Blog 09: To Spain – at last! – via the coastal route

The Bay of Biscay being notorious for rough weather, we had always imagined we’d have to make use of a brief ‘weather window’ and sail diagonally across Biscay straight to Bilbao or Santander.  However, to our surprise, it was calm and sunny with a light breeze for long enough for us to take the coastal route from Royan to Bayonne, completing our first overnight passage of this season. 

We also visited Biarritz and Arcachon by road. Unfortunately, the nice weather didn’t last and it became changeable, wet and grey!  So in one sense the weather was very kind to us, but it wasn’t always good for photography. 

However, it was certainly a lovely morning when we left Île de Ré and finally moved on from the La Rochelle area.

Looking back at Île de Ré.

We had a pleasant passage motor-sailing in an incredibly calm sea and taking it in turns to keep watch – this is not what we expected in the Bay of Biscay!

Hardly any other boats about – avoiding lobster pots was often the biggest challenge!  This one is well marked with 3 bright flags, but often you can hardly see them till you almost hit them!

Calm enough for Charles to put his feet up and look very relaxed.

Our wake – how often do you see the Bay of Biscay like this?!

We reached the Gironde estuary, which is formed from the meeting of the Garonne and Dordogne Rivers, and had a longish steam to Royan past little ‘fishing huts’ on stilts – looked like a very traditional way of fishing more reminiscent of villages in the Far East.  The nets are attached to a sort of simple crane and lowered down into the river at the right state of the tide to catch the fish swimming up or down-river.

Royan

Royan is a pleasant town with an excellent indoor market …

… a beautiful sandy beach …

… and a superb cycle path running the length of it for several kilometres.

Some rather grand old houses along the seafront …

… interspersed with some modern boxes, which don’t fit in as well, but are probably lovely places to live in …

… and then a block of flats in the middle!

We had a pleasant lunch in a café on the Place Charles de Gaulle, where I was amused by the decor!  

At a quick glance, they just look like old-fashioned family photos!

We left Royan the following morning into what looks like quite a rough sea, but it is a tidal ‘race’ in the Gironde estuary, the effect of the strong tide on a relatively shallow, narrow channel and uneven seabed.  At times, the rate of the tide got up to over 4 knots against us!

You can see from the boat instruments that the speed of the boat going through the water is 7.6 knots (bottom left instrument), but the ‘speed over the ground’ (SOG on the instrument in the middle of the top row) is only 3.4 knots.  It’s like swimming against the tide and not going anywhere fast!

Once we got out to sea, though, the Bay of Biscay was like an absolute millpond!  Amazing!

Along this part of the French coast there are hardly any good harbours.  The only place really is Arcachon, but the entrance is quite treacherous and shallow with shifting sandbanks and an unlit channel which is not safe to navigate at night.  It would be quite late in the evening by the time the tide was high enough to enter the channel, not quite dark but not a great time to be entering an unlit channel.  The weather, on the other hand, was so good for making the long sea passage almost down to the Spanish border that we decided to carry on and sail through the night to Anglet, near Bayonne, and visit Arcachon and Biarritz from there.

We did have enough wind to sail some of the time, but the sea is still flat calm!

The coastline here is very flat and mostly sand dunes.  This is what it looked like for miles and miles and hours and hours on end!  It’s also a practice firing range for the French military, so you have to be careful not to enter the wrong zone when they are firing!

At one point we had a stowaway – a pigeon or seagull or something, maybe a young one, perhaps exhausted, hitched a ride with us for several hours.

It seemed like it was going to be quite an uneventful trip until we were called over the radio by the French customs and boarded by three armed customs officers!

They inspected our boat documents and passports, filled in endless forms and then searched Astraia.  They were, however, very friendly and once they had finished they admitted they had only approached us because we were the only vessel in sight as far as the eye could see!  I guess it was a slow day in the office for them! 

I didn’t feel I should take close-up photographs of three armed men (!) but this is a picture of them returning to their ship in their inflatable rib.

This is us having a sit-down dinner at the cockpit table in the middle of the Bay of Biscay!  We had expected to be only just managing to make a packet of cup-soup!

Sunset over the Bay of Biscay.

Moonlight over the Bay of Biscay.  We took turns to keep watches and snatch a couple of hours sleep.  There were only a few fishing boats to avoid and a couple of big ships at anchor, so it was really a very easy passage.

Dawn over the Bay of Biscay – still flat calm! 

Early morning arrival - this is the ‘fairway buoy’ which marks the beginning of the channel into Bayonne.

A rather industrial view, but the sun came out and they found us a nice comfortable berth in Anglet Marina at a very reasonable price …

We also met up with an old friend ‘Lauretta’ and her crew – a different crew each time we meet her – but we have now met this boat four times in various ports!

Bayonne

We took the very efficient bus into Bayonne and enjoyed wandering through the narrow old streets and patronising the relaxed little cafés.

This is the Cathedral of Sainte-Marie de Bayonne – the two towers are an impressive sight from various vantage points around the town.

It felt very lofty, but narrow, inside.

Lovely ceiling …

… and beautiful cloisters.

These are some of the old buildings in Bayonne, which seem to have been repaired and modernised, but they have retained as much of the original fabric of the building as possible.

The Botanic Gardens have been incorporated into the walls of the old town …

… but they still had to add the inevitable Japanese bridge!

This is the River Nive which runs through the city of Bayonne before joining the bigger River Adour which flows past our marina and into the Bay of Biscay at Anglet.

And that was more-or-less the end of the sunshine!!

I went for a bike ride to Plage de la Barre, the local beach near Anglet.

It’s a wonderful expanse of sand which extends for miles all the way to Biarritz.  Further along the beach the waves were big enough for surfing, but I didn’t get any good photos as most of the time the surfers seemed to be falling off or paddling back out to try again – they were up on their surfboards very briefly!

This is the dredger keeping the harbour entrance clear.

The clouds cleared long enough to see the mountains in the distance – lovely to see the hills after so many miles of flat dunes.

What a difference the weather makes to my photographs – three views of Anglet marina …

On a dull day …

… and exactly the same view with the sun shining!

Clear reflections on a very dark, still night.

Rebecca arrived from Amsterdam where she lives, hoping for a few sunny days sailing, to be greeted by torrential rain!!  She arrived in Bayonne from Bordeaux airport via a ‘Bla Bla Car’ ride booked on-line, the French railways currently being on strike – it seemed more efficient than public transport!

We met Becca in Bayonne and by the time we got back to the boat the weather cleared up long enough to at least take this nice photo! It is alternately very hot and sunny followed by sudden heavy downpours today.

Biarritz

After lunch on board we took the bus into Biarritz to explore this famous fashionable destination.  Unfortunately, the weather was mostly grey and cloudy so I’m not sure the photographs really do it justice.

This is L’église Sainte-Eugénie, sometimes called Biarritz Cathedral.

Just off the coast are many interesting rocky outcrops and islands, many of which have been joined to the mainland by bridges and steps, presumably so that fashionable visitors could promenade across and admire the spectacular coastal views.

As you can see, it’s a bit of a grey day for spectacular coastal views, though!

A nice photo of Becca and Charles with the Cathedral in the background.

Ditto myself and Charles – thought I’d better put one of me in!

Great view from one of the rocky outcrops of the tiny harbour at Biarritz – we were interested in how well-sheltered it was by its convoluted entrance and several separate basins.  You can see the white surf outside the harbour where the waves break onto the rocks contrasting with the calm water within.

Amazing stormy sky looking down the coast towards the clear outline of the distant mountains.

Another view of the Cathedral and a turreted mansion on the hill with a cluster of small fishermen’s huts beside the harbour below.

This is Place Sainte-Eugénie, named after Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, who liked to visit Biarritz and made it fashionable.  Shortly after this photo was taken, there was another torrential downpour and we sprinted (!) to one of the bars on the left for shelter and aperitifs!

We then had a delicious and very interesting meal at a Danish tapas restaurant in Biarritz called ‘Caroe’ – sort-of Scandinavian/Spanish fusion served in France – an interesting combination of cultures!  It was recommended by one of Becca’s fellow ‘Bla Bla Car’ passengers and was really tasty and different.

Back in the marina, the gloomy cloudy day produced quite an interesting sunset. 

Tomorrow to Spain – at last!

It was a miserable grey day, not particularly windy or rough but a rather unpleasant motion caused by the Atlantic swell.  We had to motor as the wind was totally against us, but we had the mainsail up as a steadying sail to moderate the rolling motion.

Here Becca and Charles are pulling the mainsail in again just before our arrival – they look very nonchalant as if it’s not much effort!  That’s because Becca is using the electric winch (pressing the button with her foot!) to pull the sail in while Charles is letting the outhaul go.  So not much of an ‘action shot’ this time!

This is the moment we entered Spanish waters and hoisted the Basque courtesy flag.

This is the entrance to Hondarribia Marina.  It was a somewhat underwhelming arrival at Hondarribia, the first port in Spain and only a few hundred metres across the water from Hendaye in France, because it was such grey, wet and grotty weather! 

But this is the moment we achieved our aim to sail to Spain!!