A Village Outing
Last Saturday our village walking group had their annual 'jolly'. Some fifty of us climbed aboard the coach in the Place d'Eglise in the dark at 7 in the morning as the church bells struck. It had been a warm clear night with every possible star shining so getting up to make sandwiches at 6am had been no chore.
Dawn came up as we travelled west. Conversations on the coach were lively and humourous but the local accent and speed with which it is spoken left me unable to make out much except that there was something about mushroom picking and the gendarmes and hiding the mushrooms and the name of a local farmer in a neighbouring commune. I would have liked to understand more. The sun got stronger through the windows and the roads got straighter and wider and by the time we reached the coast, just south of Biarritz, we had reason to anticipate a beautiful day.
We walked south to St Jean de Luz along the coastal path with the blue Atlantic to our right and white terracotta-topped houses and hotels to our left. The clifftop path was still quite busy, this being only the first week of September, and joggers and runners zipped past us as we stood obligingly to one side, briefly interupting our lazy conversations until the path was clear again.
As usual, the warm air became heavy as we dropped down to the sweeping sandy bay in which nestles the chic but welcoming town of St Jean. To continue further along the coast would bring you to the Spanish border, where the gentler slopes of the Pyrenees trail out to meet the sea, but stopping in St Jean leaves these green hills and mountains as a lovely backdrop against the 19th century hotels of the town. It was lunchtime and the restaurants were doing a lively trade, serving fish dishes and moules and frites to allcomers but the beach was quieter now August was gone. Yet the sun still shone hot and harsh enough to need sunglasses and make a dip in the bay look tempting.
We ate our picnic lunch in a nearby park with the village 'community chest' of aperatifs being shared round the walking party and then we went on to a Basque village in the hills to take a beer or two outside a local bar and to buy a string of hot red peppers to take home and hang up in the kitchen.
Unsurprisingly, most of us slept on the coach ride home, but the day would not be finished that easily. No sooner had we tumbled out of the coach back in the Church square than trestle tables were being brought out of the Salle de Fete and arranged under the plane trees for supper. Jacques, it was, who had been mushrooming and we all sat down to finish off the aperatifs before feasting on homegrown tomatoes and meat preserves followed by delicious soft mushroom omelettes containing the girolles he had found. Coffee was made in the Salle de Fete and followed ice cream and eventually we made our way home in time for bed. Paper plates and plastic beakers had meant that there was little in the way of washing up. We wiped and put away the tables and chairs and quietly left the village square as we had found it a few hours before.
Dawn came up as we travelled west. Conversations on the coach were lively and humourous but the local accent and speed with which it is spoken left me unable to make out much except that there was something about mushroom picking and the gendarmes and hiding the mushrooms and the name of a local farmer in a neighbouring commune. I would have liked to understand more. The sun got stronger through the windows and the roads got straighter and wider and by the time we reached the coast, just south of Biarritz, we had reason to anticipate a beautiful day.
We walked south to St Jean de Luz along the coastal path with the blue Atlantic to our right and white terracotta-topped houses and hotels to our left. The clifftop path was still quite busy, this being only the first week of September, and joggers and runners zipped past us as we stood obligingly to one side, briefly interupting our lazy conversations until the path was clear again.
As usual, the warm air became heavy as we dropped down to the sweeping sandy bay in which nestles the chic but welcoming town of St Jean. To continue further along the coast would bring you to the Spanish border, where the gentler slopes of the Pyrenees trail out to meet the sea, but stopping in St Jean leaves these green hills and mountains as a lovely backdrop against the 19th century hotels of the town. It was lunchtime and the restaurants were doing a lively trade, serving fish dishes and moules and frites to allcomers but the beach was quieter now August was gone. Yet the sun still shone hot and harsh enough to need sunglasses and make a dip in the bay look tempting.
We ate our picnic lunch in a nearby park with the village 'community chest' of aperatifs being shared round the walking party and then we went on to a Basque village in the hills to take a beer or two outside a local bar and to buy a string of hot red peppers to take home and hang up in the kitchen.
Unsurprisingly, most of us slept on the coach ride home, but the day would not be finished that easily. No sooner had we tumbled out of the coach back in the Church square than trestle tables were being brought out of the Salle de Fete and arranged under the plane trees for supper. Jacques, it was, who had been mushrooming and we all sat down to finish off the aperatifs before feasting on homegrown tomatoes and meat preserves followed by delicious soft mushroom omelettes containing the girolles he had found. Coffee was made in the Salle de Fete and followed ice cream and eventually we made our way home in time for bed. Paper plates and plastic beakers had meant that there was little in the way of washing up. We wiped and put away the tables and chairs and quietly left the village square as we had found it a few hours before.
posted by Fran Nustedt at
4:14 AM
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