‘Groovin in the land of love’ (The Celibate Rifles).

Ok technically an Aussie band that came into my consciousness through the Billabong surf movie ‘Green Iguana’ but typified the era of the early 90’s where I got to experience my first surf trip to the Southwest of France.

France, the land of endless beaches, warm summer water, barrels, baguettes, stubby beer and plenty of ‘ooh la la ‘on the beach for a young person to get distracted by.

This is probably the first overseas surf trip for a Brit. For me it was my post A Level rite of passage, or so I thought when my mum asked me what I intended to do with my life after these exams and I quipped ‘I’m gonna surf!’

France is a quick hop on a ferry across the English Channel to a country with some of the longest beaches in Europe and whilst some ports you depart from and embark from will shorten some of your journey the one thing that is the same for all of us…. be prepared for a road trip as there is at least 560 miles of tarmac to cover to get to the destination of Hossegor.

We decided to break up our journey to Hossegor with stops on route just south of the Gironde divide where each spot could be characterised by the nationalities that had taken up residence and called it home for the summer.

• Hourtin Plage – a la the Welsh connection. Lots of friendly, very humorous banter in the nicely shaped waves around high tide.
• Lacanau Plage – a surf contest hot zone, day trippers from the city of Bordeaux and everyone on route to Hossegor sampling their first waves since the ferry, French beach culture and the French rip currents all at the same time.
• Carcans Plage – everyone that was trying to escape from Hourtin & Lacanau to find some respite from all and sundry.

The surf was of course fun, warmer water than we’re used to and allowed our sun burn and wetsuit rashes to develop very nicely but the big new revelation was nothing other than the ‘Hibachi Grill’.

Oh yes, this beautiful invention available at all good super Marche’s revolutionised the make up of our day.

Yes of course we got up early checked the surf, surfed, went to the boulangerie, grabbed some croissants maybe a café au lait aussi (ha is it ok to blend the languages like this??) but this contraption got us youngsters into the habit of cooking for ourselves, well over cooking, burning our burgers, sausages, steaks and because it was portable, well that meant lets cook where ever we felt like it.

Like we have some spare time in the forest camp site…… lets light up the Hibachi. Um we’re waiting in the car park between surfs, hmm fancy a burger…… lets light up the Hibachi. Arrive too early for the ferry home…… lets light up the Hibachi. (that actually did happen too in the ferry queue in Cherbourg).

Mixed in with the stubby larger and baguette with a ‘la Vache qui rit ‘(laughing cow soft cheese) triangle, what more did one need?

So after a week of getting into the French groove it was time to up sticks and head further south to our final destination – Hossegor where the promise of more power in the waves, even shallower sandbars, barrels mixed in with the even more international mix of surfer tourists will be, what isn’t right about going there you may ask?

The Forest

Accommodation on a very simple budget meant camping near the beach is usually in the forest either in a local council run camp site or literally just in the forest.

Both options provide you much needed shade from the intense summer sun, a full complement of mosquito and other bug bites. I mean super hungry midges but without the protection you’d deploy in the tropics (no anti malaria tablets, mozzie nets)

Also, both options involved a likely chat with Gendarme either to move you on for not being in a council run campsite or because you wetsuit had been stolen and you had to try and get an crime reference to claim on the insurance when you got home. Crikey that last bit was such an ordeal for my favourite O’Neill short sleeved wetsuit.

The council run campsite at the time in Les Bourdaines was a hop and a skip to the beach through the huge dune system that gave you with easy access to the peaks of Le Penon and it was here that you realised how vast the beach is in this part of the world.

The surf

From the human eye the beach stretched to the horizon both north and south and but to the west the glorious Atlantic Ocean welcomed you. The sand was fine grained and shelved quite steeply into the exposed low tide banks with defined deep channels left and right of them as far as the eye can see.

To the North more peaks and less people, to the south more peaks and more people. We sampled as many as we could over the next 3 weeks.

Le Penon – Fun high tide, skate park and lots and lots of Brits.

Les Estagnots – The parking lot was full of camper vans and Aussies, and a consistent bowly left hander from mid up to high tide doing its thing and very crowded.

Les Culs Nuls (aka Bare Bums) – Nudist beach plus fun peaks just a little walk away from the crowds of Les Estagnot

La Graviere – Barrels for those that dare and we did not as it was our first time and we were scared.

Capbreton – Jetty based mainly right handers that took some of the edge off the size on the big days, plus also kind of handled the sideshore winds ok.

La Piste (German Bunkers) – WW2 blockhaus falling into the sea but securing some rad sandbanks for the tube hungry. Semi close outs but some pits to be had.

The Synopsis of our sessions were a classic mix of occasional moments of well executed turns followed by lots of paddling in circles with the savage rips, plenty of hold downs that pushed you down into the depths it felt like it went dark (or was I just passing out?), bails, boards ripped from your hands attempting a duck dive, lost boards, snapped leashes, call outs from aggressive locals, call outs from aggressive Aussies, call outs from aggressive Brits, aww was it an eye opener on what the surf world outside of the UK was actually like but boy did it rub off on us.

I think the best way to describe this surf trip is it was more an adventure rather than just going surfing. In fact the surfing part might have been the original reason for going to a different country but the experience we gained from travelling to France was way more than just the sporting part but gave us the perfect reason to use surfing as a vehicle (come on you mean an excuse to go surfing more) to explore what other flavours of this lovely recipe were out there in the world.

We came France more than once over the next 30 years because it is just fabulous and even the family would agree with me that it is just one cool place to be in the summer.