Basque country or bust!: Day 9

Well, my last morning in the Pyrenees. I got out of Luz by 10am and headed towards Pau. I drove though the town pretty quickly but it seemed to be quite pleasant. You can always tell a nice French town. It usually doesn't have graffitied Renault Traffic vans on every street and doesn't have groups of 15 year old chavs riding mopeds wearing the obligatory Sergio Tacchini tracksuit tops causing mayhem outside Pizza joints. Pau had neither. With a bit more time I would've spent more time here. I first heard of it back in the 1980s when I watched the Tour de France on Channel 4 and an Irishman called Martin Earley won the stage in Pau. Although I think I searched for the name "Po" for a couple of days before discovering the real french spelling.

From Pau I headed north on the N134 towards Mont De Marsan passing the very grand looking racecouse in northern Pau. I reached Mont de Marsan and had a little drive around. The town is the birthplace of Alain Juppe (the disastrous 164th Prime Minister of France), Joel Bats (French goalkeeper in 1986 world cup) and Romain Larrieu (goalkeeper of the evil green scum down the road). The Tom Tom was getting confused and every sign saying "Centre Ville" also had a "deviation" following closely behind. So I got out of Dodge and headed towards the Atlantic coast in search of memory lane on very straight and long roads flanked by partially destroyed forests.

First up was Arcachon and the Dune de Pilat. I came here in 1988 during a French Correspondance with my secondary school. 21 years ago. Jesus wept. First to stop me was a 4,60 Euro charge for the car park and I had no change on me. I had a quick glimpse of the dune and then headed back into Arcachon which was absolutely rammed with locals, tourists and some drunk bloke who looked like Fish from Marillion. I couldn't park anywhere. So I got out of Dodge again and headed towards the town of Saint Jean d'Illac which was where I stayed in my two weeks.

My french correspondant, Julien was a knob, but his mum was quite sweet and his older sister was the answer to all my adolescent dreams. Never has a woman worn a perm so well. Black permed hair and white dungarees she used to wear. I think I hung out with her more than Le Knob. He just stayed in his room sulking and looking at his Conan the Barbarian posters. I think I still have the tape she made for me with U2's Joshua Tree on it.

When I got to the town I have to say that absolutely nothing looked familiar but I managed to find, after 20 minutes, the road to the remote village where there house was, but then after the first five minutes absolutely nothing looked familiar, then the road got a bit Colin McCrae on me and I turned back satisfied that at least I made an effort to find a little bit of the past.

So I headed past the airport at Merignac and then towards the Bordeaux Rocade where I had a slight bit of road rage with some prat in a Avocado coloured Renault Twingo. Twingo drivers are the worst in France. They drive like they've lost the gift of sight and sound.

Once I got past Bordeaux and over the Pont d'Aquitaine it was then a short hop up to the town of Saintes. Birth place of one Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin who championed the use of the Guillotine but interestingly didn't invent it. He just suggested it might be a good way to execute people. Saintes is also twinned with Salisbury in England and Timbuktu in Mali.

As its Sunday night nothing was open or busy in the centre of Saintes so I decided to go to the MacDonalds down the road from the Hotel. It was rammed. All of Saintes seemed to be in there. No Melanie Blatt though, much to my chagrin.

Photos

On the road to Mont de Marsan