We liked ‘Goyetchea’ so much that we decided to stay two nights there. In any case we needed some time to recuperate, take stock, do some washing and plan the next stage of our journey. There were plenty of free spaces so we had our pick of the best and we chose a spot with a magnificent view of the undulating countryside and the Pyrenees in the background.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a plan to take our bikes and explore the villages in the area despite the steep slopes but Judith was feeling below par (the culprit possibly being the steak tartare in Bayonne) and we generally felt we needed a day devoid of any rushing and catching up with the blog so we took it easy. I must admit to wanting the use the pool there as much as possible being an important contributory factor for me! It was a decent-sized pool and looked like it might be a bit cold, as the temperature at this height dropped considerably at night, but it was a pleasant 24 degrees and so I managed half a mile or so on three occasions. I had to watch the shallow end as it was barely 0.80 metres and I scraped my knees doing the breaststroke and my hand doing the crawl a couple of times.

 

The evening we arrived we had a cherry-filled Basque pasty we’d bought from Bayonne for pudding together with a small drop of our vin doux from St Emilion. Cherries are widely grown in the Basque region and indeed in the whole area of Navarre and Aragon in Spain as well, as we were to find out.

 

 

 

In the morning, we didn’t have very much for breakfast but looking through our tiny cupboards, we found the jar of ‘zaatar’ (or ‘doqqa’ as it’s called in Egypt), basically a mixture of roughly ground thyme, sesame seeds and salt which my sister Laura had had the presence of mind to persuade us to take with us for emergencies. For the uninitiated, you break off bits of bread and dip these in olive oil then in the zaatar mixture and the zaatar sticks to it. But of course it’s supposed to be ‘shami’ (Syrian) bread – which is what pitta bread is called in the ME. This zaatar is part of a big bag of it given to me by my friends at the Palestinian Ministry of Education in Ramallah the day they gave me a wonderful surprise send-off before my retirement in February. I’ll never forget that, nor their kindness or that of all our other dear friends in Egypt and the rest of the region.

 

 

So this is what we had with the pain de campagne we’d bought from Bayonne at the same time as the cherry pie from a marvelous little bakery in a side street round the corner from a church where a funeral was being held. A memory came back of the mournful sound of church bells and quite a lot of people gathering outside the church and starting to enter. There’s always something moving about the sight of a large number of people maintaining a respectful silence, and the bells, tolling singly at two-second intervals made the scene more poignant and brought a lump to our throats. It’s not a sound you often hear in England. ‘Elles sont jolies, les cloches’ I said to the baker as he handed us the bread and cherry pies. ‘Oui, mais ce n’est pas gai aujourd’hui’.