Monthly Archives: July 2013

Bm196: the ultimate evidence

I was very happy to receive – with help of Jean Hirschinger – some pictures of Anne Marie Bats and Bernadette. Those two brave women are searching the Basque bordermarkers since a year, following Jean & Simone’s example. When fleeing the Basque hills because of thunderstorms, they decided to excavate bm196 further to find a number, having their garden-tools in their car. That number still lacked as the ultimate proof that this massive block was indeed bm196. See this post.
And they succeeded! Thanks a lot, Anne Marie and Bernadette!

A cemetery of bordermarkers – continued

Shortly after the previous post, Javier Martínez Ruiz surprised me with the pictures of his exploration in 2007 of this cemetery of the bordermarkers 75 and 76. At that time, these abandoned borderstones were far more visible than now. And there were even two pillars 75, all bordermarkers apparently pushed down the hill by vandals.

A cemetery of bordermarkers

Jacques Koleck makes me jealous: he reported another amazing discovery. At Col the Gorrospil and just beneath it, there are two fairly new bordermarkers: bm075 and 076: see this page.
On june 30th 2013, Jaques Koleck discovered ± 50 meters downhill from bm075 the former pillars 076 and (probably) 075, both buried in the gravel of the stream of Haizagerrico, next to each other. A bit higher, he found another marker with no signs of engraving, possibly a submarker.

In more detail:
– bm076: the engraving is still fine
– bm075 (?): this one is cut vertically in half and the engraving seems destroyed with a hammer
– the third one lies 10 meters higher in line of the streambed in the open air. Jacques supposes that this is a submarker between the source of the stream (which is the borderline until Dantxarinea, 5 km to the west) and (the new) bm075.

From above from bm075, the spot of this cemetery is easy to see according to Jacques: where a huge uprooted beech tree lies flat. These old markers were put erect by Jacques to make the pictures.
And finally, let’s project the spot of these former markers on Google Earth: