle's lunar descent - the profile was astonishingly complex with a computer alarm thrown in for good measure as the mission approached a peak of intensity.

21st July. This video shows a later mission - Apollo 17 - lifting off from the moon - but it's identical to the Apollo 11 mission. I can't begin to imagine what that countdown must have been like:

The exceptionally hot weather we've been having these last few weeks seems to have awoken the normally dormant mosquito population - and as I'm a well-known mosquito magnet, the end result is that I've been scratching myself like a juiced-up chimp. Then I remembered the many trips to Virginia I used to make, especially those in the summer heat.. I'd sometimes stay with friends and they had a deck in their yard with a bug zapper. It contained a small UV light to attract mosquitoes and other bugs - and surrounding the light was an electrified grid that constantly despatched the pests with a satisfying (to me at least) buzz-zap! Job done. Here's one in action - music to my ears!

The question is: can anyone recommend an electric bug zapper for outdoor use - preferably with an LED light - that really works and is available in France? I've read of a US product - the Flowtron BK-40D - that is highly recommended (see above) but with the shipping cost, it works out at a hefty US$90. There would be additional import duties to pay on it too. (Electricity supply in France is 240v and I've just learned that the Flowtron is rated for 120v. Ah well..)  

20th July. These incredible live pictures from Man's first steps on the lunar surface 50 years ago showed us Earthlings exactly what we - the human race - are capable of. Where we go from here is another question though. 

19th July. I started painting the shutters at the back of the house at 7am this morning while it was still cool - and by mid-morning I'd finished. By late afternoon, they were bone dry and I managed to hang them without breaking any toes! The temperature on our west-facing terrace at 7.20pm was 36°!

50 years ago tomorrow - less than 25 years after the end of WWII - Man landed on the Moon in the form of two astronauts - Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin. This staggering achievement was enabled by pushing the technology of the time to the very limit. JFK had set the bar high 8 years previously - and America delivered in spades. Did it ever! Hats off to all those who were involved.. all 400,000 of them. I remember watching these fuzzy pictures as they came in in the wee small hours:

17th July. We were in San Sebastian this morning to do some minor shopping and at lunchtime we went for a stroll along the promenade overlooking La Concha - when we found La-Perla - a relaxed café/restaurant with an uninterrupted view of the bay. Considering its position, it was very reasonably priced. Recommended!

16th July. Fifty years ago today we watched in awe and amazement as Apollo 11 launched into the heavens with a crackling roar atop 7.5 million pounds of thrust on an epic journey that captured the hearts and minds of the entire world. I count myself privileged to have been alive to witness Man's greatest ever achievement. It was a truly miraculous feat, and we even had live imagery from space in glorious black and white - plus live TV pictures of the astronauts' first steps on the Moon! It was only a few years previously that we'd been able to see live transatlantic TV broadcasts from the US via Telstar.

What went through the astronauts' minds as they said their goodbyes to their families and their loved ones? We'll never know what the risks were - but I'm sure NASA had contingency plans in place for as many of them as possible. They were the bravest of the brave. (Engine start at 2:00)

In the 80s, I had the opportunity to visit the Apollo/Saturn V exhibit at the Kennedy Space Centre. At the time, a Saturn V rocket was lying on its side in a ground display compound and I was dwarfed by the giant nozzles of the five F-1 rocket engines in the Saturn V's first stage - that produced a staggering 7.5 million pounds (3.4 million kilograms) of thrust and was used during launch for about 2 minutes. In the process, they gobbled up 20 tons (40,000 pounds) of fuel per second.

15th July. I nearly crippled myself yesterday evening taking down the heavy wooden shutters downstairs to give them a fresh coat of paint. These are 8ft 4inches (2m54) tall and solidly made out of wood (no venetian-type slats). My grip on one of them slipped at just the wrong moment and it landed squarely across my toes.. Ouch! (I almost said!) Nothing broken though. After a few minor repairs to the shutter, I applied a coat of Rouge Basque - but this morning it was still tacky..

14th July. Today will be a first for me - my first 14th July as a French citizen. I received an official email the other day informing me that as they couldn't dig up any 'cause or just impediment' to my application, they had no option but to tell me that I had acquired French citizenship. I paraphrased that a bit!☺ I now have to go and apply for a carte nationale d'identité.. and a passport. It makes sense - we'll have been here 12 years in September, and I'd like to stay - plus, I'd like to be able to vote here too. Phew, it was worth the effort! (I still retain my UK citizenship)

In celebration of France's Bastille Day, here's a video of the entire glittering military parade down the "world's most beautiful avenue" (and who could possibly argue with that description?). If you want to cut straight to the fly past (and SuperHomme), start at 37:04...

