The Northern Basque Country was for long largely undiferentiated from other areas of what is now Gascony. When Caesar conquered Gaul he found all the region south and west of the Garonne inhabited by a people known as the Aquitani, who were not Celtic and are modernly regarded as Basques (see Aquitanian language).

In Roman times, the region was first known as Aquitania and later as Novempopulania or Aquitania Tertia.

After the Basque rebellions against Roman feudalism in the late 4th and 5th century, the area eventually formed part of the independent Duchy of Vasconia, being segregated as separate County of Vasconia in the early 9th century.

In this period Northern Basques surely participated in the successive battles of Roncevaux against the Franks, in 778, 812 and 824.

Count Sans Sancion fought against the Franks again between 848 and 858 eventually becoming Duke of Vasconia.

In 1020 Gascony ceded its juridsiction over Labourd, then also including Lower Navarre, to Sancho the Great of Pamplona. This monarch made it a Viscounty in 1023. The area became disputed by the Angevin Dukes of Aquitaine until 1191 when Sancho the Wise and Richard Lionheart agreed to divide the country, remaining Labourd under Angevin sovereignity and Lower Navarre under Navarrese control.

Meanwhile, Soule (Zuberoa) was constitued as an independent viscounty, generally supported by Navarre against the pretensions of the Counts of Béarn, though at times also admitted certain Angevin overlordship ^[1].

With the end of the Hundred Years' War, Labourd passed to the Crown of France as an autonomous province, while Soule remained attached to Navarre, specially as Béarn was incorporated to the Basque kingdom.

Béarn is bordered by Basque provinces Soule and Lower Navarre to the west, by Gascony ( Landes and Armagnac) to the north, by Bigorre to the east, and by Spain (Aragon) to the south.

original borders of France as established by the Treaty of Verdun in 843, its inclusion in the kingdom was controversial. Its first parliamentary body, the Cour Major, was formed in 1080, 185 years before England's parliament. Bearn became a part of the Kingdom of Aquitaine, which passed to the King of England with Eleanor of Aquitaine, and was thus subject to England for a little over a century (1242-1347). Béarn passed to the county of Foix in 1290; in 1347 Count Gaston III Fébus paid homage to the king for his own county, but refused to give homage for Béarn, which he claimed as an independent fief, with its chief seat his stronghold at Pau, a site that had been fortified by the 11th century, which was made the official capital the seat of Béarn Province in 1464. Later, the territory passed through heiresses to the Kingdom of Navarre (see below), and this inclusion in a foreign state (though ruled by descendants of the French Capetian dynasty) contributed to its doubtful relationship to the Kingdom of France.

Eventually, Béarn fell to Henry III of Navarre, who inherited it from his mother, while at the same time the Kingdom of Navarre was almost entirely annexed by Spain (with only Lower Navarre, north of the Pyrenees, not annexed by Spain). Henry III of Navarre became King Henry IV of France in 1589, but he kept all his estates distinct from France. It was only in 1607 that he conceded to the demands of the Parlement of Paris, and reunited with the French crown his domains of County of Foix, Bigorre, Quatre-Vallées, and Nébouzan, conforming to the tradition that the king of France would have no personal domain. However, he refused to unite Béarn and Lower Navarre with the French crown, since these territories were sovereign countries, not formally under French sovereignty like Foix, Bigorre, and his other estates.

Thus Béarn and Lower Navarre remained only in a personal union with France (i.e. united to France through the person of Henry, both King of France and King of Navarre). It was only in 1620, ten years after his death, that Béarn and Lower Navarre were united to the French crown and entered French sovereignty, but the title of King of Navarre was kept by the kings of France until the French Revolution.

Previously, in 1539, the Edict of Villers-Cotteret had ordained that laws would be enacted in French (to the detriment of Latin and smaller local languages), but Béarn was not yet part of France and the edict did not apply there. Instead, after its incorporation into France, laws continued to be enacted in the langue d'oc until the French Revolution.  (source: Wikipedia)

Navarre is a mixture of the Basque influence from the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean influences coming from the Ebro. The Ebro valley is amenable to wheat, vegetables, wine, and even olive trees, as in Aragon and La Rioja. It was a part of the Roman Empire, and in the Middle Ages it became the Taifa kingdom of Tudela. During the Reconquista, the Northerners extended southwards.

List of golfs in south-west France: click here

List of golfs in the Landes (Dpt 40): click here

List of golfs in the Pyrenees-Atlantique (Dpt 64): click here