Go West

The trip into the west and to the town of Andernos Les Bains went without a  hitch, oh except when we tried to drive under the underpass in Biganos and nearly lost the caravan roof.  The height of the underpass was 2m6, our car+ bike / caravan height was also 2m6.  We scraped through with nothing to spare and a stream of angry French drivers behind us blaring their horns and showing their frustration and disbelief with expressive arm movements.  Camping Fontaine Vielle is a lovely site right on the edge of the Arcachon Basin, unfortunately for us as we arrived late in the afternoon and this being the height of the French summer holidays they only had 1 pitch available for the week.  This was the size of a postage stamp, on an angle, surrounded by shrubbery and oh yes, the electric point was too far away for our long electric cable.  We made the best of it for the first night, even went so far as erecting the awning, and by the following morning a larger site + electric had become available.  We re-packed, shuffled up the site 100 metres and set up camp again.  Ben set up a games afternoon for us, a whole afternoon that is.  He was in a very happy and content mood as he set off that evening to find out what games entertainment was being provided by the camp and was delighted when he came runner up to the 15 year old winner of the jousting-style knockout game!

During the rest of the week we spent our time cycling on the cycle track up to the local town and walking to the end of the promenade to look at the crab population, climbing up Dune de Pyla, the largest sand dune in Europe, and running down the other side (the children that is, Kev and I were lumping a cool box full of lunchtime goodies and a bag of towels/ swimmers with us), cycling to Cap Ferrat (Ames and Tom on their bikes for the first couple of miles then we locked these up and continued with them in the trailer along the cycle paths through the dunes to the long sandy beach with huge Atlantic breakers – Ben was spotted at the front of the group of swimmers!! 

Then returned back through the dunes to their bikes and watched Tom leap back on his bike and cycle a la Ca-ven-dish back to the car.  Unfortunately his sprinting with gusto ended in disaster as he tried to out race his brother and came a cropper on the tarmac, but he was very brave and within minutes was back on again and cycling at speed. )

The Arcachon Basin is a lovely protected stretch of coastline and has the most glorious sunsets.  

I managed to get a couple of cool early morning runs along the esplanade beside the basin (think a very large Gansy Bay) with the boats bobbing at anchor and the sky a milky blue wash, arrghh just lovely.