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We slogged our way up the rest of the hill and after a couple of tough miles I spotted a sign for a tourist office and left Kez at the top of the hill while I cruised down towards the coast to try and find a cycle route map. The girl in the office said there were no cycle ways because there were too many roads which made sense to me, so I slogged back up the hill, stopping briefly to watch some youngsters learning peloté, the game where the players wear wicker hook shaped scoops on their hands to launch a small ball at the wall with frightening force. Something like squash maybe, but scarier. Realising the only way around the coast to Spain was going to be the busy roads we pressed on through the traffic, delightfully cruising past long lines of cars and motorhomes in a narrow cycle lane on the main road. I was nearly forced into the verge as a bored driver decided to swing across the cycle lane to try and get out of the queues, but my squealing brakes alerted him to my presence and he wound down his window to shout an apology. I waved it off as we cruised on past and enjoyed the views as we coasted down to St Jean de Luz, round the huge bay before hitting some evil hills the other side. The fact that our little GPS doesn’t understand hills may become a problem as we get round into the rockier coast of Spain. Today was a good example as we followed its suggestion along a small road to lop off a corner of coast, but had to push and sweat our bikes up an evil incline to get over a ridge we could have avoided mostly by following the coast road. It hasn’t really been a problem up until now but with the landscape becoming a bit more serious I think I’m going to have to invest in a contoured map to help us avoid pain in the future. A few miles before Hendaye we came across a cheapish camp site opposite some fantastic rocky cliffs being some distance from the town and beaches meant it wasn’t packed, had proper grassy pitches and hedges and no cheesey disco, so we stopped. I had become quite exhausted for some reason and Kez managed all the chores while I lay on my back uselessly. Later we strolled along the cliffs marvelling at the crumpled layers of rock jutting up out of the sea to form huge smooth sections of cliff face that you could probably slide down relatively painlessly until you hit the jagged broken edges amongst the waves a hundred feet below. We managed to avoid that though, luckily.

Traffic filled streets, fast roads, nasty hills, roundabouts and traffic lights for us today as we continued South. Fighting our way past queues of slow moving traffic was actually quite a refreshing change as we cycled through Bayonne and Biarritz. We stopped to unwind at a small park with a war memorial and I had a quick walk around the streets looking for a camp site guide for Spain. Of course, being still in France the book shops only seemed to have guides to France so I gave up and returned to Kez with a baguette to eat with the large pork sausage and juicy melon in our food bag. It was hard work today with the heat, hills and stop start traffic taking its toll, and having got out of Biarritz and past some beautiful coastline, we gave up half way up a steep hill with a four star camp site sitting there invitingly. At €26 it was the most we’ve spent on a camp site but it was a relief to be shown to a grassy shady pitch bordered by colourful hydrangers and without any of the dusty sand we’d been pitching on lately. Free wi-fi, a pool, restaurant and excellent showers made us feel a little less guilty about the expense as we relaxed into the rest of the afternoon. The evening entertainment turned out to be a pretty decent pop rock band playing some good covers, albeit with a French accent. We’d probably stay a week if it wasn’t so expensive.

An early departure saw us heading Southward again on fastish roads until Lac Marin D’Hossegor, where we took the ‘Avenue Tour de Lac’ down the West side of the lake. We began to wish we’d stuck to the main road as the avenue dipped and climbed its way through multiple exhausting hills offering glimpses of the pretty lake between the affluent real estate and forcing cyclists from both sides onto a dangerously narrow cycle lane presumably so the well to do residents could play in their 4×4s without having to consider anyone else. We rested on a waterside path in the smart center of Cap Breton that ran along the river into a marina full of yachts while joggers and cyclists passed before finding our way back onto the main road and the decent cycle path that ran along it. Decent except for the narrow gateways at junctions that forced us to wheel through awkwardly and caused no end of problems for the cyclists with double child trailers.
We found the smart looking municipal camp site in the touristy beachy part of Labenne but were told they couldn’t take us until 3pm, and only then if a booking didn’t turn up. The receptionist in a three star site round the corner pointed at a dusty square near the gate when we asked for a night. We looked at each other and politely declined. It looked like the place where the bins should be, but strangely, as we were leaving she called us back and after some discussion in the office gave us a nicer larger pitch with a tree, which we accepted, sandy though it was. The beach was packed with people enjoying the hot afternoon sun and we gazed across at the jagged mountainous looking coast of Spain looming through the distant haze. Once again we watched the sun set over the ocean before a late dinner while a petanque competition on our site entertained the guests and a cacophonous disco at the expensive four star site across the road thumped techno beats through the evening air until late.

