beercyclers.com

We made our way back along the cycle path, past Kez’s crash spot to Contis Plage, the large beach that most of the tourists in the area head for. With panniers full of picnic food and grapefruit squash we sat ourselves down on the golden sand while the green/blue waves rolled in impressively carrying surfers and body boarders toward the sand. Life guards periodically stopped in their jeep to call swimmers out of the surfing area, bikini girls played bat and ball and topless blotched mahogany sun leathered wrinklies showed just how bad the idea of laying in the sun all day is. We giggled guiltily as a Mr. Bean character made a big show of unpacking his surf board, performing his stretching exercises and jogging down to the water before flailing around uselessly in the choppy foam a few feet from the shore. Kez had developed a slightly dodgy stomach so I enjoyed the delicious melon we’d packed on my own, then managed to eat the rest of the picnic while she sipped weak squash and fascinated herself with observations, assumptions and comments about other beach goers. Eventually we decided it would be prudent to get within safe proximity of the camp toilets so hauled ourselves exhaustingly over the steep dune we’d gleefully slid down earlier and cycled back to camp. A lone bullfinch sat on the path at Kez’s accident blackspot which she insisted was laughing at her, but we made it back OK. I left Kez at camp for a quick supermarché run and when I returned she breathlessly told me of a giant spider attack that had occured while I was away. Apparently whilst tidying the tent a huge spider ‘but not like an outdoors one that are ok while they’re outdoors but not indoors but like a fat legged indoors one that aren’t ok’ had come into the tent from outdoors and waited in a toilet roll tube for Kez to pick up. She had noticed it and emitted a scream that woke the forest flinging the bag of toilet tissue across the pitch and stood hyperventilating staring in turn at the three pink rolls that had bounced into various corners of our camp. In my absence a kindly French lady had noticed the panic and asked urgently what was wrong. ‘Snake!?.. Scorpion!?’ Before finding the spider and despatching it with multiple blows from her campervan broom.
With Kez still off her food we had a quiet Saturday evening under the trees, me on the red mat and Kez watching the forest floor closely from her €1.50 child’s inflatable ring that I had bought for a second chair and which is surprisingly comfortable and wonderfully small and light for transporting when deflated. We are expecting it to fail with an embarassing bang at any moment though.

We decided to stay for a couple of days as we munched hazlenut and chocolate chip cookies and slurped coffee beneath the pine trees. We had a nice pitch on a reasonably priced, quiet site a short ride from the beach, the town and a large supermarché. We relaxed amidst the sand and pine needles watching the large wood ants we’d become quite fond of. We noticed that they seem much more aware of their surroundings than the normal small ants. A wag of a finger near them sends them scampering in circles before stopping under any available cover where they stay motionless for a few seconds before emerging cautiously. Presumably this is a way of avoiding hungry birds. We had to be careful with our cups of lemon squash though as the ants were very quick to dive in and drown if we left them on the floor for a few seconds. Later after I spat a wine covered ant from my teeth I carefully built an anti-ant defencive fence with pine needles around a patch of sand with a raised central fort for my cup which all seemed to be of no concern at all to the ants who crawled through quite happily. Kez watched some campers who had brought their cats on holiday with them, the third time we’ve seen this, the cats being teathered and walked on leads like dogs and seemingly quite happy about it. It made us wonder if we coud’ve brought Kez’s cat Bumper along for the adventure after all, but we couldn’t imagine getting a harness on her without losing a lot of blood. Kez marvelled at a caravan that had fifteen towels pegged on the line next to it ‘fifteen!’ and another that was airing a square tea towel ‘Square!’ while I wondered idly how often people got brained by the large fir cones that littered the forest floor. Thirty eight cent cans of Braubier and a bucket of our favourite plonk de table saw us through the evening with some lovely gouda steak burgers for dinner.

I got a bit confused with our route out of Mimizan and we ended up going back on ourselves a bit and we ended up doing ten miles without really gaining much Southerly ground. We finally found the piste Southward near the coast and followed it through the woods and dunes. The constant croaking of vocal frogs we’d become used to further North has given way to the equally impressive buzzing of cicadas up in the trees. I imagine gangs of little cloth capped football fans enthusiastically spinning their rattles as we pass. Cloudy weather kept us cool as the path narrowed and became fairly potholed and broken. We met quite a few cyclists who we had to pass very carefully as there was scant room for our laden bikes as it was. Families of holiday makers on hired bikes bumped along with their smallest children enjoying the bouncy ride in trailers behind and picnickers sat amongst the bracken taking a break from the saddle. Leading the way I coasted at speed down the path which looped round a wooded mound with picnic tables and stopped to wait for Kez on the far side. I was sure she was just behind, but she didn’t seem to be appearing. As my concern grew a man appeared on the top of the mound and called to me what sounded like ‘Monsieur, elle est topplee’ while making a capsizing gesture with his hands. Despite my terrible French I deduced Kez had had a fall and with images of my ginger frowned reluctant adventuress laying crumpled amongst blood and pine needles I raced round the corner to rescue her. I met her wobbling up the path. ‘Well you’ve missed it all now!’ she declared as I swept gallantly up with a look of protective concern. Apparently she had spotted a bullfinch on the path and worrying for its safety had veered off onto the sandy verge, losing control and crashing embarassingly back onto the path in front of the picnic mound. A chap had jumped up, raced over and helped her to her feet while I’d been waiting round the corner tutting at how slow she was today. I made her stop and checked her scuffed shins and bumped elbow but she seemed to have come off fairly well, and the bike seemed fine too as a family of slowcoach cycle pootlers that we’d barged past impressively earlier trundled smugly back into the lead. I pointed out that bullfinches can fly whereas beercyclers obviously can’t and we decided to pitch up at the next site down the road. A similar large foresty place as the last, but much more peaceful, even with the resident evening DJ ‘Dansanté’ playing his entire catalogue of Village People, Boney-M and Wham!, which Kez quite enjoyed.
PS Kez has demanded that I let it be known that as of tonight, she has become the new Yampion.

