San Sebastian / Donostia

We’re staying at Hendaye, which feels rather home like. It’s got a lovely beach and late Edwardian promenade, and the thing that makes it feel homelike is the wind; there are lots of people on the beach trying to get out of the wind, or trying to get out of wet swim suits, while wrapped in flapping towels. They need, but don’t have, windbreaks. I know the idea of going on a beach when a windbreak is needed is something that amuses some people, but we native north easterners know their value.

The view from our hotel balcony

It’s also where Franco met Hitler in 1940, and where Wellington’s troops crossed the Bidassoa into France.

Soult was busily building redoubts and fortifications, but he believed the Bidassoa couldn’t be crossed, and the weakest point of his line was near the sea. Wellington was keen to keep in close touch with the navy and his supplies, and had discovered from local shrimpers that the river could be forded in the estuary at low tide. On October 7^th 1813, local guides led the troops across, armpit deep in the Bidassoa. At the same time, the Light division took La Rhune, in a brilliant attack.

We can see La Rhune. There’s a rack and pinion railway up it. It’s amazing to me that the men got up it and were in a condition to fight when they reached the top. There’s been so many times in these expeditions when we have scarcely been able to believe the soldiers’ fitness and stamina. I suppose only those who could keep up survived.

Today we went to San Sebastian. The trip started poorly – most of San Sebastian is an unlovely modern city, and we were a bit sulky and regretting making the effort.

However when we got parked near the main beach, it turned into a grand day out. We spent ages going round the rocky promontory, Monte Urgell, and the fortifications on top of it, Castillo de la Mota. Franco put a huge statue of Christ on the top. The old citadel has been made into a museum of the history of San Sebastian, with a lot of emphasis on the tourism, so there were some brilliant old films of the twenties and thirties. There’s a royal villa, where the royal family used to holiday. It looks lovely, but I doubt whether Juan Carlos has holidayed there – San Sebastian (or Donostia)  is apparently a hotbed of Basque nationalism. A lot of signs are only in Basque.

Anyway, Wellington needed to take San Sebastian. He couldn’t just blockade it, because it kept being resupplied by sea. Wellington got very ratty with the Royal Navy, but I suppose it was too hard to catch every little cutter when the fogs came down.

The town walls were much weaker than those of the citadel, so the British attacked the town. The first assault, on July 25^th, failed, and Colonel Sir Richard Fletcher, Wellington’s brilliant chief engineer, responsible for the Lines of Torres Vedras, was killed.

Citadel at the very top of the picture, taken from the riverside
walk. Why the town was assaulted, not the citadel.

By 31^st August, the guns had battered a breach in the east wall, and the troops waded the river at low tide. By this time the artillery was so reliable and accurate that they fired over the heads of their own troops, which was unheard of, and managed to ignite the French magazine. Then having got into the town, the British and Portuguese went on the rampage. It was only stopped by the fact that the entire town was on fire.

The gate of the citadel, from where the French commander finally
surrendered, 9 days after the city had fallen.

We noticed that it is still a very sore topic in Donostia. There’s a street called 31^st August, where there are memorial ceremonies every year. Some of the signs in the museum, and the Spanish government of the day, implied that the fire was deliberately started. Wellington always denied this, and it does not seem a necessary explanation, in a town which had been heavily shelled and a powder magazine exploded.

A note on food – you may have noticed a lot less about where and what we ate than you usually have to plough through. This is because the food has been largely disappointing. There are some very posh looking “new Basque cuisine” restaurants, if one is prepared to fork out £70 a head. But everywhere else has been OK, and that’s the best I can say.

Bayonne

Today we left for Bayonne. On the way, driving down the valley of the Nive, which by the way, was a very beautiful drive, we went through a number of villages mentioned in dispatches as sites of fierce engagements. The land is so broken up and the rivers are so fierce (remember that the fighting in this area was in winter), that there wasn’t a “battle”, with both armies drawn up opposing each other.

We stopped at the Croix de Mouguerre, erected in memory of Soult’s defence of France and the soldiers who died. It’s to honour Soult “who with inferior forces, foot by foot, defended this country for seven months against the army of Wellington.”

The Soult memorial

In fact the numbers were pretty equal overall. Wellington had to send home his Spanish troops. The Spanish were too inefficient to supply their men, who sometimes actually starved; this meant that they were driven to looting, the one thing Wellington was extremely anxious to avoid. He did not want the population driven to guerrilla action as the Spanish had been.  In fact, the French civilians, far from finishing off British stragglers or the wounded, took care of them, knowing they would be compensated for their trouble. But Soult certainly made life difficult for Wellington's army. 

There’s a nice story about Wellington talking to the rather garrulous mayor of an occupied French town, and inviting him to dinner. The mayor couldn’t believe Wellington’s courtesy, and contrasted it with the behaviour of the French generals, who had treated him “like a dog.”  

Anyway the Croix de Mouguerre marks the site of an extremely sharp engagement , St Pierre, when the French tried to drive off the British army investing Bayonne.  The British army was widely spread, and one of the two pontoon bridges which had been put across the Nive was swept away, making troop movements very slow. The British around St Pierre were commanded by General Hill, and were outnumbered three to one, so there were some very ticklish hours before Wellington was able to bring up the 6^th division.  Wellington did not take over, however, commenting “My dear Hill, the day’s your own.”

The hills on which the action of St Pierre was fought. 

There were a number of incidents which bear telling – the colonel of the Gloucesters, announcing “Dead or alive, we must hold our ground”; General Stewart, who had lost his entire staff, remarking “A shell, sir. Very animating”, as one fell at his feet; the ADC sent to order a brigade to attack, who ended up leading the attack himself, because all the senior officers were dead.

But there was also a shaming incident. The new commanding officer of the 71^st Highlanders, Colonel Peacock, lost his nerve and ordered them to abandon their positions. Hill himself found them, and Stewart personally formed the Highlanders up and led them into the battle.  Peacock’s behaviour caused Hill to swear for what is believed to be only the second time in the whole war! (As far as I can make out, Picton never stopped swearing.)

Bayonne is a really pretty town, with loads of attractive houses. Building outside the fortification was forbidden until the beginning of the twentieth century, so it’s very well preserved. It’s on the confluence of the Nive and the Adour, which is a really big river, and the old walls and some of the towers are turned into old houses. The gateways are still there. But outside the old walls are the modern fortifications (Vauban again).

Wellington didn’t attempt to take it by storm – much too costly – but kept it blockaded, like Pamplona.

Unfortunately, the governor of Bayonne, General Thouvenot, decided, after he had heard about Napoleon’s abdication, to launch a sortie. The British seemed to have relaxed, believing the war to be over. After being driven back, and in some considerable confusion, they were saved by the Coldstream Guards under Colonel Maitland (later to behave heroically at Waterloo) and the King’s German Legion. Thouvenot withdrew his men. The British losses were over 800, and the French over 900, and all for some laughable idea of “honour”.  The British officers, who had been slogging their way right from Lisbon, for five years, were seriously shocked by the waste.

The 1st Foot Guards (Coldstream) cemetery

There are a couple of cemeteries for the British Guardsmen, and we visited one. Most of the memorials are for officers, but there was one for a company sergeant, who had served in the Coldstream Guards for twenty years.  It’s like being killed on November 12^th 1918. 

St Jean Pieds de Port

Today we decided to have a proper look around St Jean Pieds De Port. It has medieval walls, built by (I think) Sancho the Strong. Or maybe Sancho the Great. I get a bit confused. I thought they were the same person for a while.

However, Louis XIV sent Vauban to fortify the place during the wars of the Spanish Succession. There are “modern” fortifications, built with artillery in mind, and a large citadel, which was a barracks. This was why it made a good point for Soult to regroup the army after the disaster of Vitoria. Here, and Bayonne, had defences, barracks and military supplies.

 You can walk round the medieval walls and out along the river, so we had a lovely morning. You can’t go into the citadel, which is a school. An approved one, judging by appearances. Along the river there were hundreds of chaffinches, the din was amazing, and we saw dippers.  There were lots of trout in the river, too.

Then after lunch we decided to drive up the Col D’Ispeguy. It’s just spectacularly beautiful. There are foxgloves, coltsfoot, and wild herbs, and we saw a lot of griffin vultures. I might have seen a raven, but I couldn’t swear to it. I wish we were up to some walking, there are loads of paths which seem to be well way marked.

Looking back down the pass towards St Jean Pied de Port

When we were looking at the vultures, a French lady came and asked if me if I knew where the black pigs were. Half my mind was thinking that my French had let me down again, and I’d got it wrong, and the other half was running on Captain Pugwash, for reasons that I’m sure anyone of my age will understand, and I can’t begin to explain to anyone else. Luckily Phil rescued me. I hadn’t misheard. There are wild black pigs, not boars, and they make famous ham. But we didn’t see any. We did see pottoks, often with rather cute foals, and very pretty goats, and sheep, and off white cows, also quite pretty as cows go.

Pottok with foal

Griffin Vulture - didn't Phil and the fancy camera do well!

From the col, you can see into the valleys where the battle of Maya was fought. It must have been incredibly difficult to control large bodies of men, and to know what was going on, in such broken and difficult terrain.

It’s weird, every village has a fronton, for playing pelota, and the tourist boards make a big boast of it, but we’ve never once seen anyone actually playing. Perhaps it isn’t the season.

Orthez

The battle of Orthez is the last (chronologically) battle of the Peninsular War that we’re going to visit. The very last battle was at Toulouse, but we’re not going there, because the city has grown so much that there’s nothing left to see, and anyway we don’t want to go into another big city.

Orthez is out of the foothills and in lovely slightly hilly countryside, very well wooded. It was more interesting than we thought, as it turns out to be a centre of Protestantism, and the home of Jeanne D’Albret, mother of Henri IV,  Henri of Navarre, he of “Paris is worth a mass.”

Jeanne d'Albret's house

We crossed the Gave de Pau. Wellington kept pushing Soult back, crossing rivers quickly, so that Soult was never quite ready, and his flank was turned. He wasn’t helped by Napoleon taking troops to defend the east of France. (Wellington had to wait to invade France until he was sure that Prussia and Austria were not going to make peace, and release all the French Armies to descend on him.) In addition, some of Soult’s  German troops defected after hearing of Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig.

The bridges over the rivers were usually destroyed, but the British crossed on pontoon bridges, or more often, by fording them. This was much quicker, and speed was of the essence, but a very dangerous procedure, and many men were drowned. The strongest men would form a line across, just upstream of the crossing point, because if a man carrying a sixty pound pack fell over on the rocky, uneven bottom, in the swirling waters, he would never be able to get back up.

The Gave de Pau - you can see the rocky banks, but not the whirlpools.

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After the river, it got hard to make out the main points of the battle. It’s really heavily wooded, so it’s hard to make out the features. It might not have been so wooded in 1814, and the battle was in February so at least the trees were bare. Wellington had 2000 more men than Soult, and Soult had almost twice the number of casualties – more than 4,000 men.

We did find the village of St Boes, but it was completely destroyed during the battle, so it’s not even in quite the same place. We also found the Roman Camp, which turned out not to be a Roman camp at all,

The "Roman Camp"

but an Iron Age fort. We were hopeful that we might get a better view from it, but the grass was up to my shoulders!

But we did find the monument to the French dead, and one to Foy, in the place where he was injured by shrapnel (as invented by Major Shrapnel of the Royal Artillery.) According to the monument he was a hero citizen, and this was the fourteenth time he had been wounded.

A bit of a lie - by this time, they were definitely dying for Napoleon only.

The Foy monument.

Wellington received his third slight wound towards the end of the battle. A bullet drove his sword hilt into his hip. He managed to stay on his horse, though he was still limping a week later.  As Wellington was never far from the thick of the battle it’s surprising he was never seriously wounded or killed. Even he said that he thought “the finger of God was upon him.”

The drive back to St Jean Pieds de Ports was lovely. The sun had come out and we could appreciate the rolling foothills, with massive peaks in the distance, all as green as can be, and decorated with wild roses, honeysuckle, elderflower and yarrow. It is very beautiful here. 

