BIARRITZ TO PAMPLONA AND BACK VIA SAN SEBASTIAN, 155 MILES
(250 KILOMETRES)
DISTANCES ALONG THE ROUTE
Kil. Miles.
=Biarritz= to St. Jean de Luz =16= 10
=St. Jean de Luz= to Béhobie (frontier) =10= 6¼
=Béhobie= (frontier) to Vera =15= 9½
=Vera= to Almandoz =37= 23
=Almandoz= to Pamplona =39= 24
=Pamplona= to Tolosa =58= 36
=Tolosa= to San Sebastian =23= 14¼
=San Sebastian= to Fuentarrabia =20= 12¼
=Fuentarrabia= to Béhobie (frontier) =6= 3¾
=Béhobie= (frontier) to Biarritz =26= 16
NOTES FOR DRIVERS
Only those who have cars capable of climbing for many miles up some
exceedingly steep gradients should attempt this little two-day
journey through the Basque Country of Spain to Pamplona. The
surface of the road is very dusty but good between =Biarritz= and
=Béhobie=, and it is rather better and much less dusty from the
frontier to a little beyond =Irurita=. Beyond that the steep
gradients begin, and the surface of the road becomes loose in
places, although it keeps fairly good until the long zigzag ascent
to the =Col de Velate=, a pass among the mountains, 2,717 feet above
sea-level.
_Snow lingers in small patches at this height until April, but
information as to the state of the road can easily be obtained in
Bayonne, Biarritz, or Béhobie, before starting._
There is no need to fear brigands now that a couple of soldiers are
always stationed at the head of the pass.
Beyond the Col de Velate the surface rapidly improves, and becomes
quite good when the steepest part of the descent to Pamplona has
been accomplished.
=Pamplona to San Sebastian.=--This is a good but dusty road, except on the
very steep gradients which occur about halfway. There is a very steep
and very dangerous winding descent on leaving a long and narrow ravine,
but otherwise the descent towards the coast is gentle and continuous.
It is wise to carry provisions in the car for this journey, as the
villages do not cater for visitors or tourists. The _fonda_ at
Sant’ Esteban can provide, however, a most excellent lunch,
although giving only the slightest signs of such a possibility. The
Hôtel la Perla at Pamplona is clean and the food excellent.
PLACES OF INTEREST ON THE ROUTE
=St. Jean de Luz.=--Picturesque town on level ground, with a small
bay, old houses, curious church, and Château de Louis XIV.
Wellington’s headquarters in 1813-1814.
=Béhobie.=--A frontier village by the international bridge over the
Bidassoa.
=Irurita.=--An old and very quaint Spanish town, with several houses
ornamented with the armorial bearings of their noble owners.
=Col de Velate.=--A pass through the Pyrenees at a height of 2,717
feet, guarded by soldiers to prevent brigandage.
=Villava.=--Has the ruins of an ancient convent and some Renaissance
houses.
=Pamplona.=--A large walled city, the capital of Navarre; has no
great attractions beyond its situation, its massive walls, and the
Spanish life of the streets. (1) Cathedral founded in 1397, and
façade rebuilt in 1783; (2) Church of San Nicolás, twelfth and
thirteenth centuries; (3) San Saturnino, a curious building, much
altered since the fourteenth century; (4) the citadel has seen much
fighting, down to the Carlist War of 1875-1876.
=Road to Tolosa.=--Through a long ravine for a great part of the way;
small, scattered villages here and there.
=Tolosa.=--A small town, with dark and narrow streets; Church of
Santa Maria has elaborate classic front.
=San Sebastian.=--A large and very attractive Spanish watering-place,
frequently visited by the King of Spain; citadel, on Mont Orgullo,
is all that remains of the defences of the town, besieged by the
English in the Peninsular War; Churches of Santa Maria, built in
1743, and San Vicente, rebuilt in 1507; modern bull-ring.
=Irun.=--A small town of little interest; the church dates from 1508.
=Fuentarrabia.=--A very quaint old walled town, at the mouth of the
Bidassoa, about 3 kilometres from the main road at Irun.
This section of the tour is a two days’ journey to and from Pamplona,
the capital of Navarre. It is recommended on account of the scenery of
the passes of the Pyrenees which are traversed rather than for any
architectural or archæological interest, beyond the picturesqueness of
the houses of the wayside villages.
