and he's a Triathlon man...

Woke up to a beautiful sunny morning at Eulalie en Born, and even though it had rained in the night, Monsieur Spanneur was dead keen on a bike ride.  So was I, actually (amazing what a bit of sun can do), so Tesco bags over the wet saddles - they don’t give you free carriers over here - we set off on the most beautiful easy ride along the banks of the lake.  Only about 8kms, but enough for poor old Madame S all the same, even though my arse is getting plus toned and petite by the day.  Every now and then along the way we saw men with guns, which - even though I know it’s almost normal over here - I still find disconcerting.  It doesn’t help that so many of them seem pissed as farts while they’re doing it.  The local commune hangs receptacles for spent ammunition on telegraph poles, but judging by the ones I’ve looked into, it’s three beer cans and a wine bottle for every shotgun cartridge.  Bizarrely though, there are SO many birds here, so maybe the French are just lousy shots.  I hope so. 

After the bike ride, the lake.  There’s a municipal campsite next to the motorhome area, and it had a sandy beach, so we thought “Why not?”  We soon knew exactly why not – it was bone-chillingly freezing.  I am sure you don’t want me to describe what it did to Mike’s testicles, which is just as well, as I would have needed a microscope (he said this, not me).  However, I did take a very nice picture of him swimming – his sunny smile making a very good job of hiding the pain.

When we got back to the van, Mike suggested a run, but by that time I’d had enough – this is a holiday after all, not a bloody triathlon – and luckily, time was getting short so we left for Mimizan....

...where the waves were HUGE.  Not just biggish, but stonking great crashing things that were very scary, even just standing on the beach.  They seemed to break very unpredictably, and there were also big 'Danger' signs everywhere warning of shelving sand and lethal currents, so we decided against it and went further south, to Contis-Plage.  Have to say it all looks a bit big here too, but we will see what tomorrow brings.  It would be very nice to get into the sea, especially as we’ve had to pay seven euros just to park here!  In England we’d be congratulating ourselves on having found  somewhere cheap to stay, but in France, seven euros feels like a personal affront.