Vanya found a very interesting boutique hotel in the small village of Cuzcurrita de Rio Tiron in La Rioja Region. We decided to treat ourselves there but, on the way, stopped off for lunch in Miranda de Ebro. Miranda de Ebro is the place with which Haro started the wine fight all those years ago (see earlier Haro blog).
It is a now large industrial city (chemicals) on the banks of the River Ebro with a population of 40,000+. In the limited time available to us (we were both keen to get to Cuzcurrita) we were never going to get to see much of the place and so settled for a short walk around the old town and lunch on the main square.
It was a pleasant enough walk along the banks of the River Ebro to what I think was the Carlos III Bridge and that bridge would lead us to the old townThe other side of the bridge, to the left, is the old town square with it’s bandstand in front of the town hall.A rock band were playing a mix of their own music and some Rock & Roll classics as we arrived.There was a small food market selling snacks on the square
We stayed long enough for a light lunch, a brief stroll around the (small) old town and then it was back across the Carlos III Bridge to the Van. Cuzcurrita de Rio Tiron beckoned.
On our way back into Spain we stopped overnight in Saint Pee sur Nivelle in the French basque country (Pays de Labourd); just 8 kms from Ascain which place we very much enjoyed last year notwithstanding the restrictions then imposed on us by covid. This area is famous for it’s ossau-iraty cheese, an ivory coloured semi hard cheese made from unpasteurised ewe’s milk and I love it. We’ll be taking some of that back to the UK with us.
Saint Pee is an unusual place in that it is not concentrated around a single town centre. It has a centre of sorts (stretched out along the D918 for the most part) but the town appears to comprise several different communes spread over quite an area. This made for fair a bit of walking when I set out to explore the place; not least because there are a lot of hiking trails in the area and I couldn’t resist checking out one or two of them. There’s a nice walk along by the River Nivelle; another around the Lake of St Pee and; at least two more up and around the Hills of Ibarron. I didn’t do them all.
It’s a pretty area with numerous walking trails
The ‘centre’ (if it can be called a centre) comprised a few shops, two or three restaurants or cafe bars (one particular cafe bar was selling a selection of locally produced artisan beers – I tried just one and it was good) and some pretty half timbered houses all coloured in the basque style.
The most interesting building however is the Eglise St Pierre. This unusual and imposing church has a pleasing interior – a stone floor made from old tombstones, an impressive church organ, a large intricately carved wooden altarpiece and a wonderful three story wooden gallery so typical of the area. Certainly, the gallery reminded me of the church in Ascain.
The exterior of the Eglise Saint Pierre…… and the interior…… with it’s exquisitly carved altarpiece.
This is another of those areas which suffered horribly from witch-hunts in the early 17th century. Certainly, the basque country both in France and Spain was the focus of the witch-hunts between 1609 and 1614 which saw an estimated 3,000 people put to death. Salazar de Frias, operating out of Logrono, was one of the leading inquisitors in Spain at this time while Pierre de Lancre led the hunts in this part of France.
Ossau Iraty cheese
Currently well behind with this blog. we were in Saint Pee in September. It is now 23 October – apologies
With just 200 inhabitants, Cassaigne is the smallest of the three villages we visited during our stay in Eauze. In reality it is now little more than a hamlet.
Built by the Bishops of Condom the original 13th century Chateau de Cassaigne was remodelled over a period of time and by the turn of the 16th century a pretty little village, complete with church, had formed around it.
The remodelled Chateau as it is now…… surrounding buildings on one of it’s two streets and a view inside the small church
During the French Revolution the State confiscated the property from the church and it was auctioned off. For many years thereafter it remained in private hands until in 2003 the wine cooperative Plaimont purchased the 30 acre Cassaigne estate. Nowadays, 20% of the estates vines are used to produce Armagnac and the other 80% goes towards the production of red, white and rose Cotes de Gascogne wines.
Plaimont operate wine tasting sessions from the chateau but we didn’t have time for that. We simply sampled some of the cooperative’s produce and then purchased a few bottles of their white wine for drinking back in the UK. I also bought a three bottle sampler selection of the chateau’s Armagnac. I’ll try those on my own one cold winter evening in Brighton.
After a short walk around the outside of the chateau primarily to get a closer look at the Fallow Deer enclosure, we made our way back to Eauze for dinner at the Michelin rated restaurant La Vie en Rose.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t go out of my way to visit Cassaigne but it could perhaps be taken in on the back of a visit to nearby Condom, a quiet rural medieval market town with a fairly impressive cathedral.