We woke late, laid in, then breakfasted and packed leisurely. We’d decided on a short ride today so didn’t leave until nearly lunch time. We cycled down to the lake and out onto a spit of land that had boats moored either side and fishermen on the end. The lake looked wonderful which ever way we turned. With forested hills around it in the distance, sailboards and motorboats floating around, water birds and jumping fish. We cycled into the town to find a tourist information office for a new map of piste cyclables in Landes since we had now ridden off the edge of our Gironde map. We picked up a piste heading South which took us through more pine forests. The acid smell of the deciduous trees balanced by a sweet fragrance from the little purple and yellow flowers that carpeted the forest floor. The pistes seemed now to follow old forest tracks rather than disused railways, and as such wound and meandered pleasingly along, making the journey a bit more interesting than the arrow straight pistes we’d ridden before. The piste eventually joined a road near Mimizan and we rode past two or three sites before finding the entrance to the municipal we’d been aiming at. The site was a huge area of pine forest running up to a lake at the top. Half in shady wood and half just with small shrubs bordering the pitches. We chose the shade of the pine trees and after a quick run through the town for groceries spent the rest of the afternoon sipping beer and laying gazing up at the huge trees, trunks devoid of foliage until the very top, which swayed hypnotically constantly changing the cool dappled shade below.
Kez elbowed me awake as my snoring became embarassing and kids started annoyingly trapesing through our pitch on their way to the barbecue area. At least three tripped over our guy ropes annoying me greatly, and returning from a walk by the lake we discovered a young girl sitting in our pitch yacking on her mobile phone. Perhaps I’m being too English about this, but having paid for a pitch I expect people to respect my space and use the bloody paths that go round, not through, the pitches. I dumped my bag down, slumped onto our sofa mat and opened a beer. The girl didn’t seem the least bit embarassed and carried on talking right next to us. I rolled my eyes and tried not to care as the barbecue hoardes finished their sausages and started stomping back the way they had come. Kez shouted and impressive ‘Whoa!’ as yet another teenager tripped over our guy rope, which illiceted a mildly embarassed ‘excusez-moi’. I had been thinking abut staying here a day or two, but with huge groups of ‘young adults’ on some kind of school holiday outing marring the tranquility I think we’ll move on after all.

We cycled South West from Gujan avoiding the busy town of Arcachon along the bay, and soon joined another piste cyclable which took us through the gentle shade of pine forests growing on the sandy hills near the coast. It was the first hills we’d encountered for a few days and was a bit of a shock to the system. We reached the coast near the mouth of the Bassin d’Arcachon and cycled past numerous expensive looking camp sites with all sorts of activities for the kids. Paintball, quadbiking, and if they got bored of those they could try quad paintball. We passed the huge Dune du Pilat, and offered help to a Dutch cyclist stranded with a puncture, he assured us he was ok though, his wife had gone back for the car. We took a slight detour down to a beach called Le Petit Nice which was anything but petite, and ate our lunch on the dunes watching the vast expanse of the Atlantic gently rolling in, glistening blue in the sunshine. The piste cyclable meandered along the coast for a while and we passed many cyclists heading for an afternoon on the beach before we cut back inland to pass between the huge lakes Etang de Cazaux and Etang de Biscarosse. The shores of the lakes were busy with people sunbathing and swimming, the narrow sandy beaches backed by tree shaded grass looked perfect for a morning of sizzling on the sand and an afternoon of barbecues under the shady trees. The lakes looked beautiful, but with motorhomes crammed into every available space and kids running round everywhere we were glad to be cycling on. We passed through a pretty little town that took its cycling so serious that instead of the usual white painted cyclist on the road signifying the cycleway they had brushed metal plaques pressed into the tarmac, which although smart, looked a bit slippy to me.
The camp site was a huge three star municipal and like most around here at the moment was busy and expensive. The pitch we were allocated was dry and dusty so I got us moved onto a nicer grassy one with a shady tree where we relaxed with beer and wine as the camp site kids squeaked up and down on their stabliser wheeled bikes. ‘Wi-Fi zone’ proclaimed a large sticker at reception, ‘Errr at the moment no.’ said the receptionist when I enquired.