York and Durham

I’ve had an exciting couple of days. First, we went to York for a weekend to see The Globe’s production of all three parts of Henry VI. We saw the first part on the Friday evening and the following two on the late afternoon and evening of the Saturday.

The Globe was keen to point out that the three parts are not written as a series, and the “first” part was written last, in my opinion was the weakest, and probably by Shakespeare alone, whereas he probably collaborated on the other two. But I do think we gained from watching all three in short succession – there was a tremendous momentum - the bloodshed gathering pace, so that forgiveness became harder and harder, and the hate became unstoppable. Henry is presented as a holy fool, but it is the country’s tragedy to have such a head.

The cast was admirable – they all took several parts except for Henry himself, and the amount of learning, and the work, of staging all three plays in a day was seriously daunting.  I thought the scene of Talbot and his son was too shouty for pathos, but that’s really my only gripe.

So then we went to Durham. Friends had booked us into see the Lindisfarne Gospels, which are on loan from the British Library temporarily. But, by mistake, they had booked for the day of the Miners’ Gala. Well, I’ve never been before. You just didn’t.  You stayed well away from Durham. The shops were boarded up; people weren’t used to being able to drink all day, so the atmosphere was pretty fraught.

Well now, it’s a pale shadow of its former self. There are no deep pits in Durham, only a little bit of open cast. The county looks so much better. Some of the pit villages are still pretty grim, but at least they don’t have spoil heaps lowering over them any more. So the Gala (in our day it was always “gayla”, but now it seems to be “gahla”, perhaps with foreign holidays) is a sort of big folk festival. 

Bands waiting to parade into the cathedral to have their banners blessed.

There are loads of brass bands parading with the banners, and rapper sword dancers, and a huge fairground, and there were still speakers haranguing the crowds, who were mostly not taking any notice of it at all. No important politicians as far as I could tell. The banners seemed to be carried by the womenfolk and hangers on of the bands. The young men were nearly all outside the pubs drinking and getting seriously sunburnt, but not nasty in any way – well, not by the time we left. One very good thing was that there were lots of young people of both sexes playing in the bands.

The exhibition around the gospels was very informative, with lots of other gospels and other manuscripts – I particularly fell for a small illuminated Life of St Cuthbert.  (I wish he was still England’s patron saint – a better and much less martial example than George, and he actually existed.)

So although the miners' gala (or Big Meeting Day) was not on the carpe diem list, perhaps it should have been, and I can't tell you how pleased I am to have gone. 

Both York and Durham look great, have great catering, and Durham has the best cathedral in England, almost in Europe. It was sunny, and everywhere looks better in sunlight, but these are world class tourism sites, and we tend to be blasé about our own stuff and overpraise the more exotic. If you've never been (lots of people have missed Durham) I urge you to go at once. 

Honderribia and Biarritz

We’ve completed our Wellington plans, except for La Rhune, which we planned to go up via the rack and pinion railway; but we’ve scarcely managed even to glimpse the top though the low clouds, so we’ve decided not to waste the money.

So we took the little ferry across the Bidassoa to Honderribbia on the Spanish side. A boat trip is always fun, and although we clearly should have waited for low tide and waded across up to our armpits, we chickened out.

Crossing the Bidassoa

Honderribbia has a small but absolutely charming old town, with walls and a thirteenth century castel, now a parador. There’s a cathedral and quite a number of sixteenth and seventeenth century palaces. So we had an enjoyable walk round there, and then a walk along the river front. It’s a festival, and so most people were done up in Basque white clothes with red neckerchiefs, at least, and some were quite elaborately done up with espadrilles and berets.

A town house in Honderribia

Honderribia

Back across the river we went to a restaurant near the marina for lunch, jolly good, and then had a long walk along the promenade and beach at Hendaye – it was one of the sunniest days we’ve had.

We flew back from Biarritz, so left early enough to have a look round.  Phil had been there on business and wasn’t that impressed, but I wanted to see it. There’s a lovely beach, well kept, but rather dodgy streaks in the sea. There are still some Belle Epoque houses, but mostly it’s vast apartment blocks. There are rocky stacks, which have been joined by bridges to make sort of piers, and there’s a lot of attraction in a walk out along the pier. The massive and very posh Palace Hotel  is a Napoleon III relic. So I’ve seen it and agree with Phil!

