Today was a business day – lots of research and planning, lots of assessing our belongings and making a throw out pile. My favourite skirt had literally perished, with a gaping hole finally giving it its final death knell. We walked into town to look for another in the enormous pre-festa street market. Most items were very cheap, but the skirt I tried on and liked was 74 Euros ($120 ), so we left it there. Many stalls later we finally found another for 10 Euros; a great relief to Keith who was loyally waiting at every stall, but whose idea of a good time does not include shopping for clothes. A girl was selling lollies to aid needy animals and, in particular, the rabbits that she had on strings sitting on top of a box. We bought a CD of Basque choirs, but we had to be insistent that we wanted traditional music, because as soon as the man learnt that we were Australian, he was convinced that we would want Rugby songs sung by a Basque choir.
After lunch we took the bus to the ice skating rink at Anglet to see Jan training. He is training for a competition in Moscow in February and has spent every afternoon of his three weeks in Bayonne at the skating rink. It was very cold inside the building, with the ice clear and firm and not covered in a watery slush as we have seen it in some Australian rinks. The conditions were not good for training, since the rink was very crowded and some others were being coached in their tricks. Nevertheless, we were able to see the effortless way Jan glides about and some pirouettes and jumps. He took time to coach some junior skaters who wanted to skate backwards and to do some pirouettes. The strength and balance required for skating is amazing, let alone the preparedness to practice and to fall so many times to perfect a move.That evening we made an apple crumble to share with everyone and looked at Jan’s photos of his family and holidays. He is also an alpine skier who thrives on speed, slalom competitions and steep down hill slopes.
Our time in Bayonne had been both relaxing and interesting and we had been very lucky to stay with Catherine. She had helped us a lot and we had really enjoyed her company. We had decided to go to Barnsley in England, via a couple of days in Paris, so we were sad to leave but excited about our next moves, with of course, the big one being seeing our son, Rohan, in four days time.
Traditiona Basque food for sale: deep fried 'churros' above and a large thin crepes below.
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