Here's an element of it that took all of us by surprise.. Forget flying bicycles, I want one of these!

This (below) looks like fun.. although I'm not sure that the bike (and those wheels) would be sufficiently sturdy and resilient to stand up to a few heavy landings. Some suspension wouldn't go amiss either!

13th July. We went for a evening stroll with the dog around Bayonne yesterday evening and all the restaurants along the Nive were full.. with lots of tourists in evidence.

place Jacques Portes

On the way back we walked through the newly re-surfaced place Jacques Portes (in front of the Galeries Lafayette) where a large wind orchestra (brass and woodwind) was playing La Peña Baiona (aka Vino Greigo) - which is Bayonne's unofficial national anthem!

(Health warning: A music critic has written 25 pages to analyse the bejasus out of this song - if you wish to find out what she thinks it's all about, read on. You've been warned..)

The band turned out to be l'Harmonie Bayonnaise - and very enjoyable they were too! They went on to play some demanding music (in my untrained opinion!) - such as Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody among others.. A neighbour of mine was singing along - complete with actions - in her own private rhapsody to much amusement all around.. We enjoyed many of their renditions until the dog decided that he'd had enough..

12th July. I don't think there's a better interpretation of "Somewhere over the Rainbow" than this - by the highly acclaimed Polish guitarist Marcin Dylla. See what you think:                             (more here)

11th July. Just had some pasta - followed by a slice of water melon straight from the fridge.. Mmm-mmm!

8th July. The annual madness that is the Fiesta of San Fermin kicked off yesterday morning with the first encierro (bull running) of the week-long fiesta.. (Hemingway has much to answer for in my view)

Meanwhile, on our side of the Pyrenees, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port is a charming small town in the foothills of the Pyrenees about 40 minutes away by car and, during our first visit there, we noticed the scallop shell motif was everywhere. It appeared that this is the symbol of the famous long distance pilgrimage known as the Camino de Santiago, the roots of which go back at least a thousand years.

Many people choose to start from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port - one of the most popular starting points for the pilgrims' walk - as from there, it's but a 500 mile hop, step and a jump to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia (NW Spain).

This walk has been on my back burner for several years now and I think it's something that I'll find myself doing sooner rather than later! Have a listen to these two podcasts that I stumbled upon by accident earlier - Part One & Part Two.

4th July. This is a piece by Mozart that I was unfamiliar with until recently: it's the third movement from his Serenade # 10 for winds 'Gran Partita' in B-flat major, K. 361/370a..

Meanwhile - Happy birthday USA!

This video clip of Stromboli erupting yesterday popped up as a 'recommend' for me.. I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that..

1st July. My favourite dog-walking field behind the beach at Anglet was invaded the other day by a hundred or so white vans and caravans - belonging to a so-called "evangelical group". We had a visitation from them in the same place last year and it took some time for the local council to evict them. I sympathise with the council as it doesn't have the practical means at its disposal to forcibly evict encampments like this. 

Over the winter, the council had positioned massive concrete blocks across the access points to the field - but they hadn't done their homework properly - apparently this well-organised group gained access to it via an unblocked route further up the coast. The council will have to ensure that access to the field is fully watertight in future. When I spotted the 'evangelical group' in situ last week, I saw that they'd also opened up an electrical power supply box and had hooked up the entire convoy to the mains supply. Who pays for the power used? And then there's hygiene. I wonder. By law, councils do have to make provision for gens du voyage ("travelling people"). I see this same group are now ensconced at Ascain (below) - our former holiday village.

* According to Henry James: the two most beautiful words in the English language.

61. Tourist week

15th May 2010. This week, we had M here for a few days. She's an old friend of Madame's and our first visitor of the year. After the unexpected heat of April (up to 28), the clouds and rain returned and the temps dropped down to 10-12C.. Brrr! We thought M was going to be in for a rough time but the weather gods smiled on her as the skies cleared and on Monday last it was 24.. We gave her our patented lightning 2 day tour of the Pays Basque.. On Monday morning I showed her around the narrow winding streets of Bayonne while Madame was at her painting class. As M's yet another fully paid up member of the Chocaholique Club.. (show me a woman who isn't!) I thought I'd take her to the legendary établissement Cazenave under the arcades in the Rue Port Neuf for a hot chocolat à l'ancienne served in porcelain de Limoges. But, I'd forgotten it was Monday and, like quite a few other shops in town, it was closed. This is what she missed:

Cazenave make their own chocolate and it is really the Rolls Royce of chocolate.

