Day 60: Hourtin to Soulac-sur-Mer

April 6, 2024

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The Hotel les Pins had a "Welcome Booklet" that for some reason we glanced at. It had some interesting (annoying) restrictions listed. For example, one was forbidden to eat in the room, or even use a kettle. What's more, one could not even eat on the grounds, unless the food was sold by the hotel (which offers only soft drinks). And our room had a very small double bed, and a small single bed. If we were to use the single bed, there would be an extra 6 euro charge. This caused me to snark that if I could not use a bed that was in the room, then it was eating up space that I had paid for, and I should demand its removal. Of course, we are too polite or timid to make an issue like that. But the food thing? It was not in the hotel policies published through Booking, so to hell with that. What's more, a Maps search revealed us to be more or less in the wilderness, and I forecast 30 kms on the trail today before any food options would appear.

It was easy to get back on the trail, and yes, we had uninterrupted sailing for 30 kms. This gave us time to ponder the huge pine forest that we have been passing through for the past several days. The trail (plus the bikes, and us) was covered in yellow pollen, as was the ground in any open space, and the surface of any puddles.

Bell Shaneyfelt had sent the further observation that one could Google "male pine cone", and he sent a link for what he had found. As happens so often (always, really) when we think we have discovered some thing or place or person new, it is new to us but typically all over the internet. So of course, the life cycle of the pine tree is not something we are discovering for humanity just because we are riding through a forest. If there is any discovering, it's about how ignorant we have been on this. We are also going to stay mostly ignorant, because trying to read all the material is overloading our circuits. You could give it a try - here is an easy reference: The Fascinating World of Pine Cones: Nature’s Little Wonders

About the only non-pine scenery along the way was "camp grounds", which in France means little cabins. Sometimes these extended for kms.

As predicted, we reached "civilisation" after abut 30 kms, at Montalivet - les- Bains. The first sign of this was a crowd engaged in petanques. It seemed sort of organized, with blue clad and black/red clad players.

We took the opportunity here to dive into an Aldi, and to stoke up on some pains aux raisin and other goodies.

This is most likely a sparrow, but maybe not.

We then nipped over to the ocean, and were amazed again at its power, and at the large expanse of smooth beach.

These guys surprisingly had their shoes on.

A marker by the beach commemorated "Operation Frankton" , in which in 1942 the submarine "Tuna" dropped men and boats to try to row up the Garonne and blow up some shipping. Of twelve men, only two survived, but some damage was achieved.

With the right computer, you can read this panel, but the Wikipedia article is more informative.

The finger shows where we are at this point. We will continue up the peninsula to Soulac today, then go to the very end and get a ferry to Royan tomorrow.

Well here is some potential fun, except it's too chilly. This is a huge nudist camp, with good beach access.

Next we strike it lucky, as Dodie spots a Hoopoe. But it quickly leaves for another tree. I saw where it went, though, and sped over (so silently!) on my bike to get its photo:

Now we drew close to Soulac, and began to see houses in the signature Soulac style. We would tend to call these "Belle Epoque" houses, and that would he right, since Belle Epoque is about 1870-1910, and that is their vintage. But the style, with red brick outlined in white, and with gingerbread trim, not to mention a name under each roof, might be unique to Soulac. Another name we have seen applied to this, though, is "Neo-Colonial". Anyway, they are super cute, and you will see a lot more examples in the remainder of this post.

We arrived at the centre of town, and found the place bustling. We soon learned much of he reason, as a man from Ottawa introduced himself. He was off a cruise ship, that had started at Fort Lauderdale. It had hopped across from England to here, and would soon return. Most of the people in the street were from one or more cruise ships.

We had held off on eating our grocery store stuff, hoping to find a restaurant in Soulac. There were a number of them, alright, but they seemed to specialize in either burgers and fries or pizza. We chose the one below, which had good place to park the bikes. It was of course much busier than when I finally snapped this shot. In ordering a burger in France you need to watch out. Their first instinct is to cook it raw, which they perversely call "au point". And if it is a high quality, cheeseburger, they will put in an inedible stinky cheese. But we are wise to this, so when the waitress asked of we wanted the burgers "au point" or "medium" we both loudly exclaimed "no, no!" not "au point", we want them well cooked. Really well cooked, do you understand?? "Yes, yes, ok" said the lady.

So we were not surprised when what came out was raw. It's France, eh. I could have gone for the chicken burger, I guess, but that came with stinky goat cheese. Right after this restaurant experience, we retreated to Aldi grocery, to make sure we would have some edible food in stock for the rest of the day!

"Regional specialty" but really a burger restaurant.

We could see just how many people had been loaded into the town, as they lined up to be bussed back to the ships.

We swooped past many more of the quaint houses, as we made our way to our apartment.

Ahh, this one is ours! It's called "La Negade" - don't know what that means. We would have preferred the next one over, the Amelie, which is the name of our granddaughter.

We got in to the place ok, but when we wanted to leave and go look more at the beach, the door would not lock. We tried "everything", before phoning the owner and getting him to come down. It turns out the deadbolt will not advance unless the handle is pulled up. That's a new one on me!

We did get out to the beach, and waited a bit to take this shot of the typical town sign. The reason we had to wait was that a little boy was curled up, enjoying sitting in the "O". We were glad when the father came along and snatched the kid away, to much wailing. But we were not really the center of the drama. The family had lost the darn kid, and we were only witnessing the moment when he was finally found.

Also at the waterfront is a replica Statue of Liberty. It is scaled down, but made from the same molds as the original. It is here to celebrate the departure from here of Lafayette, to go help the Americans with their struggle against the British.

A few more cute houses, and we came around to the Basilica, which is called Notre Dame de la Fin Des Terres.

The basilica is Romanesque style, very rounded inside. It dates from the 12th century, but was built on a church site that was hundreds of years older. The basilica has had a hard time, battling drifting sand. It was raised in the 14th century to fend off sand, and had an episode of being dug out from 1860 to 1910.

One the way home from the basilica, I think this was one of the cutest places.

We are now plotting and Booking our way up to Nantes, where we are eager to stay with our friend Michel, and do a little cycling with him and perhaps some of his cycling friends. We met Michel right here on the cycle paths over a decade ago, and count him a very close friend. He is one of many friends that we somehow met through cycling.

We are finding that a crude calculation, asking Google how far to (for example) Nantes and dividing by our typical daily range, does not give a particularly accurate figure for how many days are needed to get there. The first glitch is that Google does not follow the EV routes, which are longer, even if one tailors Google with several intermediate waypoints. The second glitch is the need to find actual places to stay, which may dictate choosing shorter or longer distances on given days.

Hang on, Michel, we'll get there!

Today's ride: 68 km (42 miles)
Total: 2,854 km (1,772 miles)

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Michael HutchingHi Steve and Dodie, following your trip with interest. As for time and distance- in 2018 we took a couple of days to get from Roman to La Rochelle, then going inland on La Francette. In 2023 it took us about 4 days to get from La Rochelle to Blain. There was a lot of marais in between which you might wish to circumvent.
Bonne route, Michael
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1 month ago

Jacquie GaudetI followed the EV 1 much of the way up the coast once I joined it at Rochefort. I really enjoyed the Marais Poitevin and would do it again. It’s documented here https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/france2019/
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1 month ago