For the whole time one is either among the Basque people or their
neighbours a little to the south, who are sufficiently similar to them
to be almost indistinguishable.
THE BASQUES
The Basque people, when unmixed, are a fair people in face and hair, and
they are generally regarded as the survivors of the Iberian race which
in primitive times occupied Western Europe from Spain to Ireland.
Everywhere else they appear to have been absorbed by other races, and by
many who have studied the subject have been looked upon as a part of the
stock of the modern English, Irish, and Welsh.
Their language is of the agglutinative order, and has been called the
despair of philologists, the difficulty of discovering how many of the
Basque words have not been assimilated from other tongues being almost
insurmountable.
Of the religion of the ancient Basques Dr. Webster declares that no
signs remain, their country being without burial tumuli or standing
stones, although in the neighbouring areas the tumuli are thickly sown.
The early Christian missionaries speak of idols, but no one knows what
these were. Although a Roman road penetrates the heart of their country,
the Basques were very gradually Christianized, while the Celts, on the
contrary, were very susceptible to the new teaching from the East.
The Basques now hold to Roman Catholicism with firmness, and are an
industrious, hospitable, and very courteous people, and are not given to
excess or extravagance. They also differ from the city-loving Celts,
according to Mommsen, in their love of the country. They delight in
scattered habitations, and many of the Basque villages have scarcely
anything that can be called a street. When they emigrate, it is to South
rather than to North America, the Pampas life seeming to attract rather
than to repel them. ‘In forty-eight hours after their arrival,’ said a
French chargé d’affaires at Montevideo, ‘you will find not a Basque in
the town.’ It is very interesting, too, that in South America the
dolichocephalic Basques are always regarded as distinct from Spaniards
and Frenchmen, the brand of their race being deeper than the superficial
signs of their nationality!
It is a rare thing to see a plough in the Basque Country, and the writer
has not yet done so. Instead of this ancient labour-saving implement
these remarkable people use the _laya_, or two-pronged digging-fork.
This curious implement has a handle coming from one side, and is thus in
the form of the letter <f>h</f>. One often sees a row of six or seven
villagers--men, women, and children--working shoulder to shoulder. All
the forks are raised aloft simultaneously, then driven into the soil
from the full length of the arm perpendicularly, and when the forks have
been driven home with the foot, the soil is turned over like a furrow by
the pushing forward of all the forks in a row. In this way a width of
ground about eight feet wide, more or less, according to the number of
diggers, is _ploughed_ into furrows with wonderful rapidity, for the
people work with the greatest energy, which often surprises the
stranger, who, on crossing the frontier, expects to enter a land of
idlers.
[Illustration: No. 12. BIARRITZ TO PAMPLONA.]
LEAVING BIARRITZ
The road to the main-line station of Biarritz also takes one to the
highway for St. Jean de Luz and the Spanish frontier; but there is
another route closer to the sea, indicated in the sectional map, which
joins the dusty national road near Bidart, and, being shorter and less
frequented, is worth consideration, although there are one or two places
where one needs to go slowly in order to take the right turning.
ST. JEAN DE LUZ
is a quaint and attractive little town on flat ground almost level with
the sea at the mouth of the Nivelle. There is also an oval bay protected
by breakwaters.
In the town there are several picturesque half-timbered houses with
upper stories projecting on carved wooden corbels, and in the main
street is the very typical Basque church of St. Jean Baptiste, in which
Louis XIV. was married to the Infanta Marie-Thérèse of Spain on June 9,
1660. The interior suggests a spacious concert-hall or theatre rather
than a church, for it is an aisleless structure with three tiers of
black oak galleries fixed against the walls one above the other. The
men, in accordance with the Basque custom, occupy the
[Illustration: THE METHOD OF SHOEING BULLOCKS IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY.
A sketch at Sant’ Esteban. (_Page 207._)]
galleries, while the women have the great surface of rather dusty wooden
floor to themselves.
Just where it is necessary to turn to the left to get to the bridge the
square-turreted _Château de Louis XIV._, built by Louis XIII., stands
overlooking a wide _place_. The _Mairie_, built in 1657, contains the
act of marriage of Louis XIV., and the _Maison de l’Infante_, on the
quay, is shown as the house where the royal bride stayed before her
wedding; it contains a painting of the ceremony by Gérôme.
