Description:

West Coast Surfing

As lovely as it is to live in the Limousin it cannot always cater for our every need, or should that read desire, so sometimes it’s nice to get away for a few days.

My wife spent the latter years of her childhood and early teenage years boogie boarding on family holidays in Cornwall and has always wanted to have another go so it was off to the west coast for us last week ,or the Cote Atlantic as the French call it.  You might think that in her 40’s she ought to know better but I suppose I must shoulder some of the blame because I bought her a boogie board for her recent birthday.

It was a very easy and stress free drive to Royan from the Limoges area, especially as the aircon had just been repaired in our car.  At Royan where we were to catch the ferry across to Le Verdon sur Mer, maybe it was just us but we didn’t see a direction sign for the said ferry terminal until the junction that took us into the booking lane!!

The ferry runs about every half an hour in the summer and cost us 28e for a car and two people.  It’s a short crossing but there is nothing like a ferry trip to make you feel that you’re really travelling somewhere.

 Disembarking you are straight onto the main road that leads to the stretch of coast in the Gironde between Pointe de Grave and where we camped near Soulac Sur Mer.  Soulac has plenty of shops, restaurants and gift shops to cater for all.  The landscape is flat and sandy and undeveloped, apart from Soulac itself.  We camped in a very small resort called l’Amelie which had a sort of shabby chic, hippy feel about it.

The beaches were huge expanses of soft golden sand that stretched for miles and the surf was excellent.  Not too big or violent and ideal for me as a beginner to boogie boarding.  My wife was off and riding the waves within hours of arriving and I spent a lot of time trying to catch a wave.  Not as easy as it looks but very satisfying when you do.  Any draw backs?  Well I had to get used to doing my ‘surfing’ surrounded buy 9 and 10 year olds all of whom were much better than me!

The areas other big attraction is it’s cycle paths, mile and miles, sorry kilometres and kilometres of traffic free tarmac tracks that follow the coast line and meander inland all over the flat marshy levels.  At certain times of the year these marshes are full of migrating birds and we saw lots of hides everywhere we went.  Sadly they are hides for the hunters rather than twitchers.

All in all a great area to visit in the summer but not as nice as the Limousin to live in. As I type this the rain has been hammering down during the night and the temperature is half what it was last week.  Memories of sunshine, surf and sandy beaches seem distant.

Story by Paul Steele who runs B&B Villechenoux in Haute Vienne with his wife Juley.

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