A New Zealand native reveals the secrets of the city through his guided tours

His job, his profession? Share this passion for Bayonne’s heritage with visitors and spark their curiosity about its rich and fascinating past. it’s a…

His job, his profession? Share this passion for Bayonne’s heritage with visitors and spark their curiosity about its rich and fascinating past. Therefore, through images and supportive personal anecdotes always accompanied by a touch of Anglo-Saxon humour, Andy guides visitors and locals every day to make them understand the history of this historic city like no other that he knows. full of praise.

An invitation to cultural participation

If Andy says that today he fully feels Bayonne’s presence in his heart and mind, then he does not hide his Anglo-Saxon ancestry. Born in 1957 in Wellington, New Zealand, he grew up in Great Britain in the 1960s and then returned to his native country where he earned a degree in Journalism.

“These studies allowed me to develop some important qualities for my current work, such as my curiosity and my ability to smell unusual things, but I couldn’t work as a journalist,” he admits. Andy wanted to wander around, move around, and see the world, and so he will explore the globe for 3 years.

Having met his future wife from Dijon, Dominique, while picking grapes in Burgundy, he settled with her in 1983, in the Basque Country, where his relatives were, and raised their wives. Andy works first at the Buffet Cinema Utopia (now Atalante), where he cultivates the relationship, the encounter and the exchange with the other as well as his passion for French cinema.

Then, when Utopia closes its doors, it is by the sign of fate that Andy is informed of the touring courses beginning to develop in Bayonne. After training as a guide, this history freak worked as a temporary worker all over the Basque Country, before really dedicating himself to the city of Bayonne, from 2013.

Learn every day

What the job-dependent Bayonnet likes best is the feeling that he’s never finished learning. Because, as he says so well: “The all-knowing mentor does not exist and fortunately!”. Despite Andy’s many years of practice, he has always maintained that wonder that you felt from day one by touching these ancient stones dating back to ancient times. Because, unlike New Zealand, which is a very small country, France and Europe in general share a millennia-old past.

For Andy, whose thirst for discovery is insatiable, wandering the streets of Bayonne and accompanying his audience to do the same, teaching them to look, surprising them with small details hidden in the walls of houses and fortifications is his greatest fortune.

human exchange

And if discovering every day is one reason why Andy doesn’t change his jobs for anything in the world, sharing and human exchange with his audience is another.

The latter does not hesitate to create a rapprochement with visitors by sharing with them personal stories and a little humanity. And so Andy proudly reveals to us, while joking, that to go to high school in New Zealand he took “the same bus that Peter Jackson,” the director of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit,” took.