No. 2, Rue Mazarin, behind the Maison de l’Infante, was occupied by
Wellington when he had his headquarters in the town from November 17,
1813, to February 20, 1814, after defeating Soult at the Battle of the
Nivelle. In this time of inactivity, while preparations were being made
for investing Bayonne, the life in St. Jean de Luz is thus sketched by
Colonel Hill James:
‘A gay little town was St. Jean de Luz in those days, when a pack
of English foxhounds successfully drew the neighbouring woods,
followed by a brilliant field of the boldest spirits of the day.
Lord Wellington encouraged the sport by constantly appearing at the
meets, wearing his favourite Salisbury Hunt livery of sky-blue with
black cape. The Basque inhabitants flocked to see this novel sport,
undismayed by their warlike surroundings; for the manly, honest,
and straightforward conduct of the strangers had reassured them,
and they had returned to their homes to court the presence and
protection of the British Army, which paid with a liberal hand in
good coin for all it required.’
As long ago as 1520 Basque ships sailed from St. Jean de Luz to fish off
the coast of Newfoundland, and as pioneers in this enterprise one can
feel the fullest sympathy for the tenacity with which the French have
held to their fishery rights on that part of the American coast.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries St. Jean prospered
exceedingly, although in 1588 the Spaniards had succeeded in burning the
town, in revenge for the many things they had suffered at the hands of
the Basque corsairs who lived at the mouth of the Nivelle.
When the Duke of Buckingham was endeavouring to assist the Huguenots of
La Rochelle in their desperate resistance to the huge forces brought
against it by Richelieu, St. Jean de Luz sent fifty ships to the help of
the garrison of the Île de Rhé, which had been blockaded by the English
fleet, and Buckingham, having failed in his final assault, was forced to
sail homewards and leave the Protestant town to fight the whole forces
of France. It held out for fifteen months, capitulating in October,
1628.
The pretty village of Urrugne, with its curious classic church, stands
close to the foot-hills of the mountain chain which almost touches the
sea at this point.
The curves of the road give beautiful views over the sea--a lovely blue
flecked with breaking waves--and the green valleys dotted with white
houses between the bare, buff-coloured mountain ridges.
BÉHOBIE (the Franco-Spanish frontier village)
In the little street of this village on the Bidassoa one must come to a
halt at the sentry-box by the international bridge, where the official
enters particulars of the car in a book, salutes, and allows one to
cross the river. On the other side Spanish officials direct one to turn
to the right to reach the Customs-house, where, if all arrangements have
been made at home, it is only necessary to produce the _triptique_, and
pay a small sum, according to one’s destination and the amount of petrol
in the tank, which is calculated by depth only, and not capacity!
When the officials are satisfied, one is free to go where one chooses
without any more trouble; but before leaving Béhobie it is worth while
to look at the Île des Faisans, an island in the Bidassoa famous for
the meetings and conferences it has witnessed. The most memorable are
the meeting of Louis XI. and Henry IV. of Castile in 1463, the farewell
of François to his two sons on their way to Spain as hostages in 1526,
and the meeting in 1565 between Charles IX. and Catherine de Medici with
her daughter Elizabeth, wife of Philip II. of Spain.
‘Their majesties of France,’ says an old chronicler, ‘having heard
through Monsieur d’Orléans that the Queen of Spain was to cross the
river which separateth the two kingdoms on the South, dined full
early, and, straightway after dinner, they set off for this same
river, adjoining the which they caused leafy bowers to be builded,
about two leagues distant from St. Jehan de Luz; where they, having
come, waited some two hours for her approach in a heat so
desperate, that five or six soldiers of Strozzi’s troops died,
suffocated in their armour. At last, towards two o’clock, the Court
of the Queen was beheld drawing near, then the Queen-Mother, seized
with a great joy, crossed the river, and found herself face to face
with her whom she had so long desired.’
In 1660 Louis XIV. met his future bride at Béhobie, and a great pavilion
was put up for their reception. It was decorated by Velasquez, who
caught a fever there, and died shortly after his return to Madrid.
The first turning to the left after crossing the bridge over the
Bidassoa is taken, and for several miles the road follows the river in
a narrowing valley.
