France, with its familiar language and culture, is an easy place for Chris and I to travel. Once we left Brittany, the coast route was mostly flat and the temperatures perfect for cycling.
But today we cross into Spain, and need to retrieve our Spanish phrases and pronunciation, and also cross the Pyrenees. The mountains are visible in the distance. The temperatures will certainly increase as we leave the coast and cycle inland into Spain, and our daily elevation gains will certainly go up.
On this last day in France, we started the day in Bayonne with a completely flat rear tire on Chris’ bike, and got that sorted out. I muttered a few choice curses for the person who spec’ed rear facing dropouts on our bikes. Whoever you are, I hope you heard me! You are an idiot.
With a few wrong turns, we got out of Bayonne and headed to Decathlon to replenish some bike maintenance stuff, and then headed into Biarritz.
Biarritz, an elegant seaside town on southwestern France’s Basque coast, has been a popular resort since European royalty began visiting in the 1800s. It’s also a major surfing destination, with long sandy beaches and surf schools. Chris wants to learn to surf, so we loosely planned to come back to one of the less busy places along this coast sometime in the future. We cycled past the symbol of Biarritz, the Rocher de la Vierge, a rocky outcrop topped with a statue of the Virgin and stopped to photograph some amazing views of the Bay of Biscay.
The traffic was heavy going into Biarritz, and it was nice that the bike lanes allowed us to move faster than the cars. Once on the coast we appreciated all the bike paths and car-free streets. The beaches are absolutely packed and parking seems super limited so having a car must be a nightmare!
We stopped for coffee and (for me) some food in a cool small town called Bidart, and then stopped at the beach for a couple hours of sand and surf. The weather has been kind of crap for most of the time we were near a beach, and today marked a day when beach proximity and good weather coincided. Also, in this area there are secure, attended places where you can park your bike for free. They take your phone number and take a picture of your bikes and then check you out with the phone again. Worry free.
After the beach, we rode the last 20 or so miles to Irun over some very steep but thankfully short hills and others just long. We are reminded that Spain gave us lots of climbing on our last trip here!
The coastline gets intermittently empty and wild between towns packed with beach goers. We passed through St. Jean de Luz and Hendaye-Plage before crossing the invisible border between France and Spain, only seen by the jarring change to Spanish and Basque signs.
Adieu, France and Hola to Spain! We have arrived.
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