The morning was cloudy so we decided to press on today. Kez had a bit of a stressful time as our decamping disturbed a couple more spiders of the type that had ambushed her from the toilet roll yesterday. Luckily though I was available this time to leap on them with my size 11s as she squeaked and pointed out the unfortunate stripey forest dwellers. We took the road South deciding to leave the piste to the pootlers and pootled our way through Lit-et-Mixe and Vielle Sainte Girons. Although we were once again cycling with the traffic it was nice to be seeing the goings on in the towns instead of bypassing it all on the quiet pistes. We made good time and stopped for lunch on the shores of the Étang de Léon, another large lake with beaches and watersports, and more to the point, a very handy picnic table. We found our intended camp site and for the first time on our journey we were refused entry. ‘One tent for one night?’ I asked as usual in my best French.
‘Non’ came the simple reply. Apparently they were fully booked and I could quite believe it looking at the amount of kids running around. We sat down on one of the benches and decided on a new destination. The area was smothered in camp sites so it wasn’t a problem, but finding a cheapish one wasn’t so easy. We cycled a mile or two down the road and found two camp sites directly opposite each other. A three star charging €26 or a two star charging €15. We’re definitely more the two star types so we booked in and were lead to our pitch by a tired faced woman on a creaky bicycle. ‘Follow me please’ she said.
‘Are you fast?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Sometimes.’ she replied as we followed her inappropriate black lacy g-string up the dusty lumpy path. We were shown to a reasonably sized pitch with a shady tree which is good, but we were bordered by five other pitches with tents and a large caravan. One pitch had noisy French youngsters who were drinking some kind of spirit, clearly to excess and we felt like we were camping in a gipsy slum. Thankfully the boozers had a drunken tiff before passing out quite early and were quiet from then on. With our washing line adding to the shanty town atmosphere we decided it wasn’t so bad, just for one night.
We strolled down the road towards the beach which took us past noisy funfares, other crammed camping sites with mobile homes packed inches from each other and a noisy circus ring called ‘Toro Piscine’ which we’d seen hundreds of posters advertising for the last week or so. ‘Bull swimming pool’ didn’t sound much fun to us so we walked on over a huge sand dune just in time to watch the sun dip sedately into the Atlantic.

Our plan to spend a second day lazing at the beach went belly up from the start. The inconsiderate youngsters that woke us around 5am by chatting away merrily in a nearby pitch, presumably after returning from a very late Saturday night out didn’t matter so much, but the cloudy sky, chilly breeze and Kez’s increasingly dodgy stomach meant we ended up spending the whole day moping around camp. The highlights of the morning were watching daredevil red squirrels leaping around high up in the canopy and spotting one of our large wood ants hauling what Kez was certain to be the legless carapace of the monster spider from yesterday across the needle strewn forest floor. Proof that it had died after disappearing under the devastating broom led counter attack to be neatly butchered and devoured by our friendly ants. This cheered Kez considerably and after she snoozed for a while in the afternoon she started feeling a bit better so we nibbled a late lunch and played Yam while a few rays of sun finally peeked through the cloud. If it’s nice tomorrow we may have our beach day after all, but cloudy and we’ll press on to Spain, it’s not far to go now until a whole new chapter in our unremarkable adventure.