[Giri]

Part I

With Tartas, we leave the forest but not the Landes département : part II will be about villages of the hilly Southern part of the département known as Chalosse.

Tartas :

The Midouze river divides Tartas into two distinct entities : the High-Town with the Church and the Low-Town.

The Low-Town :

Ascending the Town :

The Sun prevents me from taking pics of the church, so let's head to Pontonx and its bullring :

We now enter Chalosse with the village of Gousse :

Louer :

Gamarde-les-Bains :

Montfort-en-Chalosse :

Curiously enough, Montfort's church is not in the town but on a nearby hill :

As an ending, let's see Béarn's neighbouring villages : first Sault-de-Navailles.

Lacadée (notice that the architecture is getting more Pyrenean) :

No style ! (vaguely basco-landais actually)

We're in Sauvagnon, a little village North of Pau. That's also where my Peugeot 309 decided to die (before being resurrected two weeks later). Cause of the death : transmission clutch. I should have known that 80km/h was not optimal on highways. The Pic d'Orhy (Orhi Mendia in Basque) still welcomes me to home.

 

[urbane]

Interesting architectural mix. How many people speak Basque in the area ? Does the area get much tourism ?

 

[Pove86]

It's curious that that bullring up there makes use of arab motives as the ones down in Spain. Is it common?

 

[Ni3lS]

Nice pics. I can really recognize the little villages Cant wait going to France again this summer

 

[ChrisZwolle]

Nice, I have been only to Lannemezan in that area (and further south to the Bielsatunnel). They say Les Landes is pretty boring, except for the coast.

 

[Giri]

It's curious that that bullring up there makes use of arab motives as the ones down in Spain. Is it common?

Yep : Neo-Mauresque architecture as it's called was very popular in the XIXth century when Spanish-style bull-games were adopted hence bullrings were built.

The most well-know bullrings in SW France are Dax and Bayonne :

Interesting architectural mix. How many people speak Basque in the area ? Does the area get much tourism ?

Actually, Basque has not been spoken in those areas for some 1000 years now. The vernacular language is Gascon(<vasconum), a romance language that exhibits many Bascoid phonetic traits.

Nice, I have been only to Lannemezan in that area (and further south to the Bielsatunnel). They say Les Landes is pretty boring, except for the coast.

I miss the times when the Landes were a magnificient desert with odors and colors that are now long lost. Yet, I don't find modern Landes boring : monotonous at best (Lannemezan is also in the middle of landes hence its name : Landa+Medianum>Lanamesan in Gascon)

 

[Cicerón]

Gorgeous pictures, as always :applause:

This is Gascon right? Is Gascon official in that area of France?

 

[urbane]

Actually, Basque has not been spoken in those areas for some 1000 years now. The vernacular language is Gascon(<vasconum), a romance language that exhibits many Bascoid phonetic traits.

Ok, I thought that Basque was the vernacular language in some of the villages there since you mentioned Pic d'Orhy's Basque name in the thread.