We ended up having a cappucino here - sitting outside the Hotel de Ville in the sunshine.

Following this, we wandered through the quiet Monday morning streets of town, stopping only at the cathedral where we walked around its ancient honeyed stone cloisters before returning home for lunch.. In the afternoon we drove down to St Jean de Luz where someone had clearly just opened a fresh box of pensioners as the streets were full of strolling baby boomers.. We must have reduced the average age of people in town by 10 years.. (maybe!)

The clock was ticking and so we upped sticks and moved up the coast to Biarritz. Walking along the promenade the temperature must have been around 24 at least.. it felt like summer was with us again.

The next day we headed inland under grey skies (ouf!) to show M some of the delights of the Pays Basque such as St Etienne de Baigorry, St Jean Pied de Port and Ainhoa (one of the most beautiful villages in all of France). St Jean Pied de Port is on the pilgrim trail to Santiago de Compostela in north western Spain. After walking through the timeless streets of St Jean Pied de Port, M was kind enough to treat us to lunch at the Hotel Ramuntcho. This is a classic French family-run restaurant and the reasonably priced lunch was delicious. After this we set off for the valley of Les Aldudes (which I've mentioned before). Unfortunately, it was still quite misty up there and the true splendour of the mountain scenery was largely hidden. Ainhoa was next and it's a village which, at the height of the season, is an absolute tourist honey-pot. It's almost a stone's throw from the Spanish border and it seems a long way from Calais! We found an old cafe that looked as if it hadn't been altered for 100 years and had a coffee and found space for a piece of gâteau basque.

  

Here's a classic track from Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton. I don't think she got the recognition her voice deserved.. her voice is pitch perfect and has a clarity all of its own.  

17. Noël

I was just saying to Madame the other day that so far we’ve seen no reference to the approach of Christmas in any of the shops – no towering displays of marzipan or jars of mincemeat or John Lennon singing “So this is Christmas”.. or Easter eggs in Woolworths. (now - unbelievably - closed for good in the UK I heard)

So imagine my surprise this morning when I heard on the radio the unmistakeable sound of 'Jingle Bells'…! It made me think – well here we are with less than 2 months to go to Christmas and still no Christmas Lights.. The French just don’t have a clue do they.. (irony!) I would guarantee that, for the last few weeks, supermarkets back home will already have been fully set up with dedicated aisles for such traditional English Christmas essentials as German Stollen bread, French marzipan, Belgian chocolates, Turkish delight, Italian panettone cakes and the like (we contribute the spuds!).. and deep freezes full of turkeys the size of small boulders..

One afternoon we went into Bayonne to a “Depôt Vente”. This is where you can take things to sell – mainly furniture.. The Depôt Vente sets the price and then takes a percentage of the proceeds. We went there looking to see what they had in the way of armoires. There were some in stock and while they were certainly cheaper than we’d seen in antique shops, it was fairly clear why. I think these are the kind of places that you need to drop in every week to see the new stock as it arrives - except that, like stuffing mushrooms, life is just too short for some things.

After this, it was starting to feel like evening so we came back. Madame had bought some chestnuts so we had these roasted with a cup of tea (living dangerously!).

For the French holiday on 1st November, we planned on going to Les Aldudes - a village buried in the Basque mountain country that straddles the entrance of a valley that, while it runs deep into Spain, is still French. The valley's chief claim to fame is that it produces arguably the best Jambon de Bayonne in the area. And, of course, many of the other products that the Basque cuisine is famous for.

There is a saying that some lofty Parisian food critics are fond of quoting that the only implement needed in a kitchen in the South West is - a tin opener! While this was meant as a clever put-down, nevertheless I think it does hit on a truth. Much of the great products of the South West can be preserved.. Think of confit de canard, foie gras, haricot beans in graisse d’oie (goose fat), rillettes, cassoulet and pipérade (though personally I have some doubts about this last one) et al... There isn't much that can't be put in a can or a jar - but it's none the worse for that. It's possible to buy all these products via mail order too!

