A Valley in the Pays Basque by Fraser Harrison
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At first sight French rural addresses are puzzling to the British eye. They appear to be at least a line short and the post code seems to have strayed into the wrong line. Our temporary address, for example, consists of the name of the house and then, on the next line a five-figure number and another name. Is the number the post code or an American-style street number? It is, in fact the post code and it pinpoints the house with great precision because the second name, Lantabat refers not to a village, but to a valley.
Lantabat is in Basse Navarre, one of the three provinces that make up the Pays Basque, which is the French part of the world populated by Basques. These three provinces lie in a row along the western Pyrenees, which also marks the border between France and Spain. In all there are seven Basque provinces, the other four lying in Spain. An old form of Basque nationalist graffiti was ‘4 + 3 = 1’. The province on the Atlantic coast is Labourd and it boasts two of France’s most agreeable cities: Bayonne, a venerable port, and Biarritz, once famed as the resort of princes, and now famous again as the only resort in Europe where the breakers are formidable enough to attract Californian and Australian surfers. Soule, an area of caves (grottes) and gorges, is the Basque province that lies furthest inland and seems the most remote for reasons that are not entirely geographic. Basse Navarre lies between these two.
We are staying in a house that overlooks Lantabat valley and is blessed with the delightful name Choko Ona, Basque for ‘beautiful corner’. The house is surrounded by a meadow, which is being grazed by cows the colour of caramel. They are Aquitaines Blanches, big, docile creatures that can be found recumbent on the sides of narrow roads winding up the mountain-sides, as contented as they are hazardous. They rip up the juicy green grass with their purple tongues and we can hear the continual clonk of the bell attached by thick leather strap to the neck of a cow accompanied by her calf. Unless the farmer removes it, this charming bell will keep us awake tonight.
The valley drops sharply below the house to the road, which follows the sinuous course of a stream, aptly named La Joyeuse. On the other side, the valley rises to a high, rocky rim over which the clouds pour in the morning like a kind of lost surf. This is a countryside of small, immaculately tended fields and meadows, and despite the hot June sun, which is making the plastic gutters creak in pain, it is also lush and emerald, a sign of its generous, mountainous rainfall. The grass feeds a dozen flocks of sheep scattered around the valley. They form white patterns against the green that appear to have been designed by a sculptor (Richard Long, perhaps): circles, crescents, snakes and mazes. In very hot weather they crowd together, head towards the centre, squeezing into a tight swarm. They must know what they’re doing, though to a non-sheep their behaviour seems quite illogical and likely to do nothing but raise the temperature. Towards the end of the afternoon, punctual as commuters, they will line up in single file and trickle along the edge of the field, taking themselves home to be milked. The patter of their hooves on the road approaching the farm sounds like rain. In due course their milk will be turned into a slightly salty hard cheese imaginatively named Brebis (French for ‘ewe’), which is at its most delicious when eaten with cherry jam, another speciality of the region.
The farms are small, no more than a dozen hectares, and are easily picked out, since each is dominated by its white farmhouse. Basque architecture conforms to what you might call the Prince of Wales rule, which is - if you have a good thing don’t change it. At first sight the Basque house looks as if it got lost on its way to Switzerland, because it has a low pitch to its roof and large, overhanging eaves to carry snow clear of the structure. But its most striking feature is that every one looks like its neighbour: walls painted white, corners are picked out in dressed stone and, in obedience to the local law, shutters, windows, doors and so forth painted either green or oxblood. These houses tend to be enormous, almost hamlets in themselves, and are intended to house animals, machinery, as well as extended families, under one roof. Just over the border we have seen a couple of villages, Erratzu and Arizkun (typical Basque names) that still have houses in their centres with projecting upper storeys, a very old feature, and animals stalled at street level, their heads hanging over the pavement.
The Basques themselves are a short, dark, long-nosed people of ferociously independent spirit, whose men are distinguished by an almost cuboid physique and great strength that is put to the test each summer in Force Basque, trials of strength that involve lifting boulders and hacking logs. They are famous for their cuisine and the beauty of their singing in choirs of both men and women. As this valley eloquently demonstrates, they are diligent and fastidious farmers. They are of course also famous for their berets and pelote, a game played with a hard ball against a wall that is found in every village, however small. It comes in two versions, both homicidal: one involves the use of a basket scoop that allows the ball to be hurled at lethal speeds, the other is played with bare hands. Despite their often forbidding appearance, and their warlike ways of amusing themselves, Basques are hospitable and patient with foreigners.
The sun is now at its zenith in a sky that is pure blue. Its heat has brought out a little lizard covered in Op-art stripes, which skitters across the hot stones of the terrace and pauses to peck fly spots off the leg of our plastic table. A kite, identifiable by its forked tail, keeps an eye on the farm yard where a couple of yellow dogs pant in the shade. At night they will add their barking to the cow bell’s percussion, and the band will be completed by a strange species of frog that makes a noise akin to an electronic glockenspiel. Later in the afternoon, as the sun cools, we may be lucky enough to see a humming-bird moth, a creature that hovers just as it name suggests. Since it is lunchtime, or at least late enough in the morning to count as lunchtime, we open a bottle of Jurancon, a white wine of the region that is served in all the bars and hotels and is a little sweet, but delicious when cold. Lunch itself will be sausage from Spain, Bayonne ham (a coarse smoked ham), a baguette bought that morning, salad and the inevitable Brebis and cherry jam.
As our thoughts turn to these pleasures, we see another version of bon appetit expressing itself. High above the valley rim a single black shape appears, gliding motionlessly in circles. Soon there are 10 black shapes in a loose cluster, and then 30, all gliding across the sky with the same effortless grace. They are griffon vultures, huge birds, with a wingspan of two and a half metres or more, which feed off the dead sheep the farmers leave out for them to dispose of on the hill tops. For all their unsavoury dining habits, they are a magnificent sight, and this part of the Pays Basque is one of the few in France where they can be observed.
We admire them for a moment and then give our whole attention to our own lunch.
One of the best ways to see the Pyrenees is to walk. The French take their walking almost as seriously as their cycling, which means that the Pyrenees, probably the finest walking area in Europe, are well endowed with paths, trails and various well-marked and mapped Grande Randonnees. Indeed, this has been an area famous for its walkers since the Middle Ages: not far from Lantabat is the town of St Jean-Pied-de-Port which has always been a resting place for French pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela.