A New Zealander reveals the city’s secrets 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. This is it…

His job, his profession? Share this passion for Bayonne’s heritage with visitors and spark their curiosity about its rich and fascinating past. So, through photos and supporting 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 that he doesn’t know like any other. Full of praise.

Invitation to participate in the cultural

If Andy says today that he totally feels Bayonne’s character in heart and mind, he’s not hiding his Anglo-Saxon origins. Born in 1957 in Wellington, New Zealand, he grew up in Great Britain in the 1960s, then returned to his home country where he earned a degree in journalism.

“These studies allowed me to develop some important qualities for my current job, such as my curiosity and ability to smell unusual smells, but I wasn’t cut off from work as a journalist,” he admits. Andy wanted to roam, navigate, and see the world, so he will be exploring the globe for 3 years.

Having met the future wife of Dijon, Dominique, while picking grapes in Burgundy, he settled with her in 1983, in the Basque Country, where his relatives were, and founded their husbands. Andy first worked at the Buffet Cinema Utopia (now Atalante), there cultivating the relationship, encounter and 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 about the tourist courses that are beginning to develop in Bayonne. After training as a guide, this history geek worked as a temporary worker throughout the Basque Country, before truly dedicating himself to the city of Bayonne, from 2013.

Learn every day

What a certified Payoneer prefers in his job is the feeling that he’s never finished learning. Because, as he says so well: “The all-knowing guide does not exist, fortunately!”. Despite Andy’s many years of practice, he has always kept that wonder that I felt from day one by touching these ancient stones dating back to the ancient times. Because, unlike New Zealand which is a very recent country, France and Europe in general share a past spanning thousands of years.

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, and surprising them with little details hidden in the walls of houses and fortifications is the greatest wealth.

human exchange

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

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