Monthly Archives: March 2014

New website: the blog of Jacques Koleck!

Published today, Jacques Koleck surprised me with his blog: http://jkbornesfrancoesp.over-blog.com/. I thought he still preferred handwritten letters and hardcopy photos above the digital dimension.

Jacques is one of the most industrious and thorough bordermarker-researchers I know in the Pyrenees. At the age of 71 he started with his passion and at present – after 7 years – he has covered the Pyrenees from coast to coast. He doesn’t limit himself to the obvious well-numbered bordermarkers in the 1-602 range but has an open heart for the few hundred other unnumbered bordermarkers, varying from plain intermediate crosses and borderstones until demarcation plaques in bordertunnels. The blog has started with an intriguing “inventaire etc” cq counting of all the esfr-bordermarkers in a different approach than my counting.

The very first bordermarkers

Besides the more than 700 numbered bordermarkers between France and Spain, there are many intermediate markers in all kinds of shape. The indefatigable Jacques Koleck once again found new intermediate bordermarkers in the Basque country and I’m impatiently awaiting his pictures. But thanks to him I can already show you these old postcards, found on the internet. They show the international bridge between Hendaye and Irún.
First an overview on this postcard:

What you hardly can see, are the two posts in the middle of the bridge.


But this postcard shows them very clear. They must be the two posts with both arms of Spain and France which are mentioned in article 26 of the Bayonne treaty of 1856. As such they are the very first bordermarkers mentioned in the treaty!
Jacques adds: “they have disappeared on the renewed bridge (which however has plaques with the ancient province-names) but similar posts can now be seen on the pedestrian bridge next to it.”