France - West coast

After a brief stop in Port Manech we headed out of Brittany and onwards down the west coast of France. Our next two stops; Noirmoutier and Chateillon plage both proved to be windless although pleasant enough. We spent our time sunbathing, swimming and biking, and learnt one important thing, that is don’t order “Bulots” in a French restaurant unless you’re particularly keen on eating cold sea snails.

This part of the coast felt more touristy and developed than Brittany and although the kiting spots we saw looked alright without the wind we didn’t see much point in hanging around. After a few too many u-turns in stupid places we learnt to ignore the sat nav when it told us to go straight through the narrow streets of small French towns instead of following the “toutes directions” sign.

Further on down the coast we stopped near Royan which has a good lagoon at high tide. Unfortunately there was still no wind so we did some more biking to Royan to look at a kite shop and then La Palmyre. On the cycle route we had to laugh at the signs that informed cyclists of the impending “route difficile” which basically meant there were a couple of slight hills instead of the route being totally flat. We wandered around the lagoon at La Palmyre, which would be amazing if the wind played ball, and sunbathed a bit watching the birds and sailors but eventually got bored and made our way back trying to avoid the hazardous pelaton of French geriatrics on bikes for the first time since they were eleven years old.