Where's Bertie? He's in a Municipal Aire at Taussat (exact location: 44.71732, -1.06978)
The only reason that we put in such long driving days this week was so that we could position ourselves to take part in a ParkRun this morning. There are only 6 ParkRun events currently operating in France and the one that best suited our plans was 30km to the north of Bordeaux. Our driving efforts to get there didn't seem so extreme when we got chatting to another British ParkRun Tourist, who had got his wife up and out of their accommodation at 6 this morning, on the penultimate day of their holiday in France, so that they could drive for over two hours, to arrive at the ParkRun venue by 9am.
It was a very friendly bunch of people with whom we ran (a small bunch by English ParkRun standards, but a good size by French standards, at 16 runners) and I managed a time much faster than anticipated, although not as fast as the PB that I set in Toulouse last December.
By the time we had enjoyed an excellent cup of tea and far too much cake and chocolate with all of the runners (one of today's participants was celebrating her 100th ParkRun and for another it was her 50th; it also happens to be the 13th anniversary of the very first ParkRun), the day was finally warming up from its chilly start.
A chunk of poring over reference books whilst I drank coffee back in Bertie had us decide to take an out-and-back detour to the village of St Romain la Virvee, to visit a service point as it looked like that was the nearest we were going to get to one today. Having left home with just 40 litres of water, and with a need for showers, we feared we were going to be running a bit short by the end of the day.
The Aire was found and we parked up for lunch and showers before using the tap and drain. Sitting there in the sunshine, it would have been tempting to have a lazy rest-of-the-day and stay the night, except that at around 12.30 a man walked straight past Bertie's door (without sticking his head in and saying anything to us), picked up a barrier, carried it to the entrance of the parking area and affixed a sign to it. I went and read the sign after lunch. It was an official notice closing the Aire from 2pm today until 8am tomorrow, due to a local event taking place tonight. That made the decision for us: onwards we would go.
To the coast, was the decision made, and half way there I decided we should head for Taussat instead of our original destination of the town a few kilometres to the north. Both sit on the Bassin d'Archacon (a sizeable sea basin) but having initially decided there was no chance of there being a space available at the small, free Aire here, I subsequently thought that it would make sense to come and look before resigning ourselves to paying €12 for a patch of car park in the neighbouring town. As is apparent from what I've said above, there were spaces. Bonus!
With the Aire sitting just a couple of stone throws away from the beach, that's to where we headed almost the instant Bertie had ceased moving. There we found the sea to be so absent that we couldn't even see it in the distance:
Thus, we walked along the beach/mud, before looping back around through the town.
This evening we nipped back out for sunset, which happened to coincide with high tide tonight, and found the sea very much in evidence:
The arrow points approximately to where we were standing in the selfie above
It would have been interesting to nip back earlier to see the speed at which the water reappeared.
As for the detour we made earlier to visit a service point: it turns out there's one here too. The only consolation is that, due to the location of the tap, it wouldn't have been possible to use the hosepipe to fill the tank here (although the tap we used earlier was so feeble in its flow that, arguably, it wouldn't have been much slower to fill via bottles and funnel anyway).
Bonus photo for my sister - a tin tray with a good paint job:
The only reason that we put in such long driving days this week was so that we could position ourselves to take part in a ParkRun this morning. There are only 6 ParkRun events currently operating in France and the one that best suited our plans was 30km to the north of Bordeaux. Our driving efforts to get there didn't seem so extreme when we got chatting to another British ParkRun Tourist, who had got his wife up and out of their accommodation at 6 this morning, on the penultimate day of their holiday in France, so that they could drive for over two hours, to arrive at the ParkRun venue by 9am.
It was a very friendly bunch of people with whom we ran (a small bunch by English ParkRun standards, but a good size by French standards, at 16 runners) and I managed a time much faster than anticipated, although not as fast as the PB that I set in Toulouse last December.
By the time we had enjoyed an excellent cup of tea and far too much cake and chocolate with all of the runners (one of today's participants was celebrating her 100th ParkRun and for another it was her 50th; it also happens to be the 13th anniversary of the very first ParkRun), the day was finally warming up from its chilly start.
A chunk of poring over reference books whilst I drank coffee back in Bertie had us decide to take an out-and-back detour to the village of St Romain la Virvee, to visit a service point as it looked like that was the nearest we were going to get to one today. Having left home with just 40 litres of water, and with a need for showers, we feared we were going to be running a bit short by the end of the day.
The Aire was found and we parked up for lunch and showers before using the tap and drain. Sitting there in the sunshine, it would have been tempting to have a lazy rest-of-the-day and stay the night, except that at around 12.30 a man walked straight past Bertie's door (without sticking his head in and saying anything to us), picked up a barrier, carried it to the entrance of the parking area and affixed a sign to it. I went and read the sign after lunch. It was an official notice closing the Aire from 2pm today until 8am tomorrow, due to a local event taking place tonight. That made the decision for us: onwards we would go.
To the coast, was the decision made, and half way there I decided we should head for Taussat instead of our original destination of the town a few kilometres to the north. Both sit on the Bassin d'Archacon (a sizeable sea basin) but having initially decided there was no chance of there being a space available at the small, free Aire here, I subsequently thought that it would make sense to come and look before resigning ourselves to paying €12 for a patch of car park in the neighbouring town. As is apparent from what I've said above, there were spaces. Bonus!
With the Aire sitting just a couple of stone throws away from the beach, that's to where we headed almost the instant Bertie had ceased moving. There we found the sea to be so absent that we couldn't even see it in the distance:
Thus, we walked along the beach/mud, before looping back around through the town.
This evening we nipped back out for sunset, which happened to coincide with high tide tonight, and found the sea very much in evidence:
The arrow points approximately to where we were standing in the selfie above
It would have been interesting to nip back earlier to see the speed at which the water reappeared.
As for the detour we made earlier to visit a service point: it turns out there's one here too. The only consolation is that, due to the location of the tap, it wouldn't have been possible to use the hosepipe to fill the tank here (although the tap we used earlier was so feeble in its flow that, arguably, it wouldn't have been much slower to fill via bottles and funnel anyway).
Bonus photo for my sister - a tin tray with a good paint job:
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