Six Days In France: Saturday, Cotes des Basques

Having almost fried my shoulders at Anglet, I had to spend Saturday in as much shade as possible. Also, I had to check out of the hotel at ten o'clock, though the hotel let me store my bags and change in the evening into restaurant-suitable clothes. Shade is in short supply in Biarritz, but there's a cliff that provides some until about eleven o'clock, a park on the cliff that will get you by until about midday, restaurants, and another park with winding paths and trees. I began the very long day about ten-fifteen, and the tide was in. Really in.

After about an hour, it had turned and was on its way out...

....so I retreated into the first park-on-the-hillside...

By the time I'd taken that photograph, there was no hiding from the sun, so I went to the Bar de la Cote and settled in for lunch. After I could extend that no longer - they don't do "service continu" - I wandered a few dozen metres into another park on the cliffside and spent a while there. Which brings us to the surfers.

You need to click on the photograph below to see how many there are out there, bobbing about. This was about four o'clock in the afternoon, I think. And there had been no decent waves since the morning. But they all paddled out and hung around waiting for the waves. Or maybe the point was just to hang out in the water: like people fishing in public ponds and lakes. The point is not to catch fish, it's to be fishing - and therefore not to be any of the many places you don't want to be.

And when that pine-tree refuge could hide me from the sun no more, I snuck along the shady side of the streets to the old town and down to the beach, thinking I would pass some time in a cafe with losts of shade above the beach, and which was closed. ("Ferme le samdi" - va savoir) So I finally went down to the beach and found a shady spot, where I listened to Miles' On The Corner.

Of course the kids jump into the water. Always have, always will. Some things will never change, and a good thing too.

From there, I had a chocolate chaud at a cafe in the town, changed in the hotel, had a wonderful supper at Chez Ospio, waited at the hotel until ten, when a taxi took me down to the station in about five minutes flat. Thirteen euros. And so to the sleeper back to the Gare d'Austerlitz.