From our base in Eauze, we took the Van out to visit three local villages. The first to be visited was Montreal sur Gers (see previous post). We then drove a few kilometres further east to the medieval fortress village of Larressingle, also known as the Little Carcassonne of Gers.
Larressingle is also a ‘Plus Beau Village de France’ and fully deserving of the title. It is also something of a tourist attraction being the most visited destination in the Gers (and on the Chemin de Puy to Santiago) but it was almost empty as we arrived. It is a small village almost completely surrounded by 300 metres of heavy fortified walls (that are for the most part in excellent condition) and it is full of charm.
Two approaches to the village
There is only one entrance into the village, across an old moat and through a double arched stone bridge. Inside the fortress walls is a church and a range of medieval houses, most of which are set with their backs to the castle walls and are now home to craft shops and cafes and the local tourist office. It is beautiful.
The sole entrance to the village
Having walked all around the inside and the outside of the village we paused for a light lunch – a local artisan beer and a local pizza with goat’s cheese. Very tasty.
While staying in Eauze we took time to visit some of the surrounding villages, starting with Montreal du Gers, a “Plus Beau Village de France” just 10 miles or so to the north east of Eauze.
Sitting on the banks of the Auzoue River, Montreal du Gers is an old bastide town dating back to 1255. It is organised around a small central square of arcades and the gothic collegiate church of Notre Dame (sometimes referred to as the Church of Saint Philippe et Saint Jacques). Unfortunately, we didn’t see the central square in it’s best light. It is used as the town car park and during our visit was packed with cars. It was a pity because if ever a square needed to be pedestrianised it is this one.
The best features of the church are the colourful stained glass windows
We paused in Montreal du Gers long enough to enjoy the small market on the square and walk a slow circuit of the place before moving on to another much smaller but more impressive village to the east, Larressingle. Overall, I didn’t rate Montreal du Gers. It certainly doesn’t have the charm one would ordinarily expect of a “Plus Beau Village de France”.
It is a small local market…… but there were a couple of very interesting craft stalls.
Notwithstanding the above, just outside Montreal du Gers is the small hamlet of Seviac and the remains of a 2nd century Roman villa, the ‘Villa Seviac’. This villa was a large and luxurious residence discovered by a local farmer in 1864 although it was neither explored nor excavated until the 1970’s. It is now a museum. Little is left of the villa’s original walls but many of it’s mosaics have been restored to their original splendour and they rank amongst the best of their kind in France.
NB We visited Montreal du Gers mid September 2022 but this blog was not completed and posted until 22 October – apologies.
And so to Eauze and an altogether nicer part of France. Eauze is only a small town (4,000 people) but it is recognised as the capital of the Armagnac area. Moreover it is surrounded by a clutch of interesting villages, a number of which are included in the list of ‘Les Plus Beaux Villages de France’ and it has a reasonably priced Michelin Restaurant (La Vie en Rose). We knew immediately that Eauze was going to be good and so we booked into the municipal campsite for a few days with a view to using it as a base from which to explore both Eauze and various local villages (Montreal du Gers, Larressingle, Cassaigne). The campsite was quiet (it would close for winter the following week) but it has a pool, a pleasant and very popular restaurant (Restaurant au Moulin de Pouy) and is just a short walk from a large Leclerc supermarket and the town centre itself.
Initially named Elusa in Roman times, Eauze is a town of some considerable historical significance (especially during France’s Religious Wars). It was home to Henri III of Navarre (who was subsequently crowned Henri IV of France) and his wife Marguerite de Valois (who was sister to no less than three French Kings – Francis II, Charles IX and Henri III – and popularised by Alexandre Dumas in his historical novel ‘La Reine Margot’). I recall watching the 1994 film version of Dumas’ book which starred Isabelle Adjani in the title role.
Eauze may be small but around it’s main square (which, unusual in rural France, has a bar that stayed open until one o’clock in the morning) there is a decent sized medieval quarter of narrow streets simply teeming with character.
The main square and a couple of the town’s narrow medieval streets The Camino Le Puy (also known as the Via Podiensis) takes you through Eauze
Also on the main square is a former cathedral, now a church, dedicated to Saint Luperc. Luperc (sometimes known as Luperculus) was a Bishop when the town was controlled by the Romans. He was martyred by the Romans during the reign of Emporer Trajan (3rd Century?). The original 15th/16th century church was destroyed by Cardinal Richelieu during the final days of France’s Religious Wars and the current building was built during the 18th century on the site of the older church. It is a tall but narrow Gothic building which, while not all that impressive from the outside, is quite distinctive on the inside. It is unusually light and airy and the apse contains a series of impressive paintings depicting the life of Jesus Christ and some beautiful long colourful stained glass windows.
