Pyrennes and the Basque country

Chausson in the Pyrennes

There is a narrow area of land between Spain and France that stretches from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. The Atlantic side is home to the Basque people and the area is called Pays Basque (Basque country). The middle and Mediterranean part of this area is the Pyrenees. The Pyrenees are less developed than the Alps and really very beautiful with 3000m snow capped peaks, streams, lakes and forests.

The transition between the flat agricultural land we left behind in the Toulouse area and the beginning of the Pyrennes mountains was quite swift. We were soon driving through villages that looked as if they could have been in Wales, grey stone houses with grey slate roofs.

Cirque de Gavarnie

The forecast was good, and as promised the weather was clear and sunny when we left the pretty village of Arreau. The mountains were outlined clearly against a purple-blue sky and the peaks glowed orange in the sunrise. We set off early on hairpin bend roads via a couple of mountain passes before arriving at the Cirque de Gavarnie. My mouth opened and a word of shock was uttered when we rounded a corner and saw the Cirque – it was stupendous, too hard to photograph though. A giant wall of grey rock shaped in a semi-circle topped with a fresh dusting of snow from the night before hung before us. It is like a huge theatre curtain, dripping with melt water that feeds streams and waterfalls. The walk up to the cirque was brilliant. The soft light shone through the silver birch leaves that were taking on their autumn colours. The light breeze had the leaves shivering on the branches and little confetti-like bits were blowing around.

After spending a night in the mountains, we rattled and rolled the insides of Chausson on another hairpin bend road to Cauterets to see the Pont d’ Espagne. We didn’t know what the Pont was – a natural bridge or something? We passed alot of signs pointing the way and were looking forward to seeing the prize at the end of the bum clenching drive. We were greated by an enormous carpark (more expectation) but couldn’t see any of the advertised chairlifts running.

As the lifts were not running, we walked a 4WD road up and up to the Blue Lake. After 2 hrs we came back down a narrow stony path, it was then we saw signs to “Pont d’ Espagne”. The Pont was an old humpbacked stone bridge crossing a deep rock chasm. We could have walked right past without knowing. That sight ticked off, we hit the road again, and drove on yet more hairpin bends, some about 360 degrees on our way to Lourdes. We drove over Tour de France messages painted on the road as encouragement (?) to the competitors that had cycled the route some months previously.

Blue Lake near Cautarets

The campsite we stayed in set the scene for Lourdes itself with its down at heel appearance. Tacky souvenir shops lined the streets in Lourdes selling Madonna shaped bottles for you to fill with holy water. I did fancy one of these, you screwed the crown off the head for the opening, but value for money, the 15 litre plastic jerrycans would capture much more holy water. We went into the Sanctuaires Notre Dame de Lourdes, that had a large impressive church as its centrepiece. I eyed the vending machine inside the church selling medals for 2Es, but then my eye was caught by the very large candles for sale outside. I like candles. There were alot of people visiting on this rather drab day, ranging from some being wheeled in wheelchairs to large Chinese tour groups, however all nationalities seemed to be represented.

Enough of Lourdes, I had got the washing done in the campground with a short lived heart-in- mouth moment when the washing machine flashed all kinds of message to me, but none of a visionary nature. It settled down and did what it was supposed to after I tried pressing various buttons over and over. 

 It was a big drive to St Jean Pied du Port, we are really in Basque country now. Mountains and hills hove in the distance, some dusted with snow. St Jean PdP is a walled town that is the last stop in France for pilgrims headed for Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The river Nive cuts through the middle, and the town is surrounded by ramparts with a couple of historic ‘portes’ (gates).The scallop shell is the motif of the pilgrims and we saw this repeated lots of times through the town. There were backpacker type places where we could see bunk beds through the windows for pilgrims and cheap menus for pilgrims.

St Jean Pied du Port

We visited a few typical Basque villages, some had a fronton (an open concrete court where the national sport of pelota is played. Pelota involves hitting a hard leather covered ball against a high wall with either your bare hand, a bat or long basket attached to the hand. It can be really dangerous due to the speed of the ball. Beret wearing gentlemen, and signs in both French and Basque are other clues we are not in France-regular.

Pelota court in Basque village

We hovered on the Spanish/French border, unwilling to make the change in countries again. We had an unfortunate experience with blown fuses in the truck caused by a faulty laptop charger. Things started bad then got worse, the 12v outlets wouldn’t work, then we discovered the internal lights and bed motor wouldn’t work ..... after Stuart tried the logical remedies we contacted the Chausson owner group on Facebook and simultenously Stuart and a helpful member figured the fuse mystery out.

Off to Spain, the GPS was programmed with a destination in San Sebastian and an LPG station as a via point. Long story short – we went wrong, ended up on a toll road, then were headed back to France. (We forgot to cancel the LPG via point in the satnav). Luckily big distances weren’t involved and we found some LPG which runs our fridge, cooker, and hot water, phew – we were down to 2 litres.

Espagne, here we come.