12 September 2022 - On me bike!

Miles driven today = 0 but quite a few pedalled.

Total Miles to date = 765

The electric bikes finally made it out of the garage today.  After a leisurely start  luxuriating in the cool morning air I popped over to the onsite boulangerie for our breakfast croissants.

Then we unleashed our trusty steeds from their confinement and pedalled off into the main resort here at Bicarrosse Plage.

We rode along the promenade and checked out the beach where a kids' surf school lesson was in full swing.

To our festival family this is a "turny-turny" and we regularly fill them.  We might have had a job with this one though.  It was pretty big.

We then pushed our bikes, as instructed, down the main pedestrianised thoroughfair.  In all honesty it's a holiday resort and there wasn't an awful lot to grab our attention, plus it was threatening to rain so we headed back to the van in case it filled up with water through the open skylights.

It didn't actually rain very much but we used the time to do a few jobs we have been putting off and have a spot of lunch.

In the afternoon the skies cleared and the temperature climbed again into the mid-30s so it was back to the beach.

Same beach different day.  As we suspected might be the case, the beach was much emptier on a Monday.  The tide was much further out too and a sandbar formed a shallow lagoon, so none of the washing machine experience we had yesterday.

Back at the van once more and I fancied getting on the bikes again before they went back in the garage.  Given it was 33 degrees, Lisa wasn't massively enamoured by the idea so I headed out on my own while she chilled at the van.  

There is a bike path which follows the coast north through the woods but I found that blocked with a big no entry sign before I had even got past the end of the campsite.  So I decided to follow the road toward Arcachon instead, hoping I could pick up the path a bit further up the trail.

I had pedalled out of town for a mile or so before it dawned on me that I had been mainly going uphill.  That didn't seem right so I checked my phone and realised I was on completely the wrong road.  I was in fact heading for the Etang de Cazaux, a large inland lake, so I decided to keep going.

I reached the lake shore at a marina full of large, expensive motorboats.  There was also an inflatable aquapark, which looked distinctly underused now that the kids are back at school.

I picked up a cycle path along the shoreline.  Although the lake is landlocked it still has sandy beaches and a lot of people seem to prefer swimming here in the calm waters as opposed to the rougher Atlantic swells.

The cycle path turned uphill for a short distance, through a cool wooded area.

Then back to the lake and another marina predominantly with sailing craft this time.

Eventually I reached the Navarrosse area, where I had hoped to find another cycle path to take me home but there was nothing obvious so I retraced my steps to the aquapark.  There I did find an alternative trail back to Bicarrosse Plage.  It was wonderfully twisty with lots of ups and downs including one 10% descent which those without ebikes coming the other way were struggling to get up.

This evening we have celebrated our first full week on the continent with a cracking dinner at the bar down by the beach.  Lisa had tuna tatare while I had the Poisson du Jour, which turned out to be hake or "merlu" as the French know it.  How's that for fish n chips!

Tomorrow we move on.  Our first port of call in Spain is likely to be San Sebastian but that is still at least 4 hours of solid driving from here so we may pull up a little short of the border.  There's a number of nice looking ACSI sites around St Jean de Luz so we will probably give them a look with a view to getting into Spain on Wednesday.

13 September 2022 - One more night in France