A few grains of sand

Pete and I are presently in a coastal town in Western France in a town called Arcachon. We are spending a few days here before travelling to Bordeaux for 3 nights. Arcachon is a fascinating place. In the summer, it is filled with the wealthy people either in the expensive apartments or in the mega-expensive huge houses (of which there are many). At this time of year, many of the homes are shut up but you can still smell the money.

Arcachon is situated on a bay that opens into the Atlantic and it seems that the local Oysters are the choice for most diners. There are many many bars and restaurants here which keeps Pete happy.

Today has been a stormy and rainy day, so we've explored the shops and drank beer. That's fine by me. If the weather is good tomorrow, we are getting a boat across the bay and then rent bikes.

Yesterday was a lovely day and we decided to go the Europe's biggest sand dune about 10k down the coast (the Dune de Pyla). This monster is over 100 metres high - it really is a sand mountain that has to be seen to believe. As buses don't run on a Sunday (typically French) we decided to walk there. It was a fair trek and the dune was as impressive as I remember seeing it about 20 years ago. The wind whipping up the sand was painful! At the top of the dune, a camera crew was taking fashion pictures of a cold and brave model. I'll use her image tomorrow for 5 on the fifth.

The walk back through the forest on sand for mile after mile was tough work. Pete's pedometer showed that we had walked over 25 kilometres in total. We deserved the bottle of Bordeaux that we finished off.

5 on the fifth is likely to be disrupted as wireless here is very very poor.


The Dune...