Sorauren and Roncesvalles

Sadly, we left the hotel at Akkaretta  today.

The chronology of this next bit is all wrong, but we first went to see the battlefield of Sorauren. After Vitoria, Wellington dispatched a Spanish army to guard Pamplona, another detachment to besiege San Sebastian, and two separate detachments to guard the passes of Maya and Roncesvalles.  But Soult did an amazing job of assembling and arming a “new” army and counterattacked before anyone expected.

The Maya pass was defended by 6,000 men under Stewart, who faced 21,000 men under D’Erlon. After 10 hours of fighting, the French had not broken through, but Stewart had lost a quarter of his men and four guns, the only guns ever lost by Wellington. Hill ordered Stewart to retire back down the pass.

Roncesvalle was held by 13,000 men under Sir Lowry Cole, who faced 40,000 men under Soult himself. The fighting started at 6 a.m. and ended about 4 p.m. when a thick mist descended. We have experience of this thick, clinging sea fret sort of mist in the mountains! The men found it extremely difficult to keep their powder dry, and in any case some regiments were out of ammunition. So Cole retreated.

Cole took up a position along a ridge close to Sorauren, blocking the road to Pamplona. Wellington was at San Sebastian, but on hearing the news, he rode immediately for Sorauren. By the time he got there, the only member of staff still with him was Lord Fitzroy Somerset – he who lost his right arm at Waterloo, and became famous, or infamous, as the Crimean commander Lord Raglan. Wellington was a bruising rider and seems to have had infinite stamina.

On reaching Sorauren, he realised that Pack’s division was going to walk straight into the French, so stopped on the bridge to write an order changing the direction of their advance, and then, with the French in hot pursuit, galloped into the British lines. 

The bridge where Wellington was nearly captured

The first troops he met were Portuguese, who raised a terrific cheer of “Duoro! Duoro!” (his Portuguese title) and the news and cheering soon spread through the army. Wellington rode to the most prominent spot he could find and showed himself off, and this caused Soult to pause, long enough for more British troops to come up. By this time, it seems that some of the French marshals were beginning to realise that fighting Wellington was not as easy as they had believed originally. But for some reason they continued to attack in column, right up to Waterloo, so that the British, in lines, had a four to one superiority in fire power. In addition, the riflemen, with their accurate fire arms, deliberately targeted officers and standard bearers.

During the night there was a fierce rainstorm, which the British troops took as a good omen. There were rainstorms before Salamanca, Vitoria, Sorauren, and later, Waterloo.

So first we went to Zalbadica, at the other end of the lines from Sorauren. This was held by Spanish troops, who started bravely but then broke. Wellington had added a stiffening of the 40^th foot, and 400 of them drove off 2,000 French.

Zalbadica. Allies (mainly Spanish here, with 40th Foot) on the left ridge,
French on the right, but a "land bridge" between the ridges. 

Zalbadica has a very ancient church, built as they all seem to be around here, like a fortress, with almost no windows. It’s on the pilgrim route, and we were waylaid by a lovely nun, whose job is to minister to the pilgrims, so it was a bit embarrassing to admit we were there for a battle. Apparently, the tradition is for pilgrims reaching Zalbadica to give the church bell, which is very old, a single dong. But the local authorities are trying to get people off the traditional route and on to main routes. They do seem to direct pilgrims along roads, which doesn’t look a pleasurable way to walk. The sister had information in every conceivable language, Croat to Korean. She said she’d met all nationalities doing the Camino.

At Sorauren you can see the very bridge where Wellington wrote his orders, with the French advancing rapidly. You can see the British, Cole’s, ridge, and the French ridge. After the first day’s fighting on the 28^th July, there was a pause, with both sides in their original positions. But on the 30^th, Wellington launched an attack, which drove the French back into over the border into France. He had managed to get guns up onto Cole's ridge. I do see the point of the Royal Navy Field gun races, because certainly here and at Salamanca, they gunners obviously did dismantle, manhandle and then reassemble the guns. 