Simple inside and unusually light, I really liked this church
One of the highlights of our visit to Eauze was a meal at La Vie en Rose, a Michelin listed restaurant which clearly deserves a star. It highlights local cuisine at very reasonable prices. A budget menu of the day was avalable but we went a la carte. I started with a really refreshing Salade de Saint Jacques a l’orange et aux avocats and followed it with the chef’s speciality, an earthy main of Papillotes de Saint Jacques au Foie Gras. The accompanying wine was a local Tariquet Amplitude recommended by the chef. I’m writing this blog some weeks after we left Eauze and, shame on me, I cannot remember Vanya’s main (she didn’t bother with a starter) but I recall her having a great looking dessert, a Marquise au Chocolat Creme Caramel, which she described as “simply divine”. I finished with a very good Armagnac but, in hindsight, I wish I too had taken a dessert. The ‘La Croustade’ looked fantastic.
We had our dogs with us when we visited La Vie En Rose and so ate outside.Papillotes de Saint Jacques au Foie Gras. They were cooked and served in aluminium.Vanya’s dessert, the Marquise Chocolat au Creme Caramel
One other feature of Eauze which I found particularly impressive was the local street art (most of which seemed to have been created by the one artist).
Most of the street art appeared to have been created by Jeegraffik. I liked it.
This is not an area of France that I was ever keen on and, after seeing it, Vanya was surprisingly quick to agree with me. The fact is that after living and working in so many different parts of the Middle East and seeing so many deserts, the Great Dune of Pilat (this area’s most popular feature) was never going to excite us.
We were parked up on the coast at Camping Municipale de Verdalle, somewhere between Le Teste de Buche and Gujan Mestra. Unusually, Vanya joined me on my first exploratory walk eastwards, to and around Gujan Mestra, but she soon regretted it. There is absolutely nothing there of any interest. Even the local ‘Oyster House’ proved to be little more than a ramshackle industrial unit.
My second exploratory trip, on my own this time, took me some distance in the opposite direction to the ‘Porte de la Teste’ but once again the walk did little for me (except that I found a reasonable beach bar, Chez Maman, not far from the campsite which would do for the evening). The whole area is famous for it’s oysters farms but, honestly, it seems to be more of a cottage industry here and the only half decent oyster bar on the way to Porte de la Teste (at Porte de la Hume) was closed. Otherwise, I discovered nothing other than mudflats.
Porte de la Hume is pretty enough and it does have a couple of reasonably lively Oyster Bars but as I arrived the bars were closed and the tide was out. As we returned in the evening, the tide had turned but only one oyster bar was open and it was packed.The tide was still out as I arrived at Porte de la Teste and remained so until just before I started back. As at Porte de la Hume the boats in the harbour here were all beached and the Oyster bars were all closed. Despite my somewhat negative comments, this is still a pretty area. It would be perfect for a beach holiday with the children when they were young but we are long past such holidays.
We were both looking forward to moving on to Eauze in Occitaine (Occitanie in French) but at least the beach bar I scouted out earlier in the day did prove a success.
We returned to France primarily to stock up on Cremant for Vanya and Ossau-Iraty (French Basque ewe’s milk cheese) for me but also to avoid the wet weather approaching the north of Spain. Unfortunately, the better weather over the next days is up near Bordeaux which is one of my least favourite parts of France but, when needs must.
We broke the journey to Bordeaux in Ciboure (Ziburu in Basque) just across the border from Spain. Ciboure is a small fishing port just a short walk around the bay from the town of Saint Jean de Luz. It has been a fishing port since the Middle Ages and up until the mid 1960’s was the number one sardine fishing port in France but it is now given over mostly to tourism.
Looking south across the bay towards Ciboure
The most impressive building in the town itself is the 14th century church dedicated to Saint Vincent (it’s another typically Basque Church) but it is an old fort built at the command of Louis XIII in 1627 and subsequently remodelled by Vauban which dominates the harbour area. Unfortunately, the inside of the fort is no longer open to the general public.
The fort is no longer open to the general public but the Fort beach is.
We only stayed the one night in Ciboure, taking an evening meal at one of the many fish restaurants on the harbour side. They served the smallest moules mariniere we have ever seen and they weren’t that tasty but the view over the bay with it’s numerous battelekus (colourful Basque fishing boats some 5 to 6 metres long) was spectacular.
The harbour area
Not a lot else to say about Ciboure except that it was the birthplace of composer Maurice Ravel and that the artist Henri Matisse also lived there.
