May 22, 2017
Day Fifty Six: Labenne-Ocean to Leon
With our bikes just on the deck in front of our cabin it ws super easy to load up. And with the camping right on the veloroute, it was easy to get on track and moving. Of course just saying it was easy does not mean we did it, exactly. The reason is that the camping, as many do, had a supermarket at the entrance. And since this is France, the supermarket offers fresh bread and croissants, baked on site.
We picked up some necessities, like chocolate, cookies, and chips (and sure, chicken, tomatoes, and cheese) plus croissants. The problem started when Dodie asked the store owner for 2 croissants (one each) and I objected. Pointing to my loaded bike I explained to the man that it was impossible to propel such a thing on only one single croissant. That then triggered questions about where we were going and where we had been, followed by the fellow's own aspirations about shipping his SUV to Vancouver and driving to Chile. It was fun talking, but I could not say that we actually left the camping all that early!
(By the way, even two croissants can just barely get the show rolling).
The actual veloroute is a broad, level, and fully paved bicycle highway that runs either by the sea or more commonly a little inland through sandy land planted with pine forests. We began by the sea, where the beach extends infinitely in both directions. This is still low season and since this is not Biarritz, all this beach was completely deserted.
The beach is intersected by an inlet at Capbreton where a river (Le Bouret) enters the sea and where an extended harbour has been dredged out. A small part of the harbour is used for fishing boats, and there is a little area where people can buy the fish from these boats. I guess it works, but I have trouble visualising residents of camper vans, mobile homes, or surrounding apartments cleaning and cooking giant fish on a regular basis.
Most of the harbour is devoted to pleasure boats, most with sail. At the farthest in section oysters are raised and signs threatened the chance to taste them. We missed out on that!
Soon we returned to following the beach, and for a time were just inside tall sand dunes. This was very reminiscent of the Nordsee route in Netherlands, except that there were no sheep on the dunes.
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The path returned to the forest, and it was lovely, but admittedly became boring after not very long. so it was good that we had accumulated another pile of "keeper" papers and needed to mail them away to reduce our weight by more than 2 kg! so we made a special effort to turn into the little town of Vieux-Boucau.
An info panel explained that the Ardour, the river that now runs by Bayonne used to flow by here, but sometime in the 14th or 15th century it got diverted, destroying the local economy. Now presumably tourism has picked up the slack. We at least appreciated it, since we found a town with little or no traffic, lots of souvenir/postcard shops, and two bakeries.
The first bakery had a sign in the window saying that they specialized in Basque cakes. That was interesting because we thought we had now left the Basque area and on the bike durig the morning I was lamenting the likelihood that I had enjoyed my last Basque cake for this trip. It turned out that bakery 1 had the best Basque cakes we have tried so far. Basque cakes are offered in cherry and cream varieties, and we somehow have always chosen cherry. But today's cherry seemed to also have cream, making a good combination. And the two we ate when quite soon we stopped for lunch are not even our last, because two more are stashed in the food bag!
Vieux-Boucau had a church as well, and we sat outside with our lunch. The church featured a steeple kind of reminiscent of those in the Jura, and with a fish design weather vane atop it. Inside was vaulting of a style we had not seen before, with the arches filled in with painting. One of the paintings was a Last Supper. In this one, a person to Jesus' left (not right) is clearly portrayed as a woman. whenever this was painted, had the artist been reading the Da Vinci code?
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We pedalled on through the forest, recognizing that at this point the path was wide and flat because it was in fact a rail trail. This dawned on us as we passed a defunct station. We are very observant!
We had not really gone very far and nor was it particularly late, but we found we were both rather tired and sleepy. so we stopped at Leon, which is neither in Spain, nor is it Lyon, on the Rhone. No it is just little Leon, situated just south of the little Lac de Leon. Tourist information could not identify for us any good place to stop 10 or 20 km further up the path, and in fact some campgrounds they phoned had no reasonable ways we could stay there. But there was Hotel de Lac, by the lake. We decided to toss in the towel for the day, and toddled on over.
Tourist information had described us to the hotel owner as two pilgrims on bicycles. We don't know where they got the information, since Dodie had gone in without any pilgrim related shells or stickers or anything, except her normal goofy hat. No matter, we still had to talk Compostella with the hotel lady - what the roads in Spain are like, what other pilgrims had stayed at this hotel in the last 18 months (just kidding), how useful an ebike would be there for us, for the lady if she would go, and so forth.
One thing we liked was the number of bicycle welcome signs in the hotel window, and the fact that the lady made good on these. So she put us in a ground floor room, and the bikes are in the hall just outside our door. Tomorrow again we will be able to load up and leave without having to wake up or bother anyone.
Today's ride: 48 km (30 miles)
Total: 2,410 km (1,497 miles)
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