Impromptu Donostia: Day one

In what I think I can only describe as a fit of madness, I found myself this morning leaving the house at 6am.

It was still dark at this ungodly hour, but I was to catch a bus which would take me to Périgueux for an 8am train to Bordeaux. There are a few reasons for this sudden outburst of insanity, whether you consider that the bus or the early-morning start:

• I am currently without a car
• I am currently without a life

I decided to finally make use of my Poor Person’s Railcard to remedy the latter by having a little jolly to the seaside, because why not? The seaside I chose for this is in Saint Sebastián, in the Basque Country. There is no real reason for this choice of destination; I’ve been eyeing it for years and the TER Nouvelle Aquitaine will get me to Hendaye in exchange for a relatively small number of coins.

The four or five other people travelling on the bus remained joyfully quiet for the journey to Périgueux, probably because they too were waking-dead at that point, and were more interested by the bus driver’s choice of radio station. Despite RFM, I quickly came to embrace the ability to travel along the D675 without having to actually look at the road, and as a result quckly became quite the fan. It’s true to say that I didn’t get quite the same view as from a train, but hurray for hands-free driving and massive windows.

The journey on the 08:06 from Périgueux was mostly uneventful and not too busy. We had arrived at the station with plenty of time to spare, way ahead of schedule, so I was quite excited to explore the buffet, something I have recently determined every station needs, but the dodgily-printed A4 on the door informed me that the buffet is “indefinitely closed” and has been gutted — as was I — so I contented myself with walking up and down the parvis for ten minutes before finding my TER on platform two and settling into a window-table seat with some reading material and a vague notion of staying awake for most, if not all, of the journey. I was not prepared to grace the Relay with my presence for a two-euro cup of machine coffee in a paper cup.

Despite a lack of caffeine, I made a sterling effort to keep my eyes open until about Montpon Menesterol, where uncontrollable yawning must’ve made me appear quite rude to the nun I’d recently acquired at my table seat. We nodded at each other a couple of times and smiled compassionate smiles. She buried herself in a book, I read an article about mushrooms and soy sauce.

In Bordeax, the sumptuous Grand Comptoir offered caffeine and refuge from life in general, and between mouthfuls of chocolatine (slightly disappointing and a little bit on the small side, frankly) I mainlined black coffee and water. The clatter of cutlery on china combined with muffled announcements and the noise of trains to exotic locations gliding in and out of the station provided a romance-of-rail-travelly soundtrack to accompany my people-watching. I was only slightly put out to notice that other people’s breakfasts looked much more exciting than mine because they’d bothered find out that there was an option which involved bread and jam and an orange juice.

I shall know for next time.

People and trains continued to come and go until it was time finally for me to find my place on the 10:52 TER to Hendaye. This too started as quite an empty train but it soon filled up along the way with children Edith Nesbit would not have approved of and a woman who appeared to be dictating the contents of a training course into her phone, and as the scenery was as for my jaunts to Mont-de-Marsan and Lourdes I took advantage of this to read some more newspaper until Morcenx. It was here that we were abruptly brought to a halt and held up because idiots on the line ahead of us (somewhere near Dax) were doing things they shouldn’t have. This was quite tedious and delayed us for about an hour, but did have the bonus advantage of getting rid of the woman with the PowerPoint slides who abandoned the train for a taxi and left us all in relative peace and quiet.

After an amount of time I didn’t bother to measure, announcements were made on the platform and on the train telling us that the people who had left the train should unleave the train with haste because we would be leaving in five minutes. This complicated things for the family whose bread-winners had left the train – despite the misgivings of the guard – in an attempt to win some bread in a nearby boulangerie, and soon our onward departure was made all the more splendid by the increasingly frequent, vocal, and futile squeals of “mais non, nan, nan” as the doors closed and we lurched forward towards Dax. A group of clandestine smokers, who had also evidently wandered too far from the train to hear any announcements, gave us jaunty waves and shouts of what might have been encouragement but probably wasn’t as the rest of their parties looked on in horror, their faces pressed against the windows.

This sudden yet not completely unexpected departure of a train that had been waiting to leave for a while caused much commotion and consternation from the abandoned, who now somehow believed it the fault of the SNCF that their holidays were ruined as they learned that the next onward train to Dax wouldn’t be for a couple of hours and that they were all going to miss their TGVs anyway. Specifically, this was somehow the guard’s fault. Children screamed. The train accelerated. Someone was sick over a seat in the next carriage. The guard somehow communicated “oh for fuck’s sake” to the rest of us without moving her lips.

At Dax, people got off and scurried in various directions to make arrangements either for their onward journeys or to somehow be reunited with their baguettes. Train order was restored, and the reassuring smell of disinfectant wafted down the aisle. We sallied forth once more, and tantalising glimpses of boats and blue skies and water were to be caught as we continued towards the border and after an uneventful few more kilometres we pulled into Hendaye where I immediately found a bar and had a swift demi on a terrace opposite the station. Already everything and everyone seemed a lot more relaxed and chilled, and it’s worth noting for future adventures that there are plenty of nice bars and restaurants just over the road from the station in Hendaye where one can get yummy things for not much at all.

Although stopping for food somewhere along the route had been in my initial plans, there was now no time for this as after my swift refreshing half the 15:03 Euskotren metro-cum-train-thing pulled out of Estación Euskotren Hendaia and I was suddenly quite excited by something the people seated around me found so quotidian. There was not much vue to see from my siège, apart from perhaps occasional glimpses of other people’s washing, as it runs through urban areas and it’s difficult to see through the windows anyway as they’re heavily tinted, presumably to help with the heat.

We pulled into Donostia at 15:40 and after a quick sniff around the station café I set about locating my hostel. I spent the afternoon and evening wandering aimlessly with very little planned, other than to find interesting things and look at them or note them for further looking-at tomorrow. Between two churches, the seaside, and a seminary set atop a hill which somehow never seemed to end, I grazed casually on pintxos and beer and scoured the various tat emporia for only the classiest kind of fridge magnets.

Donostia has a comprehensive public transport network but is also for the most part easily accessible on foot, so I managed to get quite lot under my belt before my feet start complaining. The Cathedral of the Good Shepherd of San Sebastian is conveniently located a stone’s throw from a pintxo-serving taberna and was opened in 1897 by queen regent Maria Christina of Austria, and her son, King Alfonso XIII. It became a cathedral in 1953 and is vast and unfussy inside, which makes for some pretty light-play on the floor cast from the massive stained glass windows above.

The Elizbarrutiko Seminarioa was closed when I eventually got there. I’d been enjoying a casual stroll along the waterfront which had become slightly too mammaric for my liking when I averted my gaze and spied it perched in the distance. It seemed a good idea at the time and I didn’t feel confident trying to use the bus to get there, so I was not best pleased to find it closed upon arrival. From there the walk back downhill took me to the waterfront where people were enjoying the carousel in front of the City Hall, whence I found myself in the Plaza de la Constitución, full of people enjoying their evening beer and pintxos while the inhabitants of the tiers of balconied apartments that historically served as boxes for the bullfights held in the square below looked down and went about their business.

Following a final look round the multitude of purveyors of tat in the old town and a quick scout of the tat they were purveying, I ended up in the San Bizente Martiria. The church contains a spectacular altarpiece from the late 16th century, but viewing time was limited as they were locking up for the night so I ended up having a little graze and a beer in a tiny taberna next door.

Having been awake for more hours than is normal, I was starting to fade by this point so quietly made my way back to my hostel before climbing into my little casita and drifting off to sleep.