_At the bridge where the road takes to the right bank of the river there
is a charge of 5 pesetas made for automobiles._
The scenery becomes more mountainous every mile, but the road keeps
fairly level as it winds through the steep-sided ravine of the Bidassoa.
The shiny foliage of box trees and bushes clothes the precipitous
ascents in a dark green garment, threadbare in places where the woodman
has been at work, and the rough banks by the roadside are in spring
starred with primroses growing among mosses, penny-pies, and withered
ferns of the previous year. The lonely houses now and then to be seen in
the valley are of the same type all the way to Pamplona. They have
low-pitched, brown-tiled roofs with a very wide overhang at the gables,
shading a quaint balcony at one end. The woodwork is often painted green
or brown, and the building is almost invariably whitewashed, leaving a
margin of red stone showing round windows and doors and at each corner.
Where there are any chimneys, they are of the diminutive type one finds
in Italy. The shutters are often plain and solid, and of different
colours.
Vera is the first village of a series. They are all small, the Basques,
as already mentioned, disliking anything but hamlets, and all are of
great picturesqueness. In general character they are very similar, each
having, besides its wide-eaved balconied houses, a rushing stream
crossed by a simple stone bridge half grown over with ivy, one or two
bullock-carts, with a few men whose clean-shaven faces and regular,
almost handsome, features seem too good to be true, a simple church, and
possibly a military-looking personage in a brilliant uniform at the door
of one of the houses.
The bullock-carts are often of the most primitive type, with spokeless
wheels, such as one associates with the chariots of prehistoric man!
Close to the _fonda_ at Sant’ Esteban there is a smithy where the
bullocks are shod. As the beasts do not stand quietly during the
operation, they are slung in the wooden framework shown in the
accompanying illustration, their knees resting on brackets and their
hind-legs stretched out over a bar. They seem to rest quite comfortably
on the broad girths by which they are suspended.
Those who visit Spain should remember that _fonda_ means inn, and also
that, in villages where there is no sign of the word on any of the
houses, there may nevertheless be an inn of a simple character where a
modest meal can be obtained.
Of the _fonda_ at Sant’ Esteban the writer can speak with recent
experience of the excellent lunch of three or four courses, including an
appetizing omelette, which was prepared in a short quarter of an hour
for five hungry travellers. The waitress was a little girl of about
fourteen, whose dignified manner gave a finish to the meal, especially
when she insisted on removing the tablecloth before placing the dessert
and wine on the old mahogany table.
Legasa is the next village. It has the usual features and conspicuously
pretty children.
Narvate is very quaint, with its wide green balconies and the carved
stone panels in the walls of the larger houses, revealing the heraldic
dignities of the owners.
Gorse is abundant, and in some of the villages one sees fences made of
thin slabs of stone placed upright on their edges in exactly the same
fashion as in the Lake District of England.
At the little town of Irurita, where coats of arms and carved wooden
brackets are numerous, the road from Bayonne is joined, and almost
immediately afterwards the road begins a long winding ascent among
steep hillsides covered here and there with short beeches.
The haystacks are built round a central pole, as one sees them all over
Italy, and the gates into the fields are of that awkward type which
consists of several loose bars or thin poles dropped one above the other
between two uprights placed close together at each side of the opening
in the hedge or stone wall.
Climbing steadily, one is soon high above the green valley, with its
string of villages just passed through, and the views become
increasingly mountainous and austere. Great serrated ridges form the
horizon, and naked rocks show above the road on the left. The villages
become more scattered, and soon after Almandoz there is a vast solitude
of precipitous ascents covered with low beech-trees, until the bare
crags and peaks, whitened here and there with patches of snow, stand out
against the clear sky and the drifting clouds.
From this point to the head of the Col de Velate the surface of the road
is loose, and in places furrowed with running water, and the gradients
become very steep, with sharp curves which necessitate careful driving,
but a 12 to 15
[Illustration: ONE OF THE GATES OF PAMPLONA, THE CAPITAL OF NAVARRE.
Wellington besieged the town in 1813, and took it alter a brief
resistance. (_Page 210._)]
horse-power car of a recent type can make the ascent very easily.
The head of the pass (2,717 feet above the sea) is guarded by two
soldiers, whose presence is sufficient to keep off brigands. A suspicion
of adventure is given to the tour at this point in the visible evidence
that, but for these two cloaked figures, bearing modern rifles, a group
of reckless and fully armed banditti might appear at any corner of the
road and reduce the harmless tourist to a penniless condition.
