I awaken with a start, in the dark, with my cowboy hat over my face, which I remove to reveal a bright afternoon light. The moment is brief and disconcerting. Where is this? What am I doing here? The moment stretches into some clarity. Jo was hereabouts. Lots of people were. There were trials of strength, a tug of war, young men racing across the field carrying full milk churns. Now there’s nobody and I’m feeling a bit exposed. I hear applause and a drum accompanying an accordian. I push myself up off the grass and put my hat on.
Jo is in a nearby crowd watching youngsters dancing a traditional Basque stick dance – very Gaelic to my eye. I’m steady on my feet. All things considered, I’m feeling pretty good.
Jo spotted the poster a few days ago. Sunday 2nd June, Itxassou, Cherry Festival. We stayed last night in a field near the village of Saint Etienne de Baigorry, only 30 minutes from Itxassou. Now we’re parked on a grassy knoll of sycamore trees in the middle of the village. The festival is next to a sports hall and comprises a bar, and stalls set around a tennis court sized grass patch, selling local produce and cherries sourced from Spain, just a few miles away, over the pass. On the court, there’s a game of Basque handball (pelota) in progress, where two teams of three players use their bare hands to volley a hard leather ball across the netless court. Several hundred spectators cheer enthusiastically when the umpire sings the score at every point. In the warm sunshine, many folks are drinking sangria and eating cheese and bacon tortilla breads, and there’s a mariachi band strolling about the site. This is French Basque territory but the mood is Hispanic.
We buy a kilo of fresh cherries, a paper cone of salami and a beret for granddaughter Edith. There are a couple of big trailers on which burning beech logs are roasting haunches and legs of lamb. At the bar we order a manzana liqueur, made by distilling green apples and a patxaran, a very sweet red liqueur obtained by macerating sloes in anise-flavoured spirit.There’s a long queue of folks buying tickets for the 1pm lunch in the sports hall where a big band will entertain. The cost is €27 a head. We buy a couple of tickets, and as it’s only noon we settle down in the sunshine with a couple of big glasses of red wine.
The hall is set with long rows of white, cloth covered trestle tables to accommodate about 500 diners. The band is playing jolly awful la la la oompah songs that we are encouraged to link arms and sway along with. I do my best to join in the swing.
Lunch Is salt cured ham and sweet pepper ratatouille with baguette bread and red wine. It’s good traditional Basque fare and I accept second and third helpings washed down with plenty of the wine. But what’s this! Another course. I’d not anticipated this. Plates of roast lamb from the BBQ trailers outside are placed at intervals on the trestle tables with peas, carrots and onions in a thick sauce, and more baguettes. And more bottles of red wine too, and a very decent Buzet Rosé, recommended by the Parisian diner on my left.
This is followed by local Bebris cheese and cherry jam. The waitress then arrives with a bottle of Patxaran, that sloe flavoured liqueur which I’d already sampled at the bar earlier. She pours a double but I feign distaste (it’s good stuff but a bit sweet) so she offers me a Manzana, and with a nod she pours two fat finger measures into a glass tumbler. And there’s still wine bottles moving up and down the table. Never mind, the sweet buttery Pay de Basque gateau will soak it all up. And bless her for her attentiveness, another waitress is back with the bottle of Manzana.
That’s how I missed everything between the milk churn race and the children’s Basque stick dance. We stay put on the grassy sycamore tree hill for a peaceful night’s sleep ready for a drive into the Pyrenees and a recuperative walk in the mountains.