Category Archives: Travel

Unknown's avatar

Gosport and the Canadians

by

Not sure if this photograph can give you a sense of just how cold it was in the wind today at Stokes Bay, Gosport. We’d come to have lunch at Pebbles Fish and Wine Bar.

It was only once inside, warm and waiting for food, that we saw through the window the stone commemorating the Canadian troops who took part in the D Day landings. It’s not a big stone.

This evening I did a little research. It seems that right where we’d been enjoying delicious fresh fish and hot chips, young Canadian service personnel had once packed the beach front, preparing to launch themselves into a war thousands of miles from home. I can’t imagine how they felt, preparing to fight for, and against, nations many of them may never even have visited.

Other than the rock we saw no sign of them, nor of the docks from which they set off. The only traces I did see were in the freedom of the windblown families who came and went around us.

Here is some footage I found of those preparations and departures from Stokes Bay in 1944 (The last video of the three – around five minutes each – is to do with the Canadians)

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

Unknown's avatar

Over the hills to Elantxobe

by

On a day when the sun neither came nor went, we decided to go for a drive to the fishing village of Elantxobe. We wound up and down through wooded hills, until we found it gleaming beneath us.

We parked beside the fishing boats, and wandered out along the wide concrete arms of the harbour. It was hard to imagine storms in the calm, but the muscle in those protective limbs made it clear that the town remembered.

From the harbour we took the cobbled street that twisted up through the houses behind. It was so steep that we abandoned it after a short while, opting instead to walk back up to a cafe we spotted on the edge of the road we’d just driven down. This boulder was outside the cafe. Below it was a sign which said that the rock weighed 301kg, and that it had been thrown to that point by the storm of the 30th of January 1990.

Suddenly the geography and forces of nature surrounding the little harbour became much clearer.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

Unknown's avatar

A postcard for Sunday – Arántzazu

by

This photograph was taken on a wet, cold, windy day in September 2022. The church is part of the Franciscan Sanctuary of Our Lady of Arántzazu. We found it at the end of the lonely road we’d followed up into the Aizkorri mountains after our lunch at Oñati.

The drive was dramatic. Forested limestone valleys, drifting with clouds, dropped away beside us, the edges getting steeper the higher we climbed.

It felt truly remote and wild, with the exception of the excellent road which delivered us to a huge car park, with the church at the far end. Both were virtually empty. The closer we got to the church the more imposing it became. It was unlike any religious building I had ever seen – more knuckle duster than warm welcome. The entrance was down a ramp beneath the barred windows on the right. Once inside, it didn’t feel much sunnier.

The wonder for me were the mountains, and the view of the sanctuary complex from behind the church.

If you’re feeling curious here is a link that explains the context and the architecture of the church

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023