So then we drove up the pass of Roncesvalles. It’s very beautiful, but much more heavily wooded and less bleak than I pictured. There are villages full of large prosperous looking farm houses, which look a little Swiss, very attractive. There are horses, or ponies, which seem to be wild. They are often palomino and apparently called “pottoks” in Basque.

 At the top there’s a Monastery, where Sancho the Strong is buried, a pilgrim’s dormitory, and a chapel, supposedly built over Roland’s tomb, but much later, which has a charnel house for the pilgrims who die on the road, which is a cheery thought, but maybe dying on pilgrimage earns you days off purgatory.  At the very top of the pass there’s a monument to Roland, who was killed by Basques, not by Moors, as I always thought, although they were vassals of the Moors.

Tho top of the pass, with monument to Roland

Roncesvalles

Roncesvalles is a bit like Little Big Horn – a legendary place, not a real one, so we were very excited to have actually been there. Of course, the modern road is different. The old pilgrims, the Black Prince, Charlemagne and Marshal Soult used the old Roman road. You can still find it, apparently, but it was raining and freezing  cold, so we decided we could live without seeing it.

The ancient pilgrim hostel at Roncesvalles - no windows and an outside
tap, but still in use.

Then we descended the valley to St Jean Pied de Port, a pilgrim heavy town, where traditionally, various routes converged before the pilgrims made the journey across the Pyrenees. It’s a pretty walled town on the river Nive with lots of interesting buildings, but more touristy than anywhere we’ve been so far. It was an important trading and craft centre, and used to be part of the kingdom of Navarre. I'm not sure when it became part of France, but when I've got an easier internet connection, I'm going to research Navarre.

Today was a Wellington free day.  We decided to visit some historical sites, dating back much earlier, to the Kingdom of Navarre, which was absorbed into the kingdom of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1509. We have been wondering how to follow Wellington, and the Kings of Navarre might be a possibility. They have brilliant names –Pedro the Bold, Sancho the Strong, Carlos the Bad.

Storks.

So first stop was Olite, where there was an important Royal Palace built in 1357 for Carlos III and his queen, Leonore. It was sumptuously decorated by mudejar craftsmen, with carving and plaster work, but unfortunately was set alight by Navarrese guerrilleros in 1813, to stop the French using it. They still have some of the blue ceramic floor tiles. It’s a wonderful place, with a private courtyard garden for the queen, a gorgeous loggia for the king, and a special loggia tower, from where the King and Queen could watch tournaments. There are Disney type turrets, and the views are amazing. The air is full of swifts and martins, and there are storks.

The Royal Palace - loggias for viewing tournaments on the left.

The King's loggia, with mulberry tree

The town is also very attractive, and as with all the little towns round here, not over touristy, not full of empty weekend getaways. There are lots of locals around. In fact, there was a wedding going on, and we wondered if it was a local teacher, since the school bands seemed to have turned out. It was lovely. 

They seemed to be getting ready for an encierra - a bull running - as there were very strong barriers being set up. But there is no bull ring, and we gathered that whatever happens, happens in the town square.

So then we went to Ujue, an almost untouched hill top town, with its fortress type Gothic church. But Ujue is a pilgrimage site – once a year, the whole of the local area descends to give thanks for their victory over the Moors in 1039. So it’s a very curious building – sort of a church within a church, because it’s surrounded by galleries which can be circambulated by the faithful. There are alabaster window panes, and I think that’s the first time I’ve actually seen any.

The church at Ujue

Then on to Sanguesa, on the river Aragon, which is much bigger than I expected, but that may be due to snow melt – one can easily see snow covered peaks in the distance. It has a church with a very impressive Gothic doorway – we are tending not to go into all the churches as they bring us out in a rash of Protestantism.

The Gothic doorway at Sanguesa

There is a thirteenth century Franciscan hospital for pilgrims, and lots of big impressive renaissance town houses. They have enormously projecting wooden eaves, some so heavily carved that they reminded me of the temples in Nepal, but less rude, obviously.

Finally, we visited Javier, the birthplace of St Francis Xavier, of Goa, China, etc. He was born in an ex-Moorish fortress, which has been heavily restored. The grounds are lovely but the atmosphere of religiosity put us off, so we didn’t go in the castle. We didn’t want to be preached at.

