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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.

We woke to glorious blue sky, not a cloud to be seen anywhere. Kids played boules on the path and rode their bikes round in circles as we ate a mushroom omelette for Bastille day breakfast. Deciding to make the most of it we grabbed our red sleeping mat (the one with the slow puncture we now call our sofa) a picnic of pepper coated dry sausage, a baguette from the camp office, some bottles of squash and headed off to the beach just outside the camp site. We sat on our mat on a tussock of foliage at the edge of the beach, some kind of succulent plant that was spikier than it looked, and spent the day relaxing in the sun. We watched boats glide out of the small port up a channel in the sand which from our vantage point made them appear to be sailing on the beach itself. The beach gradually filled with more people, children played in the gentle waves, men stalked the grassy wetland areas to the East of the beach clearly foraging for something but we couldn’t decide what, and we munched our picnic and sunflower seeds until the late afternoon when the kite surfers started making for the water with their large kites swinging around alarmingly above our heads. A couple more bottles of red back at camp and a tinned paella was enough to knock us out, it’s tiring sitting around all day.

It had rained a lot during the night and because the litre and a half of red wine I’d hidden in my stomach the night before had made me careless about checking the flysheet some dampness had got in. We cheered ourselves up of a breakfast treat of bacon and scrambled eggs while Michael and his friend packed up, planning to drive to Biarritz. Washing and chores took up the rest of the grey morning but a bottle of nice Bordeaux wine from the camp office went down well with lunch. We walked along the beach watching kite surfers enjoying the windy day and a few brave sun bathers tucked behind flapping wind breaks or tussocks of grass in the dunes, making the most of the scarce rays of sun. Another bottle from a local chateau accompanied a rather nice ratatouille with lardons that Kez cooked for dinner before we strolled round the small local port choosing which of the yachts we might buy for a round the world voyage of the future.

Thankfully the atrocious music had stopped around midnight and the children and tipsy dancers stopped shouting at each other soon after. The morning sun was pleasant and we dithered about whether we should pack up and move on, stay put until after Bastille day on Monday or just shift our stuff to the quieter (slightly) municipal site over the road. In the end we spent the day chatting to Michael about various things like the Swiss national service, computers and photography, his travels in Oz, our adventures so far etc etc. We decided to stay put for the holiday weekend and Michael drove me to the supermarché where I stocked up on enough food for the long weekend. We dreaded what sort of noise would kick off this evening being a Saturday night and with the camp site rapidly reaching capacity, but it turned out there was no ‘entertainment’ tonight, and the kids were generally more bearable. The evening had brought some chilly Atlantic winds and having feasted on chicken and cheese sauce with potatoes, peas and carrots, and having finished the red wine we zipped the weather out and relaxed on the new pillows I’d bought because our beany cushions had become slack.

We had tossed up whether to stay or leave for most of the morning as the weather was cloudy with some heavyish showers passing over, but eventually we packed up near lunch time, deciding to move on at least a few miles. After a leisurely pootle along the beaches and waterfront paths out of Andernos we got back on the piste cyclables to head South, then West around the Bassin. We stopped for lunch by a high water tower which was an unusual feature on the piste and a tiny frog posed for some macro shots on Kez’s arm. As we began the Westerly leg along the Southern shore of the Bassin the weather turned against us and showered heavily while we tried to find a reasonably priced site. We headed for a municipal situated next to a beach at Gujan, found the entrance, booked in, set up, then realised the municipal was actually a seperate site across the track and over the fence, with fewer children and nicer pitches. A swiss chap called Michael had made the same mistake but neither of us was inclined to move and on investigation we found the price to be similar anyway. Michael had three months to travel and had come from Luzern in his small car with a tent and was meeting a friend arriving by train tomorrow. Michael had done a lot of travelling in Australia and an Aussie twang was detectable in his excellent English. Children ran around the pitches and soon after we’d finished a dinner of bolognaise a disco kicked off at the end of the camp site playing Abba, Grease medleys and a lot of Boney M at great volume. We rolled our eyes at Michael who was bravely trying to read a book as a woman started karaokeing traditional French folk songs, we gave up and zipped in for the night.