A Tandem-Trip in Spain
Cite this book
Citation
W. Hill James. A Tandem-Trip in Spain. 1905. cyclearchive.com, https://cyclearchive.com/books/a-tandem-trip-in-spain-w-james-1905/
Page numbers are pages of the PDF, which can differ from the numbers printed on the page.
Contents
- The author's note that the brochure records small personal experiences on a tandem drive through the Basque Provinces, not the well-known parts of Spain, and that the drawings are by Mrs James.
- The reprint, made by request after seventeen winters at Biarritz, and a list of books for further reading on the Basques, among them Francisque Michel, Julien Vinson and H. O'Shea.
- The dog-cart leaves Biarritz on 1 April 1891 with the author, his wife and a Basque driver, goes by St Jean de Luz to the frontier bridge of Béhobie, where the Spanish customs take a surety, and passes the Ile-des-Faisans, where Louis XIV met Philip IV.
- Fuenterrabia, Wellington's crossing of the Bidassoa in October 1813, and the Carlist War assault on Irun by Sir De Lacy Evans and the English Legion on 16 May 1837, when the prisoners were spared.
- Arrival at the Hotel de Londres in the fashionable new town, and the siege of 1813, which Gleig's The Subaltern records as the first use of big guns fired over the heads of the storming parties.
- The names of Fletcher, Rhodes, Collier, Machel and De Lancey cut in the citadel rock, the fish-hung town of Zaraus where the horses are stabled among mules and oxen, and the Basque church, with the history of the Cagots.
- The drive to Azpeitia and the convent of Loyola, the Santa Casa where Ignatius Loyola was born and died, the college of 133 young Jesuits, the domed church of 1683, and the night at the Hospice.
- The arms factory and damascene work at Eybar, a wet twelve-mile ride over the mountains to Durango, the Hotel Lapico and its fire, and the Durango market, where Don Carlos's decree of 1835 against foreign legionaries is recalled.
- A dog working a wheel to twist sandal cords, the turnpike tolls (chaines) at a peseta for the tandem, the bad roads near Bilbao, a lame wheeler, and the arrival at the Hotel d'Angleterre behind the English chaplain.
- Bilbao's 165,000 people and its iron-ore trade on the Nervion, the overhead ore baskets and Sir Charles Palmer's shipyard, the English Sailors' Reading Room with sixty-four thousand letters a year, 5,708,000 tons of ore exported in 1890, and the Luchana action of Christmas Eve 1836 under Espartero and Colonel Wylde.
- The mining centre of Somorrostro, which furnished steel for Toledo blades and saw fighting in 1874, and the night at Dicido with a Jersey-born mine-owner, Don Pedro, whose endless chain shipped 1,700 tons of ore in 74 hours.
- Castro, Liendo and Laredo, a town with no railway but electric light, a salmon river found in spate for a week, the Valmaseda mountains on the return, and the fishing licence the author's wife obtained from the Governor in Bilbao.
- The narrow bridges and overhanging Fonda of Valmaseda, the green-walnut conserve, a call on the Alcalde and his relations, vespers, the village band and Sunday dancing to a drum and fife.
- Small proprietors working their fields by hand with long-bladed forks in lines of men and women, the wooden harrow, and bullocks yoked by the horns on narrow carts that run along the water-courses.
- The three Basque provinces, Guipuzcoa, Biscaya and Alava, with Navarre, and their language; the Fueros they kept until 1876; and the Carlist white berets and the Standard of the Virgin, carried by the Carlists in the earlier war.
- The Hirur-bat (three-one) and Laur-bat (four-one) symbols, the Irintzina war cry, the Basque sailors credited with the bayonet at Baionnette near St Jean-de-Luz, and a population of about 600,000 Basques.
- Señor Zuloaga's mansion and workshops at Eybar, a damascene clock that took six years and was for sale at £200, the six years' training of the men, and the inlaying method, with the work held in a slot cut in a cannon ball.
- The night at Juan Aguirre's house at Elgoybar, boys playing blaid, the trinquet and rebot courts, the chistera glove and the Basque pelota game.
- The horses learning to drink from a road trough, a day's stage of twenty to twenty-five miles, the scarcity of wildlife in four hundred miles of Spain, and the case for a dog-cart with a brake and lead traces for tandem driving.