Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
“Now you're exaggerating again.”
Lunch was excellent. We'd chosen a composite menu which included a seafood spe-
cial loaded with chips, desert, a quarter carafe of wine and espresso coffee, all for just 13€.
Pleasantly replete and feeling quite smug about the cheapness of our meal, we started to
make our way back to the apartment.
This proved to be a hazardous task as we were suddenly faced by an oncoming surge
of surfers who were jostling for position on the pavement. Steadfastly padding towards us,
en route to their closest chill-out joint, they were apparently devoid of spatial awareness
and completely oblivious to the various evasive manoeuvres required by passers-by. With
no other route available, we dodged around several boards which were balanced precari-
ously on top of the heads or shoulders of the surfers. Jack, in the midst of this skirmish
spotted that I was about to be decapitated and yelled “
Duck!
”
“
Ow!
Thanks, darling. Good lord, it's like negotiating a minefield.”
“I know,” exclaimed Jack. “The Germans could have saved a bloody fortune on
coastal defences by simply employing this lot to run up and down the beaches with their
surfboards flailing.”
Amazingly we made it back unscathed and I got stuck into tidying the dogs up in pre-
paration for our departure the next day. Jack, finding the whole dog de-sanding process too
tedious, developed a sudden urge to check the car tyre pressure and oil. This was becoming
something of a nervous tic, but I let it go because otherwise I would have had to endure
several more lectures on the benefits of life without filthy dogs.
We ended our seaside day by driving to St-Jean-de-Luz (the last major town before
heading into Spain) in the Basque country. Basque people have inhabited the foothills of
the Pyrénées in northern Spain and south-west France for thousands of years. With a rich
and sometimes tempestuous history, they are one of the oldest ethnic groups in Europe.
Their language, also known as
Euskera
, is Europe's oldest living language. It's unrelated
to Spanish, French, or any other Romance language and, extraordinarily, seems to belong
to no other known family of languages.
It was universally spoken by the rural Basques until the end of the nineteenth century
and at that time it had no written literary tradition. It is extremely difficult to tackle, for
example the phrase 'Pleased to meet you' translates as
Pozten naiz zu ezagutzeaz?
and ad-
equately shows why it might be easy to flounder if faced with a flurry of words spoken in
this tongue. Happily, that has never happened to us, but we have regularly been foxed by
the signage. Road signs, menus and other public messages are often written in both Basque
and French. So, read at speed, they can be very confusing.
The weather was remarkably tranquil so we decided to have dinner at one of the har-
bour restaurants. I suppose one should always smell a rat (although not necessarily liter-
ally) when entering a nearly empty restaurant. But we thought nothing of it. It was early,