It’s been sunny all day, and sometimes positively hot, so we’re really hoping the weather has done its worst.

We keep crossing the Camino de Santiago. Quite a lot of bits just run along a main road, which can't be much fun. Virtually all the pilgrims we have seen are around our age - I suppose you must be retired to do it, as it is a least a month's walking from here to Santiago de Compostela. Some don't look up to it, but then I suppose they are just getting into it and will get fitter. 

Here are some pictures of where we're staying. I've seen lots of red kites, too.

The kitchen, with fireplace, bread oven, stone sink, and huge chimney above.

The view from our window.

Pamplona

Before leaving Vitoria we went to the museum of arms, which was in a street of extremely lovely turn of the century houses. In addition to lots of swords and armour, they have Alava’s hat and sword, and a couple of interesting dioramas illustrating key points of the battle. I bet some war gamers had huge fun building those. They seemed quite authentic – well anyway, the Rifles wore green and Picton’s Inniskillings wore green kilts, and that’s about as far as I can judge.

Pamplona isn’t as charming as Vitoria, but interesting to see. By the time we got there, it had stopped raining. The San Fermin festival, with the bull running, is in a couple of weeks, and they are gearing up for it, with special, and pricey, menus that you must book for. We parked near the bull ring, because it was the easiest place to park in the old part, and walked some of the route taken by the bulls. It’s quite a long way to run, actually, so I hope the runners have done a bit of training and are not just drunken Australian back packers. If I were Basque, I think I’d resent all these wankers muscling in on my heritage, and really hate Hemingway, but they can’t do, as there is a street named after the old fool.

Pamplona was an extremely strong frontier fortress. You should just see the fortifications – I don’t think photos can possibly properly convey their strength and size. There are three lines of walls, three deep dry moats, cannon emplacements so that all parts of the walls were covered, and the final wall is immense. Wellington had taken Cuidad Rodrigo with heavy losses, and Badajoz with great slaughter. He failed to take Burgos, not having an adequate siege train, but it made little difference – it was eventually simply bypassed. So he took a similar approach to Pamplona. 

                                                     

Some of the outer defences, with the new part of the town in the background.

The drawbridge forming just part of the defences to the gate
with winding gear intact.

It was blockaded by Spanish troops. The French commander had a garrison swollen by soldiers fleeing Vitoria, and the besieging Spanish would not let civilians leave the city.  In the end they were reduced to eating domestic dogs and cats, and rats. They surrendered at the end of October 1813.

The final wall

The second and third walls, from the second moat.

We also visited the Gothic cathedral. The Spanish in the north seem less obsessed with blood and torture than the ones in the south, so the religious art is tolerable; but, if anything, they are even more unhealthily obsessed with Marianism. Jesus comes a very poor second to his mother round here. The cloisters were nice though.

Then we left Pamplona towards Roncevalles and our hotel. Well, it’s amazing. The previous two hotels have been modern urban chic, and to tell the truth I was beginning to find all the black marble, black slate and chocolate wallpaper quite oppressive. This place couldn’t be more different. It’s a very old Navarran Farm house. Farm implements originally on the ground floor, and then upstairs to the living quarters. The beams are enormous, and all fixed with wooden pegs, no metal. The walls of the rooms are lath and plaster, and there is an amazing kitchen, with a stone fire place in the middle, with huge stone firedogs, and a vast conical chimney above, which rises right through the top floor. There are beams for hanging smoking meat in the chimney and a proper bread oven on one corner of the room.

There’s a dovecote in the front of the building and the owners have collected really old furniture for the rooms. From the windows there are beautiful views of very green hills, and a little further off, the mountains proper. The sun has even come out – a bit fitfully, but still. The address is the best – Camino de Santiago 11. We have seen quite a few pilgrims, mostly looking knackered and /or soaked.

A meadow, as seen everywhere. But no wonder they are so lush - it does rain!

Vitoria

The main square in Vitoria

We have decided to get round the problem of Spanish meal times by having a big breakfast and then a very late lunch, and no dinner.  So this morning we ate a good breakfast, and then drove to Vitoria. Vitoria is on a little hill surrounded by a fertile plain, with the river Zadorra running across it.