Post visit report: Well, we had a great day out today high up in the Pyrenees.. First of all, the weather was supposed to be 3C in the morning warming up to 12C in the afternoon. Anyway, we set off and as we climbed up and up the skies cleared and we were gradually able to see the start of the high Pyrenees in the distance – the mountains near us were only about 2-3,000‘ high – further east, I think they go up to about 9,000’ or even higher. As we climbed, the full extent of the Pyrenees started to unfold in front of us.. and just when we thought we’d seen one high mountain, in the distance behind it, we’d see another even higher one - and in the blue misty distance behind that one, another one..

Les Aldudes

.. and yet another one beyond that. And all the time, the valley sides were getting steeper and steeper as we wound our way ever-upwards.. It was difficult to keep one eye on the driving with all this magnificent mountain scenery around us and at one moment, I thought I saw the pale outline of a snow-covered white peak that was higher than the rest, way way off in the distance and I thought, surely not, a snow covered peak so early in the season but on the regional news when we returned home they featured it too. First snow of the year in the Pyrenees..

Stirring mountain scenery and it was difficult to keep my eyes on the road as the country opened up before us. We ran up the valley on an old single track smuggler’s road that climbed up towards Spain and near the top we pulled over to eat our lunch.. I opened my window and looked out across the expanse of a great deep valley – white farmhouses with red roofs were dotted across the valley floor. It was through rugged border country like this that the men and women of the wartime Comet Line (organised by 24 year old Andrée De Jongh, a brave Belgian woman) famously helped Allied airmen to escape down from the Low Countries, through the occupied zone in France, across the Pyrenees into neutral Spain and home via British-controlled Gibraltar. In fact, in Sare, a Basque village close to the border, I recently discovered a newly placed memorial (below) to Victor Ithurria, a highly decorated and legendary figure who served in the SAS with great distinction during WWII before being killed on 25th August 1944..

I saw some large birds flying around in circles and I realised I was watching vultures (griffon vultures..) circling around in the air currents.. As I watched, I saw one furl its wings and dive down to the ground, followed by another, and another. Soon, there must have been 20-30 of them down there. Whatever was down there under a tree was getting a good pecking. Another British pensioner who won’t stop for a snooze after lunch again! We first saw them here a few years ago when we were up high in the mountains.. I remember thinking at the time, if I didn’t know better I’d swear they were vultures. When we got back to the hotel, they told us that, yes, there were quite a few vultures up in the hills.. Certainly makes you think twice about falling asleep in the sun after a good lunch..

We next came to a small village, ie, about 5 houses together, and one of them was a hotel with a restaurant. Out of interest we stopped to look at the lunch menu… it was £8 for a 4 course lunch…! (these are 1960 prices!) Next time we go up there, we might just try it. Anyway, we continued higher up the valley and soon we came to the border. There was no border as such – just a garage and a smoky café.. (smoking still being allowed indoors in Spain)

The countryside looked spectacularly good in its burnt copper autumn colours under a cloudless deep blue sky. After this, we went to St Jean Pied de Port. This is a very old town in the heart of the Pyrenees where Madame’s father’s family originated.

It’s on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. People still come from all over the world to walk the route. It was getting really warm now and after blocking various pavements for a while we found a tea shop and sat outside in the sun. Madame couldn’t believe that she was still wearing her sunglasses on 1st November..!

Main street of St Jean Pied de Port

Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port

At the moment, there’s still that holiday feel to life down here because we’re still "camping out" in the gîte with a minimum of our belongings. I just have the one English book and that’s “Out of Africa” - which I’ve read twice since we’ve been here - as all our books are in storage. As a compulsive reader, forgetting to pack a box of books in the van was a major mistake.

This is "Tarantella" by Hilaire Belloc.. (try reading it aloud)

Do you remember an Inn, Miranda?

Do you remember an Inn?

And the tedding and the spreading

Of the straw for a bedding,

And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,

And the wine that tasted of tar?

And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers

(Under the vine of the dark veranda?)

Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,

Do you remember an Inn?

And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers

Who hadn't got a penny,

And who weren't paying any,

And the hammer at the doors and the Din?

And the Hip! Hop! Hap! of the clap

Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl

Of the girl gone chancing, glancing, dancing,

Backing and advancing,

Snapping of a clapper to the spin

Out and in

And the Ting, Tong, Tang of the Guitar.

Do you remember an Inn, Miranda?

Do you remember an Inn?

There is another verse but I like this one.