Day 7 - Enter the Sandman

It had been an incredibly hot night in the tent. I was kept awake until 1.30am by what sounded like a party on the beach.

I went for a wee around 6.30am and saw that the sunrise had turned both the sky and lake pink. By the time I got back and grabbed my phone everything was orange.

We got up around 8.30am for coffee and toast, then packed up for an exploratory day out.

As we were leaving, I picked up my wraparound sunglasses, but Jackie piped up, “Don’t take them, I’ve packed your nice new ones in my rucksack”. How thoughtful!!

We broke the shackles and drove out of the campsite around 10am following the road clockwise around Le Lac de Cazaux et de Sanguinet. It was a stunning 16 mile drive which took us through pine forests and soon views out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Within half an hour we arrived at our first stop, La Dune du Pilat. It is free to visit La Dune du Pilat, but for people like us arriving by car there is a very reasonable €7 parking fee.

La Dune du Pilat is the highest sand dune in Europe and consists of 60 million cubic meters of sand. The Pilat Dune measures 100 to 115 m high, depending on the time of year. . The dune is 2.7km in length and 500m wide. It also shifts roughly one to five metres per year eastwards due to the tides and occasional heavy winds. It’s the only moving dune on the Aquitaine coast.

It attracts more than two million visitors each year. Let’s hope they don’t all decide today’s the day!!

After parking the car, I could see that it was blazing hot and sunglasses were essential to protect the eyes from the reflective white sand. Jackie handed me my new sunglasses case , which I opened and to my utter disbelief I discovered that it only contained Jackie’s reading glasses.

To say I was not impressed would be an understatement. I had visions of my retinas being scorched and I would need to read by braille for the rest of my life.

We walked along the lengthy sandy entranceway to the dune with various cafes, gift shops, toilets and information centres on either side. We were sweating profusely by the time we reached the bottom of the sand dune and of course my eyes were burning.

We had 2 choices, scale the steep sand mountain in front of us or walk up the 160 step stairway to the top. We chose the latter which was more than enough exertion for one day, particularly without sunglasses to protect my eyes.

There were plenty of tourists on the top of the dune, but not too many to annoy us, even when 2 coaches of school kids reached the summit.

We took the usual photos and even dropped down to a lower ridge for a better view of the entrance to Arcachon Bay. It was geographically stunning. I could describe it further, but I’ll let the photos do the talking (or not!!).

We shimmied down the vertical sand slope back to where we started and then walked back to the car covered head to foot in the very fine sand. Sand was in every pockets, shoe and sock and for some reason stuck to every inch of my oiled up body and head. We were probably there for not much more than an hour, but it was definitely worth the visit.

Our next stop was the Decathlon store ten minutes down the road in La Teste-de-Buch. I had hoped to buy a pair of binoculars, because annoyingly I had forgotten to pack mine. I didn’t like the bins they had for sale, so instead we bought a flashier (and more expensive) new gas cooker and a couple more expensive (but bigger) gas canisters.

Next stop on the itinerary was Cap Ferret. It was just 15 miles across the water from La Dune du Pilat, but 43 miles on the shortest route around Arcachon Bay. It was a pleasant but sedate drive to Cap Ferret which took over an hour. We stopped near the end of the Cap Ferret peninsula outside a restaurant called Chez Hortense.

It had its own private garden and mains started at €45. We decided it was too upmarket for our taste, so we walked to the water’s edge and took some photos back towards La Dune du Pilat. It was spectacular with mist hanging low under the dunes.

We drove back along the Arcachon Bay shore line and found a collection of eating establishments. After a bit of too-ing and fro-ing we settled on Chez Boulan, which turned out to be a posh oyster shack and NOT a restaurant as the owner was keen to inform us. We were sat at a table under a large parasol with a view of the bay.

There were only 3 things on the menu - oysters, shrimps or pâté. Jackie ordered 6 oysters and I ordered the country pâté. It was delicious and washed down with a bottle of Sauvignon blanc and a couple of bottles of complimentary ice cold water. It was €41 well spent.

After lunch we circumnavigated Arcachon Bay and back to Biscarrosse with the windows fully down to get some air. When the outside air temperature reached 38*C even I relented and let Jackie close the windows and put the air conditioning on. I had visions of the 2 ‘bigger’ gas canisters in the back of the car exploding!

We returned to E.Leclerc (Sponsors of the Tour de France Polka Dot Jersey) and bought 3 x 5l boxes of white wine and some snacks.

Back at camp, I had a quick dip in the lake that was warmer than most baths I’ve had, then we relaxed in the shade with a wine or two and fed the sparrows our non-Lays crisps.

After showers, we returned to the Pétanque arena for our final match at this venue. In the first game, I built up a commanding lead 12-5, but inexplicably Jackie fought back and beat me 13-12. She then decided that pizza was more important than pétanque.

As we were packing up, 2 polite young French boys asked if they could play with our boules, which we obviously agreed to. They played a game with their parents before returning them to us.

Jackie ordered a spicy pizza which we ate with our own beer, whilst watching a Hypnotist act on stage. The hypnotist did a lot of talking in French, which we obviously didn’t understand before finally getting nine people up on stage and putting them to sleep. He did this by putting his arm around their necks in some sort of choke hold, then snapping their head to the side. I wasn’t sure if we were watching hypnotism or mass murder!

The only thing of note during the show was he made one woman keep running off stage as if she was desperate to use the toilet and another woman was clearly only pretending to be hypnotised because she kept giggling. I am still not convinced by it all, but the show made for an entertaining end to the day.

Song of the Day - Hypnotised by Simple Minds.Meer informatie