France: Hendaye - Pau

The strangely-named Puyoo is a village halfway to Pau, where we had planned to break our journey for a couple of days' car hire. A very long SNCF train pulled out of Hendaye and snaked its way up the coast through St. Jean-de-Luz and Biarritz, exotic places compared to the grime of industrial North-East Spain yesterday.

It wasn't quite as comfortable as with Renfe, but all was going smoothly till we came to a halt here, and out we had to get. Apparently the train in front had been derailed - possibly a result of industrial action aimed at France's TGVs: when we tried to get to the bottom of it our French failed us.

So, we asked the station master for the key to the station loo, and tried to wait patiently for coaches to take us onwards. Amongst the throng was an elderly French woman in pilgrimage gear (i.e. complete with a dangling scallop shell): she had not only walked to Compostela, but also back again as far as the Spanish border. That spurs me on.

Spain: Hondarribia

Our final single-track, narrow-guage journey took us (via view after view of hideous, tightly-packed apartment blocks, washing draped from their windows, graffiti everywhere) across the French border to Hendaye. With some relief, we traded the train for a taxi: this took us back across to the Spanish border town of Hondarribia, formerly known as Fuenterrabía and scene of many battles.

Our comfortable hotel was a converted 14th/15th century palace in the heart of the historic centre of Hondarribia, within impressive walls. Walking down the steep path through one of the stone gateways, we emerged by the harbour: excellent fish soup for dinner at Kupela, a Basque restaurant in a charming old fisherman's cottage.

This was a good stop: we could easily have stayed here longer.