Beside the Seaside

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In Which My Prediction Turns Out To Be Right

September 4, 2007 by Mike

Bayonne

Route: Capbreton - Biarritz - Bayonne

I should have guessed.

In yesterday's thrilling update I worried that I'd get a sleepness night because of a yapping dog and Rory McGrath.

No such luck. Instead, I was rudely woken at about 4a.m. by the heaviest rain I've seen this side of tropical Brazil. It was the kind of rain that wakes you as you sleep snug as a bug in a rug in yr bed at home, battering windows and roofs. Imagine what it sounded like from my position in the hammock.

It sounded like this:

"BANG-BANG-BI'DADA-BI'DADA-BRBRBRBR-DAK-DAK-BANG-SLOOOOOSH"

The 'slooooosh' being the sound of the small lake of rainwater gathering inside the hammock as it started to develop its own tidal system. I was starting to sink. Hell, if I didn't do something quickly I'd be starting to drown.

I'm sloshing in my sleeping bag, in a hammock, in a French campsite, in the rain. I want to write 'manfully' but the truth is I was whimpering like a small child who's dropped his ice-cream as I wriggled out of the sleeping bag, excavated myself from the hammock and, gathering the soaking clothes that were neatly hanging from a nearby tree, sprinted for cover. And, in the interests of full disclosure, you should bear in mind that I'm wearing a t-shirt and.. nothing else.

All of which makes it rather fortunate that there was a mobile home just a few yards away, which had a large terraced area on one side under a strong, firm, *dry* wooden roof. I've never been so glad to see a mobile home. Well, I've never been glad to see a mobile home at all.. until this moment.

Luckily, there was nobody staying in my new pad. Even luckier, I was able to wring out the sleeping bag and get something approaching sleep for an hour or two. When my eyes groggily opened at 7, the sun was already coming up and.. you've guessed it.. there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I blinked and blinked again. Had I dreamt it all? Could I blame the yapping dog? Rory McGrath?

Then my eyes found the hammock, so heavy with rainwater that the trees it was tied to were bending inwards, fit to break.

And that was the first hour or so of my day. I've motored down to Bayonne - only about 20 miles down the coast. In my desperation to avoid another deluge I checked into a motel out by the motorway. It's as tacky and soulless as you might imagine, and it's dry, but it's not exactly cheap. At €42 it's only €3 cheaper than the budget places I noticed later this afternoon in Biarritz, which I hadn't even checked out because I presumed all the rooms there would be either too expensive or already taken. And I thought I'd got to grips with this country.

To make it worse, I spent the €3 I saved on lodging on an entrance ticket for the Biarritz Historical Museum. This prsents me with a first. I actually came out knowing less about the subject than I did when I went in. I had an impression that Biarritz was a watering hole for European royalty way back when, and sure enough there are photographs and dodgy oil paintings of Queen Victoria, Napoleon III and Alexander of Serbia. But there is also a stuffed polar bear. Not a word of explanation -- though I'm guessing it wasn't trapped very close to the town. And not a word of explanation -- in French, Spanish, Basque, English or Martian -- about any exhibit. *Useless.*

I'm conscious that I'm whinging. It's not my natural state and I blame the rain (and the price of the motel.. and Rory McGrath.. and the museum.. and.. but you know what I mean.)

So let me finish with a short hymn of praise for Biarritz. Yes it *is* the kind of places where Princes, Kings and aristos used to hang out. But they had to be idle wasters somewhere, didn't they? They chose to spend their ill-gotten wealth in a particularly cute seaside location. The beach, or beaches, fit perfectly between dramatic rocky islands and outcrops; their palaces and mansions have an almost restrained grandeur about them, as though they were perhaps, just ever so slightly, self-conscious about their conspicuous consumption.

And the sun's been shining all day. Nobody would believe me if I told them about the rain that capsized me this morning while they were all fast asleep in their palaces.

And tomorrow's going to be a good day.

Beside the Seaside

In Which My Prediction Turns Out To Be Right

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