St Jean-de-Luz revisited
July 25, 2008 in Guest Posts
The April 1974 Geography Field Trip to St Jean-de-Luz in south west France included a visit to this geological marvel, the wave-cut platform below the fortified harbour wall at nearby Socoa.
However, I took this picture just a few weeks ago when I revisited the site during a weekend break to the Basque region. Unlike my waistline, it doesn’t appear to have changed very much. But the intervening 34 years, in geological terms, doesn’t really count, does it?
I hope the picture may stir a few memories of a great school trip led by Messrs. Howell and Cole from the Geography Department. Among the schoolboy participants were (and apologies for only being able to remember a few): the late Bill Spears, Ian Bethune, Steve Richardson, Robert Dammers (who entertained us throughout with his very good impression of Idi Amin) at least one Simmons and a certain young master Pennington.
We visited San Sebastian, the shrine of St Ignatius at Loyola, a nearby mountain peak named Hizkabel (in the fog) and the small fishing port of Pasajes. Otherwise, geography field work filled our days and we got to know the ins and out of St Jean in quite a bit of detail. It was, at the time, for example, the largest tuna fishing port in France but I bet that’s changed.
I also remember an afternoon bus ride to the village of Sarre, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, and very much enjoyed retracing my steps there on my recent trip. It hadn’t changed a bit but neither had St Jean itself, the local streets still lined with pollard trees which give the town a very distinctive look.
Among the other highlights of the school trip were seeing Concorde over the Bay of Biscay, being test flown prior to entering commercial service; swimming in St Jean de Luz harbour (perishing according to Spears) and coming to terms with the effects of rough red wine after a night sitting at the pavement café outside our hotel. It seemed terribly sophisticated at the time.
Chris Laming 24 July 2008
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Stewart Jarrett said on August 6, 2008
I am afraid my reminiscense of geography field trips does not extend to such far flung locations as “abroad”, but Chris’s euro-recollections have stirred-up long suppressed memories of an eventful week, spent in the name of education, in a wooden hut on Romney Marsh circa 1973.
Who would have thought that St. Marys Bay could host such a fun “field” trip? Our agenda which included, land usage surveys, traffic census, and coastal features was hampered by the seasonal presence of nimbostratus and its best friends, rain and more rain.
We did not get to see Concorde, but one abiding memory is of one of the other “hostel” guests, from a group of mentally troubled adults, who could be seen every morning, regardless of the weather, endlessly walking around in circles in the car park. The same bloke would still be there every evening, soaked to the skin, still walking round and around. Even at that age, what started off as amusing became a subject of real concern.
We did not get to sample local wines at a continental pavement cafe but we did get to eat curled-up egg sandwiches amongst the sand dunes at Camber.
Education is such a open field.