A statue in the distance had intrigued us on other walks and today, at last, we checked it out. It was dedicated to Cardinal Charles Lavigerie by the town of Bayonne and his friends and admirers. On one side it says that he and his missionaries did more good in Tunisia than the whole of the army, and on the other is a quote from one of his speeches in which he describes the slave trade as a disgrace to humanity. Cardinal Lavigerie was born in Bayonne, was a French Cardinal, Archbishop of Carthage and Algiers and the Primate of Africa. He travelled to various European cities including London, Brussels and Paris rallying public support against the slave trade. He defied the Emperor, who wanted him to be Archbishop of Lyon, because he wanted to stay in Africa and work with the people there and not just the colonists. He died in 1892. The pose in his statue suggests a determined man invoking his personal power as well as divine power. A man of his times, he worked to save bodies and souls.
The beflagged Bridge D’Esprit looked inviting but it could wait for another time. We decided to walk along the Adour, imagining something as charming as the Nive, with a bike path and forests. There was no track and the area, although once having seen better days, is now a little on the seedy side and the home of light industry. Advertisement boards shouted their products but all contained health messages as well. There was great activity with new site works along the river banks that made them inaccessible to us, and also on the roads. It is all part of a beautification and improvement plan that we are just a little too early to see. We walked along beside the road works for some way until we ran out of road that wasn’t bigger and busier than the one that we had been walking on beside the cars. 
Turning back, we retraced our steps until we came to some more fortifications. We entered, crossing the moat and passing through a drawbridge – the first that we had seen with the chains and all the working parts. Another drawbridge followed, and both had barracks-like buildings attached. These fortifications were built to defend the second castle, which is used today for local administration and is not open to the public.
We came to St Andrews Church, a neo-gothic church, built in the mid-nineteenth century, and we entered in a bit of a ‘ho hum’ way, expecting to look around fairly quickly. The religious art works were from different styles and periods, with some having a very modern feel. Two of particular note were the painting of Jesus with his parents, as a boy learning about carpentry, and a large painting about South America. We analysed this painting for some time, seeing in it acknowledgement of past and present actions against the people, as well as recognition of the roles the church and the clergy are playing in supporting movements against imperialism, oppression of the people and suppression of human rights. Current commentary has not been given visual space in the churches we have visited so far. 
On a lighter note, and to show that we are still very much at the beginning stage of language in some regards, we read a sign, attached to one of the pillars, indicating a hole in the pillar, that said ‘Tronc de St Antoine’. A lazy guess suggested the trunk, or main part of St Antoine’s body, which I presumed was in the pillar. Given the popularity of saintly relics, it was amazing that any one church could have so much of anyone, and then why would they shove him into a pillar? Still, stranger things have happened and maybe a trunk on its own doesn’t make such a great display. The next pillar had a sign for ‘Tronc des pauvres’. This was taking it too far – even I didn’t think that they were putting body parts of the poor into a pillar, so we looked up ‘tronc’ and saw that it meant ‘fund’. Given that I don’t look up most words that I read, but only know about 60% of them for sure, I am probably wandering around in my own version of reality nearly all the time. 
Bayonne is a very visitor-friendly town. This electric bus gives people free rides around the centre or town.
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