Bordeaux - Pamplona: Pines and Basques

This week I crossed the endless pine forests of Les Landes and the Pyrenees so that I am now in Pamplona. That involves crossing an international boundary again after it has been a bit silent on that front for a while:

Contrary to all prejudices about Spain, it was cold, rainy and green there for the first bit. I wonder why none of the border crossings that I used had a typical EU logo sign with the country name. Did they decide to stop highlighting the borders with road signs, to demonstrate their insignificance?

This week I took it a bit easier than the previous two. I started with an extra day of rest in Bordeaux to see the sights, find a charger for my photocamera and send postcards. The day before I had run into Robin Brodsky (freewheelingfem.blogspot.com), an American woman on her own doing the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella on a bike having started from northern France. On the second day we explored Bordeaux together. It was raining all day so there are few nice pictures. One I'd like to show is a photo of the Saint Croix, a cathedral in the romance style of the village churches in the Charente and Dordogne:

I leave Bordeaux on Tuesday morning, having left Robin at the train station to take a train to Arcachon. Leaving the city was no problem, there was a bike path all the way to Léognan. When shopping there I noticed that the elderly woman had a Spanish-sounding accent in her French, pronouncing more consonants and rolling the r's. That actually makes it easier for me.
The route for that day went over long, straight forest roads through the Landes, that big green stain in the bottom-left corner of the map of France. Sometimes there was a clearing with a few farming fields, like this huge bean with huge harvesting machinery:

The price in the supermarket made me think that certain kinds of beans are hand-picked, but apparently that's not true. By the side of the road there were heaps of beans that had fallen off the trailer that would be worth €15 in the supermarket.
At the end of that day I was looking for a campsite near Parentis-en-Born in a heavy shower. I eventually found it. I was greeted by an elderly couple who had not expected any customer to show up in this weather at this time of the year. They asked if I would not rather roll out my sleeping bag in the facilities building, but I built my tent anyway and cooked under the roof of an old machinery shed.
At this campsite, there is an adventurer living in a caravan who is planning to ride a bike around the world. His name is Max and he is already in his sixties. Here is a photo of him with his MTB:

The next day I rode from Parentis to Moliets-et-Maa. After Parentis I started following a bike route along the coast called Vélodyssee. After only a few kilometers, I encountered another loaded tourer who turned out to be Robin. We encountered a French couple who had managed to ride 3350 km on this bike route since it was opened last June. They helped us locate a shop that sells bread in Contis. It also had the famous issues of Charlie Hebdo that have long been sold out in more urban areas, but I figured it was not a good idea to take one of them to Morocco.
I'm making a habit of visiting Textkernel employees' holiday destinations: this picture shows me with my bike and the ocean in Mimizan.

On the campsite in Moliets Robin also demonstrated how to brush your teeth without leaving toothpaste traces, something I had been wondering about since wild camping in Scotland. It would be useful the day after.

The next day we rode to Bayonne through the pines that were getting a bit boring. The forest at this point has hardly any species of tree or shrub in it that grows natively in The Netherlands. There are maritime pines, cork trees and rododendrons. Further south towards Bayonne, other little evergreens appear and the palm tree becomes a popular garden plant.
In Hossegor there was an international surf event going on. Sadly the waves were not very high, but it is nevertheless spectacular to see the contestants ride their board through tubular waves.
Bayonne is a medieval town that has low quays along the river that look a bit like Utrecht or Ghent:

Robin stays in Bayonne to sleep in a pilgrims' shelter. I reserve a place for her over the phone in French. I feel so proud about my successfully making a phone call in French that I first cheer about that and only then tell Robin that they indeed have a place for her.
Then I rode to Biarritz because Max (the round-the-world guy) had told me that it was one of the most beautiful places in the world. Indeed, it's beautiful, with the rocks, the Mediterranean green, fortifications and all the pompous hotel and casino buildings.
I'd hoped to be able to find a campsite near Biarritz, but they were all very expensive beach holiday resorts and most of them were closed anyway. After trying four of them I did not want to ride back to the cheapest one and instead camped in a pasture near Arbonne. It was wonderful: an owl flew over my tent at some 10 meters away from me and sat down in the grass maybe 60 meters away. At night, there were sounds from rodents and roes around the tent. In the morning, two hunters walked across the field but they acted as if they didn't notice me.

In Arbonne, the local nationalist hooligans have engaged in a traditional Belgian pastime:

After Bayonne, Basque culture is everywhere. The houses are plastered white with cornerstones sticking out. Some of them have a visible timber frame. Many road signs are bilingual.
After crossing into Spain near Ainhoa, Basque language gets even more prominent. In the Baztan valley, I even see shop windows that are monolingually Basque. Still, everyone I overhear speaks Spanish. I stop early at the youth hostel in Lekaroz (near Elizondo) because I prefer a warm shower to a cold wild camp near the top of the Puerto de Belate.
At the youth hostel, the attendant speaks only elementary English and no French. So much for my hope that French can be of some use in Spain.

The plan of waiting a day with the climb of the Puerto de Belate works really well. I climb up through the British-like landscape of green hills that I have been riding through since Bayonne. The rainclouds of yesterday are nowhere to be seen and the sun burns away the mist around 10:00. The village of Irurita looks like this:

I reach the summit of the Puerto around 12:15. The pass is only 847 meters high, so the question of how "real" mountain passes feel on a loaded touring bike remains unanswered.
It was Sunday, and contrary to France there were few shops open. I had lunch at restaurant (happily the waitress was fluent in English). I came there at 13:30, which is apparently still early for the Spanish.
A bit later, the road begins to descend, and coming out of a bend, I am surprised to notice that the landscape that unfolds before me is the typical brown and dry Spanish landscape as we know it. So while I may say that traveling by bike is so great because you see all the intermediate states going from one landscape to the next, in this case it does not work that way. It takes just one curve in the road to go from the green foothills of the Pyrenees to the brown flats around Pamplona. These two pictures are less than an hour apart:

 

Around 15:30, I rolled into Pamplona. I had had all sorts of nightmares about riding into and out of Spanish cities on a bicycle, but this was pretty much as easy as Utrecht. There was almost no traffic on Sunday afternoon, and while I was waiting for a traffic light on an empty boulevard that looked like Pyongyang, I noticed that there was actually a bike path running next to it. On the bike path, I overtook a boy of about ten years old, riding his bike unaccompanied and without a helmet. He didn't even pay attention to the sound of my bike bell, like a real Dutchie.

Here in Pamplona, tourism is all about the Encierro, the running of the bulls. I'm three months late to that party however. I think I'll visit some of the really impressive fortifications after only quickly glancing at those of Namur and Bayonne.

As for the route, due to messy software written by genius but impatient Russians, and negligience on my part, I only have meaningful route information for the first day out of Bordeaux and for the last few hours of the last day to Pamplona. Here they are:

Find more Bike Ride in Bordeaux, France

Find more Bike Ride in Ultzama, Spain