Pyrenees Guide

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  Photo Source: Tourisme Béarn Pays Basque

Labourd

Labourd (Lapurdi in Basque; from Latin Lapurdum, Labord in Gascon) is a former French province and part of the present-day Pyrenees Atlantiques departement. It is historically one of the seven provinces of the traditional Basque Country.

Labourd extends from the Pyrenees to the river Adour, along the Bay of Biscay. To the south is Gipuzkoa and Navarre in Spain, to the east is Basse-Navarre, to the north are the Landes. It has an area of almost 900 km² and a population of over 200,000, the most populous of the three French Basque provinces. Over 25% of the inhabitants speak Basque. Labourd has also long had a Gascon-speaking tradition, noticeably next to the banks of the river Adour but also more diffusedly throughout the whole viscounty.

The main town of Labourd is Bayonne, although the capital, where local Basque leaders assembled, is Ustaritz, 13 km away. Other important towns are Biarritz, Hendaye, Hasparren, Ciboure and Saint Jean de Luz. The area is famous for the five-day Fêtes de Bayonne and the red peppers of Espelette. Many tourists come to the coast, especially at Biarritz, and the hills and mountains of the interior for walking and agri-tourism. La Rhune (Larrun in Basque), a 900m high hill, lies south of Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the border with Spain. The hill is a Basque symbol, with spectacular views from its peak.

French Basque Coast

The shoreline from Bilbao around the coast of Vizcaya, east into neighboring Guipuzcoa province to Getaria and San Sebastián and the River Adour, separating Bayonne and Biarritz from the Landes in the north is a succession of colorful ports, ocher beaches, and green hills.

Graceful, chic San Sebastián invites you to slow down, stroll the beach, and wander the streets. The Cantabrian Sea and the Pyrenees create the backdrop of a landscape composed of all shades of green, rugged coasts with short estuaries, and mountains covered with beech and oak.

Saint Jean Pied de Port

Saint Jean Pied de Port is the last stop before the mountain pass of Roncevaux (Roncesvalles) on the pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Pilgrims have been making the trek ever since the 10th Century, their routes intersecting in this medieval village surrounded by the red Pyrenees hills.

In the village, a single cobblestone street marks the steep ascent through the haute ville to the dilapidated fortress, offering ever expanding vistas of the rolling hills and red-tiled roofs of the surrounding villages. First built by Sancho the Strong, King of Navarra in the 13th Century, the walls of Saint Jean Pied de Port have withstood attack from Visigoths, Charlemagne's men, the Moors, and the Spanish army.

Outside the walls, visitors can set off on numerous hikes into the French and Spanish mountains. The Foret d'Iraty, a mecca for hikers and cross-country skiers, is only 25km away.

Pau and Around

From humble beginnings as a crossing on the Gave de Pau ("Gave" roughly translates as valley) for flocks en route to and from the mountains, Pau became the capital of the ancient viscountcy of Béarn in 1464, and of the French part of the kingdom of Navarre in 1512. In 1567 its sovereign, Henri d'Albret, married the sister of the king of France, Marguerite d'Angoulême, friend and protector of artists and intellectuals and herself the author of a celebrated Boccaccio-like tale (the Heptameron), who transformed the town into a centre of the arts and nonconformist thinking.

Their daughter was Jeanne d'Albret, an ardent Protestant, whose zeal offended her own subjects as well as attracting the wrath of the Catholic king of France, Charles X, thus embroiling Béarn in the Wars of Religion – whose resolution, albeit only temporary, had to await the accession to the French throne of her own son, Henri IV, in 1589. An adroit politician, he renounced his faith to facilitate this transition, quipping that "Paris is worth a Mass" and then appeasing the regional sensibilities of his Béarnais subjects by announcing that he was giving France to Béarn rather than Béarn to France. He did not incorporate Béarn into the French state; that was left to his son and successor, Louis XIII, in 1620. As Pau's most famous son, Henri acquired a suitably colourful reputation.

He was baptized in traditional Béarnais style with the local Juraçon wine, and his infant lips were rubbed with garlic. In his adult life he was known as the vert-galant for his prowess as a lover. He also gave France one of its more famous recipes, poule au pot – chicken stuffed and boiled with vegetables: he is reputed to have said that he did not want anyone in his realm to be so poor as not to be able to afford a poule in the pot once a week.

Nive Valley

The Nive Valley is the only public-transport artery southeast into the Basque interior, with four or five trains a day making the riverside journey from Bayonne to St-Jean-Pied-de-Port in about an hour. The luminous green landscape on the approach to the mountains is scattered with traditional villages untouched by speculative development, and remains as peaceful and harmonious as in the lowlands.

Haute Soule

On the banks of the mountain river, the former fortifed town of Tardets is the nerve centre of Haute Soule, with its weekly market and traditional crafts and shops.