Joseph Bonaparte had set up his army in three lines across the road to Vitoria, facing west, from where he expected Wellington to attack. Needless to say, Wellington did not oblige. He divided his army into four main attacks – Graham’s force went through the hills to get behind the French and cut the main road to Bayonne; Hill commanded an assault from the right, intended to draw the French away from the main assault. A Spanish civilian went to Wellington to tell him that the bridge of Tres Puentes, was not only intact but not even guarded, and Wellington, decisive as usual, ordered Kempt’s force across, which they did with almost no opposition. One of the few casualties was the Spanish civilian, who was decapitated by a cannon ball. Meanwhile Picton got too impatient to wait for Dalhousie and forced the Mendoza bridge. Then the French were simply rolled up and routed.

The hill of Arinez, from where Wellingtom commanded the later part of the battle 

The Tres Puentes bridge is still there, and pretty much unchanged – it’s originally Roman. This was the only time on our tours that we have met other people out visiting battlefields, but we met a bus tour from Northallerton, very largely composed of soldiers. They may be here as tomorrow is the 200^th anniversary of the battle and all sorts of junkets are planned.

Tres Puentes Bridge

We crossed the bridge and walked up to the Roman town which is being excavated. It wasn’t actually that interesting, but the wild roses, honeysuckle, every sort of wild flower even including orchids, and the cacophony of bird song, made it a delightful walk.

Then we crossed the Mendoza bridge, which is completely new. We saw the village of Margarita, which was taken by Dalhousie. Dalhousie seems to have been a bit of a ditherer – Picton got impatient and  forced the bridge, and then Dalhousie said to a senior officer “I suppose we should take the village”. Whereupon his impatient ADC, Harry Smith, the husband of fourteen year old Juana, promptly said “Certainly sir!” and carried out the "order"!

Wellington wasn’t really able to follow up this smashing victory, as the roads were choked with carriages and carts from Joseph’s camp followers. There were quite a lot of Spanish who had collaborated with the French, and were keen to escape.  Actually, at one point in the battle, Spanish on the Allied side engaged Spanish fighting on the French side.

The looting was amazing – Joseph had packed up the Spanish royal picture collection, amongst much else. He escaped with only the clothes on his back . His silver chamber pot is still used by the The King’s Royal Hussars to drink toasts.    

Then we went into Vitoria, which lacks Bilbao’s dramatic site, but is a much older town. There are a lot of early Renaissance town palaces, and very attractive central squares, one with a rather florid memorial to the battle, showing Wellington being greeted by grateful townspeople.

 One of the palaces belonged to Alava, the Spanish general who was Wellington’s chief liaison and much respected. But we couldn’t be sure which one. We did find the one Wellington stayed in after the battle.

The house used by Wellington after the battle

The cathedral was built in the fourteenth century, unfortunately without anything much in the way of foundations. So for many years it’s been a building site, and you can take a hard hat tour. It was really interesting. You can see out through some of the cracks in the walls. The distortions to the arches and pillars were very impressive. It will be even more interesting in a year or two, as they have made very extensive archaeological discoveries, which are going to be displayed in a gallery in the newly reinforced foundations.

The distorted arches

All in all, I recommend Vitoria, even if you’re not a Peninsula war freak. And it is genuinely Basque – lots of people speaking it (I assume – it’s not Spanish, anyway) and lots of older men in weird big floppy berets. 

The Basque country.

Well, we’re on holiday again! This is the second bit of the Wellington odyssey. The latest point we reached last year was Freineda, where we saw the house that was Wellington’s winter quarters 1812 – 1813. He spent the time planning a daring advance – a small part of the army was sent out on the road to Salamanca, as the French expected, but the greater part carried out a strenuous and totally unexpected forced march through the mountains of Tras Os Montes, which was deemed to be impossible. This outflanked the French, who fell back right into the Basque country and abandoned Madrid.

