ON TOUR: Soulac-sur-Mer and Guernica

Soulac-sur-Mer

It is on the cruise map and our Ambassador Ambition cruise, reported in this issue of TNU, was a visitor.

www.travelnewsupdate.co.uk/article/968

It is not even a proper port and it is new to us.  Soulac-sur-Mer is interesting enough to stand by itself.

The cruise companies sometimes call this small seaside town Bordeaux in their brochures regarding ports visited.  It is very confusing.  The wine capital of the world is 60 miles away (1½ hours)!  Some name it Le Verdon, the estuary crossing point of the river Garonne to Royan one of the main French Atlantic resort towns with a marina for over 1,000 boats and a fish port.  

The pier is an uninspiring concrete platform from where you are loaded into a courtesy bus and then taken on a 15-minute drive along some of the bleakest flat landscape ever experienced.  It is not difficult to understand how a visitor might feel on a cold rainy and windswept winter’s day.  We were lucky in March.  A blue sky but very cold.

Things dramatically picked up!  Soulac-sur-Mer is ideal for cruise ship passengers.  

As you enter the village the landscape changes noticeably.  Your coach arrives at a very middle class community with some magnificent mansions worthy of Hollywood brightening up the landscape.  No litter and rubbish spoiling the view and few cars.   

You are deposited in the town square overlooked by the Basilique Notre-Dame-de-la-fin-des-Terres.  Dominated is not quite the word.  This Notre-Dame must be one of the smallest but has a most fascinating history and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was probably built in the 11th century by pilgrims from England.  In the 18th century erosion of the dunes caused the church to be almost completely silted up, and it was not until the mid-19th century that it was cleared.  Today it is open in all its glory.

From that point it is a straight quarter mile walk up the pedestrianised Rue de la Plage, the town’s main street, to the sea, a busy throughfare with the typical tourist shops, restaurants and bars.  Here we reached the promenade stretching both ways as far as the eye could see, and leading down to a sandy beach.  One can only imagine what it is like in the summer, full of families and very busy, a real holiday resort.

www.gironde-tourisme.com/organismes/relais-oceanesque-de-soulac-sur-mer

Guernica (spelling in Spanish) or Gernika (spelling in Basque)

In Britain the small Spanish town of Guernica, 25 miles north east of Bilbao, is probably only known to WWII historians and fans of Picasso.  

If you have visited Bilbao previously on a cruise ship take a tour, or better still join the narrow gauge railway from Bolueta Station (Metro), and return slightly quicker by bus.

On 26 April 1937, Guernica was bombed by Nazi Germany's Condor Legion and Fascist Italy's Aviazione Legionaria, in one of the first mass aerial bombings in support of the would-be dictator Franco. It was a merciless and savage attack. The terror inspired Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica, depicting his outrage at the violence. Its questionable results, monitored by Berlin, led to the blitz over Coventry in November 1940 and the retaliatory raids by the RAF into Germany.

Whilst most of Guernica was destroyed, the Casa de Juntas (Batzar Etxea), Assembly Hall, somehow remained, symbolising Basque residence, rather like St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Today it has been restored, painting wise the Lords of Biscay dominating the Congress, which meets there from time to time, debating in Basque.  

The Gernikako Arbola (Tree of Guernica' in Basque) is an oak tree that symbolizes traditional freedoms for the Biscayan people.  It resides close by.  Also situated in the vicinity is a replica made of ceramic tiles of Picasso’s Guernica (the original canvas painting being in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid), the artist’s perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace.

The story goes that a German officer saw a photo of the painting in Picasso's apartment and asked "Did you do that?", and Picasso responded: "No, you did".

https://gernikainfo.eus/en

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