Merde il pleut, and it never ends this week. Despite all this we decided to go to the beach.

We drove for a while past Bordeaux via the ring road to the coast around Cap Ferret and the Arcachon Bay to the Dune du Pilat a massive sand dune, about 120km from the house.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcachon_Bay

The dune is over 100 metres high and 2km long. It is situated on the Atlantic coast facing the Bay of Biscay – quite a beautiful place and despite appearances not very busy this early in the season (the weather probably helped).

You can walk up the sand or take the stairs. I was thinking a Porsche Cayenne would go up there quite well, not having one, we took the stairs.

The bottom and… the top, good climbing!

I was thinking there must be a sand worm around here somewhere.

 

And then we saw the sand people.

 

The view over the bay is magnificent, the wind is quite strong on-shore and quite cool at the top – the dune is moving a metre or more inland each year.

The strong consistent wind attracts para gliders and kite surfers.

There were also some military flyers – there is also one moving rapidly behind the para gliders in the video clip.

They moved by very rapidly in formation.

There have been some questions about food and prices. Today’s lunch was at a little stall type restaurant at the bottom of the dune. Croque Monsieur with large amount of fries and salad; large bowl of mussels with fries; two excellent Belgian beers and two coffees for 32 Euro.

So go ahead – bring the family.

After lunch we moved on to a tour down the coast a bit. Most places past the dune were by and large deserted but in a few weeks it is easy to envision every camping spot and hotel full and the small roads full to bursting with cars. We stopped in at another small beach where the wind was very strong.

Then a rainy drive through the late day traffic to return to the house.

Looks good from upstairs too!