Day 59: Andernos-les-Bains to Hourtin

April 5, 2024

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Karen Poret astutely observed yesterday a name above a Belle Epoque style house that I included in the blog, and she asked about it. We see today that almost every house of the era in this region had a name, installed just under the roofline. See the two examples below:

I absorbed some flac from a near and dear source yesterday, for taking no photos after the bird sanctuary walk. My response was that there was nothing really to see on the kms of protected bikeway. But to guard against a repeat of this problem, here we are back on the bikeway...

The bikeway, fortunately, soon provided a wealth of interest, worth recording. It began with a route barree, but that obstruction was due to redevelopment of the indoor market, and that spawned a large adjacent outdoor market!

Of course we immediately went to check out what special high quality stuff might be on offer:

Really nice artichokes and uniquely shaped tomatoes.

While I was looking at tomatoes, Dodie got snared for some UQs.

These great imported baskets are seen at many markets.

There are lots of nice strawberries about now.

We are well out of Basque territory, but the Basque cake is hanging on.

Asparagus season! These have not been completely blanched right, but will still taste good.

We set off into the rest of Andernos, and it turned out to be a pleasant and interesting town.

Along the waterfront, the beach with the tide out was picturesque. We also learned stuff from info panels overlooking the water. Have a look:

They say oe can see several types of exciting birds. But not us.

But look, there is apparently a whole bird island that we missed.

They say there are a lot of birds there, but they do not say how to get there.

From 1857 Andernos had a whaling industry, that took advantage of the railway, that later became our rail trail. Also, people used to come here to take the sea air and improve their health.

The jetty here was built in 1926, and is the longest in the region. See the crazy photo of the thing jammed with people.

We also found a carousel by the shore. These things are popular throughout France.

The tide was out, stranding all the boats in several basins.

There was a street comprised of little cabins that had been fishers' huts. Now they mostly house oyster sales operations.

One place had many bicycles encrusted with oysters. It showed how prolific oysters can be.

And there was this risque poster for all "natural" oysters.

As we continued to circle around the pleasant town, we came to a seniors' residence, which rather than being a big building was a series of linked apartments.

We ran into one of the residents, who agreed that it was a pretty nice setup.

Now we took to the trail again, and I dutifully recorded the scene.

You can see its a rail trail, because here again is a station.

Around this point, Dodie stopped and looked into the woods, for she had spotted a Cuckoo. I pulled out the camera, because I saw it too, but it flew off too soon. This was the first time either of us had actually seen the cuckoo, that we hear so frequently.

It is natural in this area of extensive planting of Maritime Pine for pine to be on our minds. Bill Shaneyfeld had pointed out that the pine "flowers" do not develop into the cones, the flowers being the males parts and the cones the female. We wondered for a moment if there were male and female trees, but that is nonsense. We proved the case with a photo of the flowers and the cones on one tree:

Bill had also mentioned that soon the flowers would release lots of pollen. Was he ever right! Today our bikes and everything else got coated in pollen. I had to wipe the screen of my camera, just to take a picture, and at point the pollen could be seen as a haze in the air.

Our route for today was to take us out to the coast, so then we would head straight north. But we got stymied by the flooded path, as we see below.

We had to backtrack and get on the real road. Fortunately this worked well, and traffic was minimal.

As we headed north, things were mostly fine. I did take this shot while cycling along, though. Fortunately, did not go flying.

Our route then looked like this, for a long time.

Except for clearings, which were filled with yellow flowering Broom.

There was evidence of forestry operations.

Like this robust machine for picking up and moving logs

Through the trees we could see the dunes that line the beach.

We stopped and I climbed up for a peek at things. The dunes were wider than I might have thought, so one had to walk for a while to cross and look at the ocean.

There are a number of sort of popup surf schools along this stretch.

At some points we noticed the forest rather chewed up, and we wondered if this was due to wind or to fire. But the regions of destruction were not extensive.

We did also notice on worker collecting pine cones. This could be part of regeneration works, or maybe the man was engaged in his own project of some type.

At the top of a rise we came to a scene that took just a minute to sort out. We had one touring bike flipped, so its rider could work on the disk brakes, and we had her partner helping out. A third fellow was Rhyss Bennett, an Australian who is cycling around the world for a charity called Kids Helpline. The cyclists' with the brake problem were Lovis and Yannick. They are from Frankfurt, and were cycling further south on Velodysee, ultimately to jump on a train to Strasbourg, before heading home to Frankfurt.

As I think I understood the brake problem, the pads were not releasing properly, and Rhyss was somehow able to contribute a new one of those forked springs that mount the brake pads. But as we looked at the pads, they were clearly totally worn out, and maybe that was the main problem. Lovis decided to leave the pads off, and to limp to the next bike shop with just the rear brakes working.

We rolled into this slightly complicated scene.

Lovis is trying to figure out her front brake problem.

Rhyss was heading north, and was hoping to make the ferry at Soulac today!

The new spring maybe won't help, ' cause the pads are shot.

We gave Rhyss a bit of a donation, and wished him well. That Kidshelpline sounds like a worthy thing to support.

We returned to the trail, that looked like this.

Soon we were passing quite giant dunes again.

The dunes along this coast are remarkable.

Just a crow. We are rather looking for a Chough.

Things got quite a bit tougher, as you can see from the profile in the track at the top of this page. We seemed to be riding a lot on the sides of ridges, and the trail rose and descended considerably. We ended with 608 meters of climbing, which is sort of considerable.

Eventually the road levelled out a bit, but we still found ourselves with lots of distance to cover, much of it on standard but quiet highway, as we cut east over to Hourtin.

On a route that we originally figured to be no more than 60 km, we managed to do 90 km, and we are not quite sure why. But we did eventually arrive at Hotel les Pins, near Hourtin. The place is just like a North American motel, which we do appreciate for its ground level entrance. It will allow us to have a quick getaway tomorrow, as like Rhyss we head for Soulac.

Today's ride: 90 km (56 miles)
Total: 2,786 km (1,730 miles)

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