We’ve decided to miss out Tras Os Montes, and begin with the battle of Vitoria. So we flew to Biarritz and picked up a hire car. As the flight was from Stansted, we drove down there on the previous evening, and it was a lovely journey, the most beautiful summer evening with glorious light, and during the last forty five minutes, a heart stoppingly gorgeous sunset, leaving us feeling wonderfully calm and peaceful.  “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Unfortunately the weather on arrival had the opposite effect. The head winds were such, that I don’t think I’ve ever had a heavier landing, and we disembarked to pouring rain. It was so bad that we were reminded of arriving at Haugesund in Norway, a couple of years ago.

So we picked up the hire car, getting soaked in the process, and set off for Bilbao. What we could see of the scenery looked lovely, green and mountainous, but the cloud cover was down to about ten feet, and it was still pouring down.

Bilbao has nothing much to do with Wellington, although he had switched the navy supply vessels to Santander before the march commenced, and as the French were forced to withdraw their garrisons, other ports were used too, including Bilbao. But it does have the Guggenheim, and, very importantly, it has a transporter bridge! In fact it has the earliest transporter bridge in the world (1893), and it’s a UNESCO world heritage site. It was blown up during the Spanish Civil War, but rebuilt soon after. So, first things first, we drove straight to see the bridge. Strictly, it isn’t in Bilbao, but down the river in a separate municipality called Portugalete.  Luckily, by the time we got there it had stopped raining. Personally, I think “our” transporter is better looking, but this one has a much more modern gondola. It looked slightly out of place, to be honest. But the Portugalete one really scores on surroundings – there’s smart looking houses, an attractive promenade, a bandstand, and lots of people taking their evening walk or jog. The Middlesbrough one is in the middle of a wasteland of industrial dereliction.

The queue to cross in the gondola.

There’s still quite a bit of industrial dereliction in Bilbao, but on the whole it feels busy and thriving, and we liked it.  There’s lots of smart fin de siècle blocks of mansion flats, often with nice art nouveau touches, and the river valley is narrow and deep so you can always see lovely green hills behind the buildings, and there are plenty of attractive parks and squares.

The next day (today) we had a good breakfast and went across the Calatrava bridge to the Guggenheim. Well, there’s two and a half hours of my life I won’t get back. No, stop it, let’s find the positives.

The building is certainly striking, but in the Sydney Opera House way – a triumph of form over function. I did like the Bourgeois Maman spider, and Anish Kapoor’s bubbles, and Koon's "Puppy", 

"Maman"

See the reflections? 

but you don’t actually need to go into the place to enjoy those. I didn’t like anything at all inside. There actually isn’t that much, anyway. I was looking forward to seeing Serra’s huge installation “The Matter of Time”, but it left me very cold. In fact, it made me think of the ancient turf maze at Saffron Walden, which does what Serra whittered on about on the audioguide much better, and no one gets pretentious about it.

It honestly wasn’t a case of over expectation either; I have had my doubts about anything labelled Guggenheim since we went to New York to find the Guggenheim there had removed all the paintings and sculptures to house a huge display of Armani clothes.

The last straw was finding out that you have to go out of the museum to get a coffee and a sit down. At that point patience was exhausted and, having had our coffee and sit, we didn’t go back inside.

We realised we were near the Cinderella art museum, the Bellas Artes, which has a couple of El Grecos, several Murrillos and Zurbarans, plus lots of Spanish and specifically Basque artists. There were some good modern works too – Chillida and Tony Craggs.

By this time it was sheeting down, so we sat for a while, then when it slowed up we went to the old part of the town, which is early nineteenth century, not really old old, but quite pleasant. Then we had a very late lunch, and returned to the hotel back over the Calatrava bridge. While I’m grumbling, I must say it disappointed me. It’s called the white bridge, but it’s quite discoloured; while being on the bridge itself, surrounded by the supports, is good and feels a bit like being in a bird cage, the approaches are ugly.  Also, it has a glass deck, meant to be illuminated from below by coloured lights at night, which sounds as though it would be lovely, but the whole effect is ruined because the glass deck turned out to be lethally slippy in wet weather (Surprise!) and has had to be covered with plastic matting.

"Puppy" - kudos to the gardeners, who don't get a mention.

Tomorrow we’re off to the battlefield of Vitoria, so back with Wellington.