Le Sud-Ouest recently carried an article with a series of aerial photographs of the French Basque Coast produced by L'institut nationale d'information geographique et foresterie comparing what places looked like in the 1950s and today. T
his pair of photos of Hendaye and the Bidasoa estuary show just how many changes have occurred in my lifetime (though of course I was not here to see them then).
The airport and the marina didn't exist, the freight yards at the railway terminus have been greatly expanded (again into the estuary), housing sprawl on the French side has greatly expanded, and the fields (water meadows?) in the flood plain around Irun have been converted into recreational and amenity land and the estuary by and large tamed. That's quite a lot of changes!
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