Day 17 - Plage de Saint-Jean-de-Luz

We slept like babies in our ultra comfortable hotel bed and didn’t really stir until 8am. At 9am, we ventured down to breakfast in the rear courtyard.

Frederick insisted on giving us a rundown on the breakfast procedure. I think we could have guessed - decide what coffee you desire, then help yourself to the buffet breakfast. The coffee was brought to us by his partner, who we have named Manuel. Manuel’s job seemed to be just coffee server and sparrow scarer.

It was a delicious selection of apparently local products ranging from croissants and bread, cheese and ham, crepes and bread pudding, cereals, fruits, yoghurts and jams. Jackie’s only gripe was there were no eggs and mine was I had to ask for second coffees.

After breakfast we confirmed that we could leave our car in their garage, then we headed for the crescent shaped beach. It was a lovely sandy beach that was sufficiently wide to cope with the hundreds of sun worshipers coming and going.

The sea is the Bay of Biscay and not cold. We dipped into on several occasions.

We stayed on the beach all day apart from taking lunchtime beer refreshments and a little tapas of amazing pork belly pieces.

We finally returned to our hotel close to 7pm, relaxed for a short while then went out for dinner. We settled on tapas. We ordered croquettes and Camembert in honey. It was nice, but didn’t have the wow factor.

The evening ended with a salted caramel ice cream in a cornet each and a long stroll along the promenade as the sun was setting. It was a very civilised evening in a very very lovely town.

Our wallets will sigh with relief when we go back to roughing it in a tent, drinking wine from a box and cooking our own meals!

Song of the Day - Beach by Something Happens!Read more