So, having been enchanted by the pleasures and charms of Ciboure and St Jean-de-Luz and the satisfaction of having two singular feux occulting outside our hotel window, we were up betimes to ensure a satisfactory croissant and café followed by a ticking off of France's last phare before reaching the Spanish border. That was three years ago to the day, as I construct this last post concerning the Atlantic coast of France. Socoa is sited in the extremities of Ciboure, another light where you pick your way through the villas to reach it. Its function is probably to provide longer-ranging locational clarity to vessels who may be seeking a French rather than Spanish landfall.
The lighthouse dates back to 1845 when it replaced a wooden tower that had served as a feu for some years.The focal plane is 36 metres and gives out a quick-flashing light, which you may recall is referred to in phareological circles as a scintilator. It shows white or red aspects depending where you see it from. Socoa has a twelve metre or 39ft tower with lantern and gallery, attached to the front of the keeper's house. As you can just about make out, the edifice has black vertical stripes on the front (north) and west faces. A day mark sort of arrangement. These are hard to see from land as the keeper has planted a privet hedge to stop folk like me taking meaningful snaps from the path that borders the property. There is a fog siren located 300 metres east. I bet that delights the neighbours when activated! Our good friend Huelse has a historic
postcard view we can take a look at… Socoa is both a landfall light and the front light of an approach range guiding ships into the western entrance to the Baie de Saint-Jean-de-Luz. The
rear light is on a skeletal mast but I shall not be showing that here as it is visually of no interest. And I didn't snap it either, there are limits. The range of this light by the way, is twelve nautical miles white, the red sector just eight. Not that large then, but definitely a lighthouse: the last Atlantic phare, or the first, depending on your direction of travel.
We travelled along the Spanish coast from Bilbao with the coastal experience very much in mind. Spain has some fine lighthouses and we clocked those we could and inevitably missed one or two that involved time-consuming excursions of our planned route. We could not miss out the phare at Cabo Higuer though, as it is the last lighthouse in Spain and JBH has 'liked' it enough to make a postcard image of it. From the cape we could look across the mouth of the Bidassoa river to Pointe de Sainte Anne and France,
(see below). The Spanish lighthouse authority has built phares all along the very rugged north coast of Spain so that mariners can nearly always expect to triangulate with two lights at night to be sure of their position off the rocky and mountainous coast that is the southern border of the Bay of Biscay. Spanish lights usually sport all glass lanterns just like Cap Higuer does: a distinctive feature that makes them shine differently at night I should imagine: more 'glowy'. They employ Fresnels, of course! But Cabo Higuer is the
only Spanish lighthouse that will feature in this blog, so that in itself should make you sit up straight!
Cabo Higuer (the current facility) was commissioned in 1881, the original station having been established in 1855. It sports a focal plane of 65 metres or 213ft and dispatches two white flashes every ten seconds over a range of 23 nautical miles. The tower itself is 21 metres tall which is about 69ft, the lower stage being square and the upper stage being octagonal. Two galleries as well, the Spaniards don't stint on the creature comforts for their keepers! Huelse is up for his usual historic
postcard view, even in Spain. As you will probably be aware, the original lighthouse was destroyed during the Carlist civil war in 1874. Tsch! Cabo Higuer shelters the entrance to the Bahía de Txingudi (Baie de Chingoudy), which is an international harbour serving both Hondarribia, Spain, and Hendaye, France. The lighthouse is built on the top of the Cape which gives it its name.
That concludes this section of the Phares Sighted blog. The second section is the Mediterranean coastline, but at the risk of distressing you I shall not be doing posts on the lighthouses of Corsica, good though they may be, because my dear public, I have not been thither, as yet. I expect there may be passing references to some unseen feux in the southern waters but we shall have to see just how much detail I can be bothered to go into on those yet to be achieved. Watch (as I have said before) this space!
I thank Jean Benoît Héron for the two lighthouse renditions above, and Mme Melling for the two views in the 'border' montage, above. The other pictures are mine, of course. I also acknowledge once more the valuable information source of
The Lighthouse Directory on which I have often relied, to give you all those specifications and detail, so clearly vital to your appreciation and understanding of the phares I have been featuring throughout these postings.
