In summer 2023 we had 5 weeks during the school holiday to head to mainland Europe on a road trip. The main aim was to put our new Hilux Overland conversion through its paces. After some pondering, a rough plan was formulated: head down to Normandy and on to the French Atlantic Coast, then through the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean.
After that, we planned to head back to the UK via the Route Des Grandes Alpes (Nice to Geneva). The route changed a bit due to the weather. The route we took is shown below:
Heading South
Departing so close to the start of the school holidays, we decided to leave on a Thursday morning to try to avoid the crazy weekend traffic. We left Birmingham at 5 am aiming to miss the M25 rush hour and catch the 10 am ferry.
Traffic was pretty heavy approaching Dover, so we eventually managed to board the 12.30 ferry. I hate to see what the queues are like on a weekend. I feel sorry for the locals who have to deal with this traffic all the time.
Fine English drizzle had been with us since we left home, and it followed us across the channel. I wanted to spend a couple of days in Normandy to show the kids the D-Day landing beaches. The rain was still coming down, so we got on the autoroute and headed southwest towards Caen.
“If we get to the Caen junction and it is still raining, we will just keep heading south until the rain stops,” I said to Suma. None of us wanted to start our holiday by camping in the miserable rain. We’re English, and that means we don’t do rain when we are on holiday.
The rain was still coming down when we reached the Caen junction, so we just kept heading south. We will have to visit Normandy on another trip.
It was about 9 pm by the time the rain stopped, so we pulled over in an Aire just off the Autoroute near Poitiers. It had been quite a long day on the road and we were all a bit tired. The tent went up in no time, we all crawled in and got some sleep. The Aire was quite busy, so we kept getting woken up by campervans & motorhomes arriving and setting up.
The next morning we grabbed a coffee from the restaurant, had a quick wash in the bathroom, packed up the tent, and was on the road by 10 am.
Dune Du Pyla
We stopped in Bordeaux for a couple of hours and had a look around the old part of the town. It was quite nice, but not as impressive as other towns in France. The surrounding region has more to offer.
We headed out of Bordeaux and hit quite a lot of holiday traffic heading west towards the coast. Spotting some forestry I left the autoroute and found some dirt trails through the forest. It added some time to the journey but that didn’t matter, it just felt nice to be out of the traffic.
We arrived in La-Teste-De-Buche and decided to start looking for somewhere to camp. After chatting in broken French to a local fireman, he directed us to a campsite near the Dune Du Pyla so we headed there.
The campsite was lovely. We squeezed onto a small 4×4-accessible pitch with great views over the sea and dune. The walk down to the beach is a steep drop down the dune, with no easy way back up. The beach itself is sheltered from the Atlantic swells by a sand bar, so it isn’t a surf beach but is safe for paddling close to the shore.
Parapenting is very popular here, there are several schools where you can learn how to operate one. The dune is one giant soft take-off and landing zone, with a constant onshore breeze, so I’d say its probably the best place in Europe to learn how to parapente.
The French like to do things properly, and French campsites are no exception. The facilities at Panorama Du Pyla are great, it is 4 star. The toilets are clean, the restaurant serves great food, and the pool is nice. There is plenty to keep the kids entertained. It would be easy to spend a long time here, especially if you are into sailing or parapenting. The price was around 60 Euros per night, this seemed to be about average for the sites we stayed at.
A wildfire had burnt through the area in 2022, stripping the leaves from the tall shade pine trees that cover the campsite. It underlined to us the importance of not having open fires or charcoal BBQs: the whole of Southern Europe is so dry in the summer months.
Mimizan – Lakeside Campsite
We left Pylat after 2 nights and wanted to find somewhere a bit further south near the coast. I tried to drive through some of the forest to do a wild camp on a beach, but the trails were very loose deep sand there was no easy way over the dunes. I got bogged down in the deep sand on the flat, so trying to follow the trail up and over the dunes would have just meant getting stuck. Even if I could have made it onto the beach, there was a real risk of being stuck there. Some local knowledge would have been useful, but with the high numbers of tourists in this area I’m sure wild camping is not allowed.
If you want a deserted beach all to yourself, you will have no problem finding one in this area. You will need to hike through the forest, going up and over the dunes.
We continued to Mimizan Plage, but there were no pitches available at any of the rather swanky-looking 5* campsites. It pays to be well organised and book ahead if you have specific places you want to stay. But we were just making it up as we went along.
We then went back inland as there was a lakeside campsite not far away: Camping Du Lac near Mimizan Village. They had plenty of pitches available so we booked here for 2 nights. It is a 3-star campsite but has a bar, restaurant, large pool, and clean toilet facilities. We did try to get some ice cream and cocktails at the bar once but the bar staff completely ignored us, so we left them to it.
The campsite caters to large groups of French teenagers on outward-bound or Scout trips. They have an area of the campsite cordoned off with old prospector-style canvas tents. To my surprise and their absolute credit, the teenagers are extremely well-behaved. Come midnight, there were no drunken fights and puking as we would expect from large groups of British teenagers hanging out together. A bit of a culture shock for me.
The campsite is on the edge of a lovely lake, and there is a nice walk through some beautifully manicured public gardens that fringe the lake. It reminded me of Monet’s paintings at Giverny.
We had 2 nice relaxing days here at Mimizan, just staying within a stone’s throw of the campsite. There looks to be plenty to do in the area. There is a large network of inter-connected cycle routes snaking through the forest which blankets this whole area. They link all the villages, campsites, beaches, and points of interest.
Hendaye and surrounding area
Suma wanted a break from camping, so she found a place to stay on Airbnb for 5 nights. The cheapest place we could find was Euro 65 per night in a small basement conversion next to the beach in Hendaye. It was pretty small but not too bad, and it had free off-road parking. It was a great base to spend the next 5 days exploring the local area.
Hendaye is a quiet and posh Basque region tourist town on the Spanish border. It is where the Pyrenees Mountains meet the Atlantic Ocean. The high rainfall in the area results in lush green vegetation in the hills above the town. There are numerous surf schools on the huge sandy beach, and beach patrols to make sure everyone is safe. It did seem to rain a fair bit while we were in Hendaye.
There is a Decathlon store near the Marina so we went and purchased an inflatable surfboard for me to learn to surf with. The kids had their some inflatable bodyboards that we inflated using the truck-mounted air compressor with an air-line adaptor. The kids loved the surf, but I couldn’t use my new surfboard for very long. Many years ago I broke a rib and the resulting large bony lump caused me too much pain within a few minutes of lying down on the surfboard.
Aside from surfing, there is plenty to do in Hendaye and the surrounding area. We drove to nearby towns and villages on both the French and Spanish sides. St Jean De Luz is a very pretty resort and worth a visit.
San Sebastian is a short drive away and is beautiful. The old town has a lot of character, and there is a nice walk up to the old fortress on a hill protecting the harbour entrance.
We also visited Pamplona. It is different from what I expected. I thought would be a small village with narrow streets for the world-famous bull run. It is, in fact, quite a large city, the bull run takes place in the old part of the city, which has plenty of character.
Looking ahead to our next base camp in Andorra, we decided to head there on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, which has less rain and gives us the chance to see the famous Ordesa Canyon.
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