A picturesque diligence that travels by this road is drawn by three
mules abreast, with another leading. Besides this one seldom meets
anything but the local vehicles of the villages. There are opportunities
of seeing a number of rare birds, if one is lucky, and has time to
linger in the solitude of the pass.[G]
Masses of conglomerate rock are passed on beginning the descent, and the
evening light falls on great slopes covered with beech. The road
gradually improves as the descent towards the plain is made. More quaint
villages are passed, dogs bark, and carts are met drawn by five or six
mules in a long line.
Before reaching Pamplona, the sun sets behind a jagged ridge of blue
mountains fringed with fluffy golden clouds, and the villages begin to
show specks of brightness from a distance, for all are lighted with
electricity, owing to the cheap power which is supplied by dozens of
mountain torrents and streams.
Villata has an old bridge, a ruined convent, a small river falling over
a dam, and a main street of tall houses, some of them ornamented with
classic sculpture. It also has a notice warning cars to reduce speed.
Soon afterwards an avenue of trees dignifies the road as one approaches
PAMPLONA
From the exterior, the lofty walls, the citadel and bastions of the
city, with the towers of its cathedral and churches rising above, set in
an amphitheatre of mountains, make a most attractive picture, but within
there is a want of antiquity which is disappointing. There are no
streets of old houses, and the churches lack, to some extent, the spirit
of romance, although one of them dates back to the twelfth century.
_The Cathedral_ was founded in 1397 on the site of an older building,
and the façade was built in 1783. The interior has three naves and
richly carved choir stalls dating from 1530. In the south transept the
doorway leading to the cloisters, of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, has a carved tympanum showing the death of Mary. It is
painted and gilded, and is a very beautiful example of late
fourteenth-century work.
_The Chapel of Santa Cruz_, in the south-west corner of the building,
has an iron fence made of the chains which surrounded the tent of the
Emir at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. The tomb of Charles
III. and his wife, Leonor of Castile, has been taken from the choir to
the old kitchen of the canons.
_The Church of San Nicolás_, in the Paseo de Valencia, is an interesting
building of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
_San Saturnino_ has been restored and altered a great deal since the
fourteenth century, and is now a curious building containing a dreadful
atmosphere of human decay, the wooden floor being almost entirely
composed of numbered trap-doors leading into the vaults beneath. On this
dusty floor the ‘devout’ kneel to repeat prayers in front of little
altars and shrines, and seem to disregard the pestilential odours of the
dead, which make the church intolerable for more than a few minutes.
Perhaps the dirt and the smell are regarded somewhat after the manner of
a penance, although the Roman Church, which inclines to a monetary basis
for all the forms of absolution it dispenses, would be hardly likely to
give it any recognition. Before hurrying out of the building the large
representation of an armed knight in low relief high up on one of the
walls should be noticed. The north door has a fine carving of the Last
Judgment.
_The Citadel_ is a great star-shaped fort at the south-west corner of
the city’s defences, which have been attacked at different times down to
the Carlist War of 1875-1876, when the city endured several bombardments
without the Carlists being able to gain an entry.
In 1521 Pamplona was besieged by the French, and a young Spanish captain
named Iñigo Lopez de Recalde was wounded near the gate of San Nicolás.
During his convalescence he planned the rules of the Order of the
Jesuits, and became their first vicar-general, being known after his
death as St. Ignatius de Loyola. Near the gateway a chapel was, in
1691, erected to the memory of the founder of the Jesuits.
In spite of its formidable defences, Wellington besieged Pamplona in
1813, after his victory at Vittoria, and took it after a brief
resistance.
PAMPLONA TO SAN SEBASTIAN
Leaving by the gateway called the Puerta Nueva, one crosses the River
Arga, and goes north-westward on a level dusty road. The city, with its
double tier of ramparts and its church towers, soon becomes a distant
object in the narrow plain set about with blue mountain peaks. On
getting closer to the rocky heights the crumpled and distorted
stratification becomes visible, as well as the intrusive masses of pale
grey rock.
All the level ground is under cultivation, and the Basque method of
digging with the _laya_ can be frequently seen, for the Navarrais of the
northern half of the province of Navarre scarcely differ at all from the
Basques, and have the same language and physique. In the southern half
of the province the people speak Spanish, and have the same
characteristics and the same failings as the Spaniards.
