WE ARE AWAY AT DAWN and after a brief visit to the bassin edge to watch Cap Ferret phare flash out overall in the incoming dawn, it's Route Barrée within minutes. Our plan to drive down past La Dune du Pilat, through Biscarrosse and Biscarrosse Plage are scotched by the terrible and decimating forest fires that raged hereabouts in the summer. Being thus warned by signs and barriers we proceed by various strategies to rejoin our planned route via other roads and by-ways.
CapBreton supplies the last sniff of a lighthouse, but I am not fooled. Only feux I fear. The little stone tower has been inactive for quite a while; the light a few metres seaward has taken over the green flashing and now the tower remains as an oddity. It is covered though, in The Lighthouse Directory, if you need chapter and verse . . .
Mme Melling eschews my proposal to bypass Bayonne and Biarritz on the A63 and directs us right through both on ‘normal’ roads. Not too bad, in parts… At some time in the afternoon en route we try in vain to visit the St Jean-de-Luz coastal headland feux… the only car park up there is fully patronised and we give up, then thrash about a bit through roadworks and illogical slip roads to try to get to our hotel, eventually succeeding and here we are in Ciboure. It is a joy! Of course, this too is the subject of a rather good post in my Pharesighted blog but just in case you can’t be fussed enough to visit nay, revisit that worthy description, I conclude this post with Ciboure and St Jean images, as well as distant views of Socoa, the last proper phare before the Spanish border, visited before but not this time.
We walk the beach at Vieux-Boucau-les-Bains, a fraction of it at least, and wish for less development and more time to take in the light, the surf and the squeaking sands. We deviate to Plage d'Ondres to eat our acquired sandwiches on the beach where I feel overdressed, it being warm and very surfy! Shoes! Jeans! And rather an oldie……sucks. And if that wasn't bad enough, Biarritz has two 'rs' and I've used only one in the montage below. You'll note I have not done anything about it though… don't tell me about the accent on the word jetée being missed off either unless you want to get a bad word back!
CapBreton supplies the last sniff of a lighthouse, but I am not fooled. Only feux I fear. The little stone tower has been inactive for quite a while; the light a few metres seaward has taken over the green flashing and now the tower remains as an oddity. It is covered though, in The Lighthouse Directory, if you need chapter and verse . . .
Mme Melling eschews my proposal to bypass Bayonne and Biarritz on the A63 and directs us right through both on ‘normal’ roads. Not too bad, in parts… At some time in the afternoon en route we try in vain to visit the St Jean-de-Luz coastal headland feux… the only car park up there is fully patronised and we give up, then thrash about a bit through roadworks and illogical slip roads to try to get to our hotel, eventually succeeding and here we are in Ciboure. It is a joy! Of course, this too is the subject of a rather good post in my Pharesighted blog but just in case you can’t be fussed enough to visit nay, revisit that worthy description, I conclude this post with Ciboure and St Jean images, as well as distant views of Socoa, the last proper phare before the Spanish border, visited before but not this time.
The stripe of tone on the Socoa montage is in sympathy with the identifying mark that Socoa sports, i.e. a black vertical stripe. That sort of cross reference is a demonstration of designerly engagement with the subject in hand, an aspiration I still try to adhere to, despite the almost total lack of any form of encouragement from my public. One might almost feel one’s efforts are going completely unnoticed.
I am trying you know . . . very trying, go on , say it — I know, I know…
NB There is an error in the labelling below: St Jean de Luz FGS, not 'du'. Twice as well!
I apologise but cannot be bothered to change it.
