Boondock Puffins

We woke up by the sea just outside the little town of Fouras and headed for a slow run around the coast into the settlement – it was a beautiful spot and amazing coast.

As always, Tom took a camera in a running pack so we stopped many times to admire the scenery and the dawn light.

Once back at camp, we packed up (we are getting significantly better and quicker at this!), made coffee and lunch, then got on the road.

The first section of today’s ride was all good, then it got hotter… and hotter… and hotter. The bike’s thermometer told us it was 37°C as we were going through Bordeaux. When it is full sunshine, nearing 40°C and you are wearing black motorbike jeans, queueing at traffic lights sucks. By the end of the traffic jam through Bordeaux, we were pretty jealous of any car driver who had air conditioning, and Tom became an expert in finding a place to stop in the queue that was in any part shaded.

When we got to our planned campsite (the only one that we could find that wasn’t full as it is still the height of school holidays), it was super creepy, filled with living corpses, mosquitoes and wasps. We paid and entered, immediately decided it wasn’t possible to stay, particularly with no shade, so sat for an hour while getting eaten alive to try to find somewhere else to go.

After we had rung around honestly every campsite within a 3 hour radius (top tip: don’t travel through the south west of France in August unless you’ve already reserved places), we confirmed that they were indeed all “complet” once again. Ultimately, we were left with no choice but to find a hotel.

Enter Hype Hotel who certainly lived up their name and came to our aid! Bicarrosse is not a place we’ve ever even heard of, let alone planned on visiting, but let us look briefly at some of its history:

Biscarrosse a large town a few kilometres away from the Bay of Arcachon. It has some interesting museums and is the birthplace of airmail, the location of Air France’s first creation of its regular flights, and it’s also where you can find both a huge lake and massive sand dunes.

This, combined with its unusual cleanliness and friendliness made it a much appreciated rest stop.

We’re fairly certain there are few better feelings that walking into an air conditioned hotel room that has a private bathroom when you are grimy, sweaty and knackered after being slowly cooked alive in the sun all day and have had nowhere to stop or stay! We also managed to get some washing done in the sink and hang it up to dry on our laundry line.

While most things were shut thanks to it being a Sunday (which we were prepared for while we planned on camping, but somehow it seems slightly less acceptable to whip out the JetBoil for boiling potatoes when you’re in a nice room!), we still managed to find a little convenience store that was open all day (Vidal) and a pizza place!

We headed happily to the hotel bearing pizza and snacks before collapsing in a heap and watching some YouTube videos, enjoying an early night in the luxury of air conditioning.