More bars than Amsterdam.

We are only here in Oleron Ste-Marie for its bars, not that the place is a party town, the bars in question are chocolate ones. We rented a house near here about ten years ago and came across the large Lindt and Sprüngli factory on the outskirts of town by accident. Back then the factory shop was a slightly scruffy looking place in an old warehouse. It mainly sold discontinued lines and bags of 'wonky' chocolate at a fraction of the usual cost. It was full of Spanish people raiding  from the other side of the mountains on a spot of chocolate rustling.

These days the shop is a much swankier place with a café and 'chocolate bar'. It has changed direction somewhat, now selling the standard Lindt offer at a discounted price rather than old lines and factory seconds.

We parked our bikes by the side of the shop and headed in for a bit of chocolate rustling of our own. After a few minutes of browsing I began to feel uncharacteristically jolly. Was it the waft of chocolate in the air hitting some deep seated pleasure spot in my brain, or is communing with fellow chocolate aficionados simply an inherently happy endeavour? Everyone seemed to be smiling.

Chocolate has to be one of humanity's more inspired inventions; as drugs go, it has few downsides and its pleasures are immediate, if a tad short lived. We bought about €30 worth of chocolate supplies. We will mail a few bars back to our kids to reassure them that we have not abandoned them entirely. The remainder will keep us going for months. We have managed to control our chocolate habit, limiting ourselves to one square each to accompany our after lunch expressos. Sadly, it seems we lack the discipline to apply an equally moderate approach to wine.

Our entire trip through France has been designed around our visit to this Lindt shop; otherwise we would have taken the coastal route like last year. We returned to the van for lunch, broke our own rules and had two small chocolates with our coffee, living on the edge here .. 

Next it was back to the bug hunt. Our war of attrition is beginning to yield results, after a quick reconnoitre of the moho's nooks and crannies, including the space above the pull-down bed folded into the roof, we only found six beetles skulking in the shadows. Yesterday there were dozens. I caught and released the stragglers, I really don't like killing creatures needlessly.

We thought we had better visit the town while we were here rather than merely raiding the chocolate factory. We decided to walk in this time. It was only a couple of kilometres. Oleron has that grey, slightly dour look of a mountain town. It reminded me of Jaça, which is directly south of here on the other side of the mountains. The older quarters of Oleron are quite substantial, with a ring of nineteenth century terrace houses encircling the medieval centre which straddles the confuence of two rivers, the Gave d'Aspe and the Gave d'Ossau.

I wondered where this Belle Epoque prosperity came from. Textiles, according to Wikipedia, not any old thing. The mills of Oleron Ste-Marie were the main producers of the classic Basque beret. As niche markets go, selling berets to the French at the beginning of last century must have been like striking gold. No hat making now, the main industries are chocolate bars and aircraft undercarriage, an odd combination, but both crucial in their own way. It's good to see a rural town with a thriving manufacturing sector.

We had a chat about where next. Time to head for Spain we agreed, but we had found an inexpensive campsite in the nearby village of Sallies de Béarn. One night there then off to San Sebastian we decided