At Hendaye on the Atlantic. Did I know what I was getting into…? I’m back at my desk after hiking the length of the Pyrenees, from Atlantic to Mediterranean: just under 800 km, with 51,000 metres of elevation gain and descent, in 35 days. I wanted to do this high traverse as a sort of farewell-to-Europe after 15 years living on the continent, six of them in Malta and the rest in...
Matthew Carr The Pyrenees is one of the great European landscapes. It cuts across the mouth of the Iberian peninsula, forming the border between France and Spain. It’s been a place of beauty and of terror; a passage for refugees, dissidents and resistance fighters; and the cradle of both religious heresy and religious pilgrimage. This fascinating region is too often overshadowed by the...
San Sebastian’s picture postcard beach The Spanish village of San Sebastian makes an appearance in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, the brilliant first novel that would propel the expat writer and his sparse, direct style to international fame, and eventually to remaking American literature. It tells the story of a group of American and British expats who travel from Paris to Pamplona...
The streets of Santillana del Mar On my second day in Basque country, I left Basque country — but only briefly. We were heading to France in a few days, and I wanted to see more of northern Spain before wandering Basque villages on the other side of the border. We set course for Santillana del Mar, a beautifully preserved medieval village of cobbled streets and tanned stone walls lined with noble...
Bilbao, in the heart of Spain’s Basque country. I took a short trip to Basque Country to mark the end of Berlin summer with a week of overindulgence in what’s been called the foodie capital of Europe. The Basque people claim to be the oldest group to inhabit the European peninsula. No one knows exactly where they came from, but their presence in the region straddling the northern border of...