Med and the Altantic beachy bit

All photos from this trip are HERE, previous installment HERE

Our 5 fun filled and relaxing days by the beach were obviously needed, and most of our aches and bruises went away. My swollen wrist had gone down and no longer made any funny noises.  However, you’d have thought a stay by the seaside would be totally safe?  Not so – I was frying some eggs for a salad wearing, well, not-a-lot, and as I served the eggs the fat spat over me leaving me with 9 burns and blisters over my front– but grateful it wasn’t any worse or go any lower (!).

So refreshed with a bit of tan (still the whitest on the beach due to factor-30) – we headed west to Brassac to do some more mountain biking, as they had some nice blue and red runs from the town. We opted for a blue as a warm up, but en-route we missed a sign and ended up doing about a 400m tough climb before realising we’d gone wrong!  We don’t do hills (going up), so this nearly killed us.  Once back on track we got our first puncture of the trip – which is astounding considering we were getting one a day previously.  The good news is that we had all the necessary repair bits, the bad news was the pump had seen so little use, it didn’t work very well!

We got news of some friends on the Atlantic coast, so left Brassac and headed towards the coast overnighting in Auch on the pretty river – suitable for a morning run and making us realise our running fitness has suffered.  Auch was interesting enough for a morning walk around but probably not much more, so then a rush to the Atlantic coast to meet old friends and play in the very rough sea!  So different compared to the gentle Med, this was fun (and probably slightly dangerous) as the waves would bowl you over and then drag you around a bit.  Probably very good for exfoliating your skin mind being dragged along the sand….

After a couple of days we headed further north towards Soulac-sur-Mer hoping for some more sun before the inevitable realisation that summer would soon be over and we’d soon be home to an autumnal Britain.  We stayed on a reasonable ACSI campsite and had a lovely pool and a few slides to play on as well as the beach with fun and aggressive waves, so long as the sun stayed out we’d take in the rays!  We managed to get the kite out too for some beach dragging which was incident free.

One meal we had out was at a sea-food restaurant and Mels first choice dish wasn’t available, so she opted for an assortment of sea food.  There were 3 options available and we thought we requested the cheaper (€18) version.  Anyway, the waiter looked a bit funny especially when we asked for chips, and when it arrived it was one of those moments where everyone turned around and looked in awe at a massive platter arrival…  We’re not sure what was on the plate, but it was lots, with probably 100 bits of seafood from oysters to massive crabs claws to prawns almost the size of lobsters!  I spent the meal scared we had the €50 dish, but no – we were billed correctly…. Amazing value.  Even better, we weren’t ill!

But with the sun saying goodbye with a glorious sunset, and our time almost gone, we continued our journey north.

Next and final installment HERE