A rock "pier" at Biarritz

On the flight I had time to weigh up what our Wellington trips have taught us.  The major conclusion I’ve come to is that Napoleon was a very wicked man. He was a monstrous egoist, who seems to have believed that ordinary people existed to be of use to him. He was utterly indifferent to how many men, women and children died horribly because of his ambition. Did you know he actually reintroduced slavery?

Wellington’s genius was hard work, careful, detailed preparation, and a care for his men’s lives, if only because he knew they could not easily be replaced. When he made his prompt decisions, he could do so because he had already researched all the possibilities. He never betrayed any uncertainty or lack of confidence, and his men soon learned to have enormous confidence in him.

The other thing that impressed me was the difference in attitude to war – the French, who committed terrible atrocities in Portugal and Spain, were nevertheless obsessed with ideas of honour and glory, which were already outdated in Britain. The  British seem to have seen the war much more as a job that had to be done.

St Jean de Luz

We decided to go to St Jean de Luz, because it was Wellington’s headquarters during some of the winter 1813 – 1814. Hostilities didn’t cease completely for the whole winter, but there were periods when the roads were impassable.

Well, I have to say we were very pleasantly surprised. St Jean De Luz is really pleasant. There’s a proper fishing harbour, not just a pleasure boat marina. (As an aside, I simply can’t get my head round marinas. They are usually packed with millions of pounds’ worth of boats, of which maybe one in two hundred are being used. In fact the boats often look as though they are never used, or maybe once a year, and they deteriorate faster than some other sorts of property.  So how does it make any sort of sense?)

Also there’s a very attractive old town, with lots of substantial houses built by pirates; one was used for Louis XIV, and one for the Infanta Maria Theresa, when they got married here.

The privateer's mansion used by Louis XIV

 We had a coffee in the main square, facing the Mairie, where there seemed to be a fairly constant stream of weddings, the women all clarted up like dogs’ dinners and the men mostly scruffily casual.

Wellington’s house was quite easy to find, although there's no proud plaque advertising the connection, as there were at his various houses in Spain and Portugal.

Wellington's house. Very Basque.

The commissariat was set up here, and each regiment was marched in to be issued with new uniforms. They were literally in rags, and it was winter. The supplies were brought into a deep water port, which the British called Passages, which confused us, but it’s just in Spain, and its real name is Pasaja. The wounded were sent home from here too, as soon as they were fit enough to make the journey.  Lots of entrepreneurs descended on St Jean de Luz, and the peasants were keen to provide cattle. There was a problem with what coin they would accept, so Wellington recruited 40 soldiers who had been professional coiners to melt down the available coins and turn out five franc pieces dated earlier in the century!

Then we drove through lovely countryside and lovelier Basque villages, stopping for lunch at Espelette, where they grow such superb pimentos that they are appellation controlee. The meal was Basque, and majored on pimentos, but it was good.

After lunch we went to Bera (if you’re being Basque) or Vera de Bidassoa if you’re being Spanish. It’s just on the Spanish side of the border. Here a French division retreating from an attempt to relieve San Sebastian, found themselves cut off on the Spanish side of the river, trapped by the river which had risen suddenly to flood levels. The only remaining bridge, at Bera, was guarded by Captain Daniel Cadoux and less than fifty men of the 95^th Rifles. They held the bridge for more than an hour, killing more than two hundred French and their General Vandermaesen. But of course they were overwhelmed in the end, and the French division was able to escape to France. The Rifles never forgave General Skerret for leaving Cadoux and his men to be killed, and were very pleased when he had to return home sick.

Cadoux's bridge

As a nice touch,  British accounts stress the number of French corpses in the river, being nibbled by trout. Other diarists comment on the good fishing they had and the fat trout they caught and ate!

The monument to Cadoux and his men.

I think, judging by the villages, the Basques were usually prosperous. It might be mountainous, but the valleys are usually wide and sunny, not like the glaciated ones in Norway and Switzerland, and there’s mixed farming and lots of timber. Plus, of course, whaling, fishing, piracy, and smuggling.