I’m currently very much behind with this blog. We arrived back in the UK on the Bilbao to Portsmouth ferry on Wednesday 28 September to receive the worst possible news (my mother died within a few hours of our getting back to Brighton) and I’ve not looked at the blog since. It is now Friday 7 October. I suspect the remaining entries regarding our 6th European Tour will be rather brief.
From Lierganes we made our way up into the Cantabrian Mountains for the night, stopping at a small mountain bar in the area of San Roque de Riomiera which reminded me of the Ponderosa out of the tv series Bonanza. It was just for the one night before we returned to France where Vanya would top the Van up with Cremant and other French wines. The Brexit limit of 90 days in any 180 means this tour is coming to a conclusion.
I love the mountains and we really don’t see enough of them these dayThe bar really did look like something out of Bonanza
It was a lovely warm summer’s evening up in the mountains and we sat on the back porch of the bar talking and drinking the local wine (a really good Albarino and Riesling mix) until late into the night. This was probably one of the most chilled of all our evenings during this particular tour.
And that wine (Casona Mikaela) was wonderful. We stopped in Lierganes on the way back out of the mountains and I was delighted to find that the local shop stocked it. A few bottles were purchased for when we get home
I slept like a log that night notwithstanding that there are bears and wolves in these mountains.
Having chilled for two days at Candas we decided to return to France (just for a week or so) because (a) the weather looked as if it would be better there for the next week (rain being forecast across almost all of Northern Spain) and (b) Vanya wanted to stock up with more Cremant. We had just enough time before the weather changed to visit a couple of places in Cantabria and we settled on first Lierganes and then somewhere in the Valles Pasiegos, probably San Roque de Riomiera.
Liérganes, which has been recognised as ‘Uno de los Pueblos Mas Bonitos de Espana’ since 2016, sits on the Rio Miera at the foot of the two small hills of Marimón and Cotillamón. I picked it out as a place to stop because I had read that it was one of the pretty little towns of Spain and so it proved to be. It is a small quaint village and we paused there for both breakfast and lunch.
A word of warning before I continue – Don’t be tempted to buy the local delicacy known as ‘Chocolate with Churros’. You’ll see it advertised everywhere. I’m not sure what we were expecting when we ordered them but it certainly wasn’t that which arrived at our table – a cup of hot cocolate and a few doughnut sticks! I’ll let you know.
The ‘creature’ leaning on the village sign is a cartoon character of The Fisherman of Lierganes
Lierganes is perhaps most famous for having been the home of the legendary “Fishman of Lierganes”. The legend goes that in 1674, a young man from Lierganes by the name of Francisco de la Vega Casar, who was working in Santander at the time, went swimming with friends in the Bay of Biscay. He was an excellent swimmer but the current caught him and he was sucked out to sea. Five years later near Cadiz on totally the other side of Spain a man was found in the sea with what looked like fish scales on his chest and back. He was half out of his mind and unable to talk except for one word -‘Lierganes’. Someone recognised that word as the name of a town in Cantabria and he was brought back to the town but, when a few kilometres away, he was told to lead the way. It seems he made his way directly to a house where his mother and three brothers lived and, even after 5 years, they all recognised him. The Fishman was left to live with his family although, he kept an odd lifestyle. He kept to himself, rarely wore any clothes, had strange eating habits (sometimes going a week without eating any food) and he never recovered the ability to speak more than a handful of words. One day, after nine years back in the village, he returned to the coast for a swim and was never seen again.
There’s a bronze statue of the Fishman of Lierganes down by the Old Bridge. The legend of the Fishman was perhaps explained in the 20th century by a Dr Gregorio Maranon who suggested that Francisco could have been suffering suffering from an iodine deficiency. This was commonplace in the area at that time (because of the diet) and can lead to cretinism, which symptoms include mental deterioration and, more to the point, pale scaly skin.
I read that Lierganes is “tucked away in a lush green valley”. I couldn’t agree more. Even after the recent drought and with the Rio Miera almost dried up, you can see from the photos below how green the area remains…
The first photo is of the old bridge. The second photo was taken from the old bridge and in the background are the two hills of Marimon and Cotillamon. It is easy to understand why they are popularly known as the “Breasts of Lierganes”
Any visitor to Lierganes will be impressed by the “Donkey Tail Cactus” which is grown throughout the town. The originals would have been brought back from Mexico many years ago but they seem to have taken to the Cantabrian climate. They are everywhere. Now I have to figure out how to stop Vanya buying any?
Donkey Tail Cactus (Sedum Morganianum)
We enjoyed our brief visit to Lierganes. It doesn’t offer enough to warrant an overnight stay but it serves as an admirable gateway to our next port of call, somewhere in the Valles Pasiegos.
