It’s a refreshingly cool day today. We say goodbye to Claudie, return her stew-pot telling her how delicious ‘Granny’s veal stew’ was and set off for a 75 mile drive to Biscarrosse where there is a seaplane museum.
Showers turn to incessant rain as we drive through forests of sand pine and pretty little stone villages. The stonework is pale sandstone and some of the churches have little timber ‘sheds’ cantilevered from the steeples.
On the way to Pissos we encounter a long diversion, making our ETA at the museum ever later. Then we get a distraught message from friends we were planning on seeing tomorrow, saying they have blocked drains so can we delay the visit.
We decide to find somewhere to park, visit the museum tomorrow and see how the rest pans out. Passing through the oil town of Parentis en Bourn we see a nodding donkey pump on a roundabout and vapour clouds around the stacks of the refinery.
The aire at Gastes has plenty of room, quite surprising on a Saturday afternoon. After working out how the pay-ticket-bollard system works [€8] we park with a great view across the lake, where yachts and water-skiers do their stuff. The rain has stopped, the sun comes out and it turns into a lovely evening.
More vans arrive but it’s spacious, relaxed and quiet.