Flat day fun

We have started to make the trip back north. After leaving Mimizan we have circled Bordeux in crazy rush hour traffic and headed back to Ile de Oleron. The sea is calm with no waves and none forecast for a while so we have been enjoying other activities. In four years of visiting this Island we have realised that we have not seen a lot of it until now. We have run along miles of beach and hiked around headlands. Looked at ports and even found out a bit about its history (it’s famous for making sea salt). We have had epic boules tournaments (Ruth being the victor). We have played table tennis (Sarah – we need some coaching!) and have tried to work on our balancing skills on the Indo Board we brought with us.
It is suddenly cold here – ok not England cold, but the weather seemed to change suddenly overnight. Apparently this is common around early October and all the French know to put away their summer clothes and get out the winter ones. Unfortunately we don’t have ours so we do look strange in layers of summer clothes.
After a couple of weeks of free camping we have pitched on a campsite (the last one open on the Island). We ended up next to another GB van. The man was from Northern Ireland and his friend she was from Angouleme in France. It was his 69th birthday so he invited us over for champagne. We had a great chat it is strange the French lady seemed to know more about England and Ireland than we did and we seemed to have seen a lot more of France than she had.
We are revising our plans today as there is a big fuel shortage in France and some problems in Paris where we are really hoping to head next to see Nina and Christian. We are hoping to fuel up and start making our way in the Paris/home direction and see what happens.

Happy Birthday to Mum (Sandie), Anya and Demon (dog)

To honour these special birthdays we made a special meal and opened a bottle of bubbly. In the excitement of eating steak for the first time in a long while John cut his finger during the preparation. Ow!

Emergency pizza night.

O, oh, what do you do when your camping gas runs out half way through cooking your tea and there's no where open to buy more gas - EMERGENCY PIZZA!

Rock night at Club de VB (The van)

Du pain, du vin, du boursin

Lion ceraeal - for the serious big wave rider, rrrrrrroar!

Mimizan and the foul smelling paper factory

After a day of good surf at Biarritz we journeyed north to one of our favourite places on the west coast, Mimizan Plage. As with many beach towns on the west coast there is the town and then the town plage which can often be 10km apart. For example Lacanau has Lacanau Ocean, Moliets has Moliets Plage and Mimizan has Mimizan Plage. The plage town is heaving and vibrant in the sumer but almost completely shuts down in the winter. We headed here hoping for quiet waves however we arrived at the start of the Quiksilver German Surfing Contest.
The surf was huge and getting bigger. By the end of the day perfect hollow barrelling waves were breaking all along the north and south beaches. No one was surfing except for a jet ski that was trying to tow a surfer into the waves unsuccessfully. It looked like you could park a buss inside the barrel. The next day the surf had dropped a few feet so I (John) headed in. The surf was still too big for the contest but a German surfer a bodyboarder and me eventually managed to make it out back. I caught a few before having one of my worst wipe outs ever. Taking off on a big one, the wave was steep and very hollow. I tried to put pressure on my toes to pull into the barrel but unfortunately ended up free falling head first down the wave to then be sucked round with the curl (going over the falls, surfers call it). I was then pummelled under water for what seemed like ages. When I did surface the water was so aerated that it was difficult to get my head above the surface. Ruth said later the German spectators on the beach responded with a collective uuuuuuuuuuuu!! Slightly shaken I managed to get a few better ones.
Over the next few days the size dropped and we had some great waves.
Mimizan has a huge paper factory. When the wind is blowing in your direction you get a really unusual and not very pleasant smell. There really is nothing quite like it, Ruth describes it as rotten sprouts which is the closest description.