A few rather dilapidated villages are passed, and then a road to the
right is taken. It leads at once straight up to a narrow cleft in a
great glacis of forbidding grey rock. It almost takes one’s breath away
to approach such a natural fortress in a car, but the road is
encouraging, and one drives through the yawning portal into a narrow
ravine, where a noisy stream of very green water rushes among boulders
just below the road. Every few minutes it seems as though there can be
no way out of the gorge, and that the road will either run into a quarry
or a tunnel, but a fresh bend always shows a good stretch of road in
front. Holly and beech grow on the precipitous slopes, and teasels and
Christmas roses are passed. A rabbit is never seen, but sometimes a few
sheep appear among the rocks.
A notice-board warns the driver of a big descent with a rough surface
and hairpin corners and views of distant mountains, after which the road
continues in a ravine for several miles, descending always. There are a
few more villages, but little chance of a good _déjeuner_ before
reaching Tolosa. The valley gradually opens out a little, the scenery
becomes tamed with agriculture, and soon after the road has turned
towards the north one enters
TOLOSA
It is a small town with two narrow, shadowy streets running parallel and
quite close together, with a collection of new houses with bright red
roofs, and some cloth and paper mills scattered promiscuously outside
the old nucleus. The Church of Santa Maria, passed on the right, has an
elaborately ornamental classic front, and the interior decorated with
local marble.
At the village of Andoain there is a fork where the turning to the left
is taken, and a beautiful road follows a river to Lascarte, where one
goes to the right for San Sebastian, passing a number of factories, and
then coming out to a delicious view of great green waves foaming on to
the rocks of the bay of
SAN SEBASTIAN
It is a fashionable seaside town, with wide modern streets, containing
little to interest the visitor beyond the smartly dressed people, the
shops, and the chances of seeing the youthful King of Spain or other
members of European royal families. The picturesque bay, with the rocky
Isle of Santa Clara and the mountainous coast-line, make San Sebastian a
most attractive place. The season is from June to October, when inland
towns are being baked under a fierce sun.
The old town, besieged in 1813 by Wellington’s army, and occupying a
peninsula between the mouth of the Urumea and the bay, had had its
fortifications removed by 1865, so that there is little to remind one of
the siege of Napoleonic times. All who go there should, however, read a
detailed account of the investment which Wellington entrusted to General
Sir Thomas Graham. The garrison, under General Rey, made such a
successful resistance to the first assault that the allied forces were
obliged to retire, but a few weeks later Graham returned, and finally
took the citadel on Mont Orgullo. The English and Spanish soldiers were
accused of reckless sacking and plundering when they captured San
Sebastian, but it is difficult to find the truth of the matter. One
thing that is definitely known is the fact that Wellington complained so
much of the plundering of the Spanish troops that he even sent them back
from the front as he approached the Adour.
The citadel on Mont Orgullo cannot be entered without permission, but
anyone may climb up the hill to the English cemetery, where the British
officers who fell in the attacks on the town were buried.
The Church of Santa Maria was built in 1743, and San Vicente, rebuilt in
1507, has a reredos of gilded wood dated 1584.
[Illustration: THE LIMESTONE GORGE IN THE PYRENEES, BETWEEN PAMPLONA AND
TOLOSA.]
A large modern bull-ring is conspicuous on the hill on the east side of
the river. It is highly interesting to visit this twentieth-century
amphitheatre, and to see the elaborately fitted operating-room where the
wounded toreador, a victim of Spanish decadence, can receive immediate
treatment. There is also a small chapel in which the bull’s antagonist
can receive the Sacrament before he goes out to the dangerous encounter.
At Irun, which need not delay one, there is a turning to the left
leading down to the very picturesque little walled town of Fuentarrabia,
at the mouth of the Bidassoa. It is difficult to take a motor through
the narrow streets, and it is therefore wiser to leave the car outside
the quaint gateway.
Wellington’s army crossed the mouth of the Bidassoa in October, 1813,
the men wading through the water at low tide with their rifles held
above their heads. Soult expected that the English would cross at Vera,
eight miles up the river, the bridge at Béhobie having been destroyed,
and being unaware of the ford among the sandbanks, which was known to
the Basque fishermen.