We've moved about 50kms north of Cap Ferret and are now booked-in for a few days at Camping le Tedey on the shores of the Etang de Lacanau. Google Translate defines 'etang' as pond in English. However the pond we are parked next to is considerably bigger than Windamere, the largest lake in England, so it seems to me that in French a 'pond' means something different than in English, or at least it has a more specific meaning. The French seem to use the term to describe any body of water that forms as a sump in a wetland irrespective of its size. We do have an English equivalent - the meres in Cheshire - but then we also apply this term to lakes formed glacially such as Buttermere or a reservoir like Thirlmere, which all goes to show that one of the glories of the English language is its innate approximation - the result of centuries of making it up as we go along.
The reason we are here is to hone my skill, or more accurately, reduce my incompetence as a stand-up paddle boarder. Gill has a a more positive take on this, pointing out that I am very good at paddling it's just the standing-up bit that is proving somewhat challenging.
Camping le Tedey proved to have qualities we hadn't quite bargained for. It's enormous, with almost 500 pitches scattered amongst the pine trees, including hundreds of mobile homes and safari tents. In high season it must be a hell-hole - packed out with over-excited French families en vacance. All adolescents are irritating but none quite so as French fourteen year old boys.
At the moment the site is fairly empty. It would be spookily so but for the management's strategy to fill the place by offering themed events outside of July and August. Our arrival coincided with a Brazilian weekend hosted by a Bordeaux based dance academy. The site had fixed up two dance floors, one in the aerobics area tucked away behind reception and another larger one covered by a canvas roof near the lakeside Sunrise restaurant. Both had sound systems that could have graced the Dance tent at Glastonbury.
The order of the day seemed to be morning and early afternoon Latin dance coaching sessions followed by an opportunity to take to the floor and strut your stuff. We know this because the pa systems were set at a volume that ensured we could hear all the goings-on clearly. However it was not too intrusive as we were a few hundred metres away from both venues. Practice sessions used prerecorded tapes, we recognised a couple of songs by Jorge Ben, which always guaranteed to raise the spirits.
The small beach that I used to launch my paddle board was next to the larger of the two dance venues. I didn't see much of the activity as I was concentrating very hard on staying upright. but I could hear the music. It was provided by a duo consisting of an accordionist and a drummer. They played along to a backing track with a distinctly Gallo-Latin rhythm. It was syncopated enough for the dancers to salsa or samba away but the accordionist was quite unable to shake off his cultural roots. The melody sounded like the kind of off-the-peg effort you might find in a late Fifties Ealing comedy set in Montmartre. I added bad Gallic Latino to my inner catalogue of terrible French pop music. If French rap is 'frap' then frangled Samba becomes 'Framba'..
The dancers themselves seemed happy enough. They weren't exactly 'Strictly stars' but they were not novices either. There was something rather fetching seeing them salsa away in the sunshine, a couple of dozen couples - a complete mix of ages, shapes and sizes, black, white, straight, gay - don't be so cynical I told myself.
What is undeniable is they had reached a stage of competence that I could only dream about so far as my attempts at paddle boarding were concerned. I have become more confident and there is a picture of me standing up, but actually I had run aground, so that doesn't really count.
After a while I was joined by another paddle boarder. He looked to be in his sixties too. He had fixed a fabric seat to his board which turned it into a kind of flattened kayak. When I Googled this later it turned out to be quite a common hack and the kits to do this are easily available on Amazon. It's a thought but I am still determined to manage to learn how to stand up.
Back on shore the dancers had gone home. Gill had been befriended by a stray collie dog. All he wanted was to find a human to throw a stick into the lake for him to retrieve. So we obliged.
Next day we took a morning walk along the lake shore. The campsite is extensive, partly because it is wrapped around a big tract of partly forested old dunes.
It doesn't take long at all before you feel completely away from it all, just you, the forest and the mirror still lake
Eventually the path reached the area near the site restaurant. The pitches around here have small wooden huts on them, we wondered what they were for. A French woman called me over to ask if I knew how to turn on the gas cylinder on her stove. In the end I managed to do it and in the process solved the mystery of the little huts.
They contain a small camping kitchens with stove, cooking equipment, a fridge and coffee maker. It means people under canvas don't need to bring camping stoves with them and it makes the wooded site much safer because all cooking equipment and gas cylinders are contained within the huts.
Next day my plan was to continue my quest for verticality. We have we worked out a much easier method of getting the awkward 10' board from our pitch to the beach about 400m away. By strapping the end to our folding trolley we can trundle the thing there rather than lugging it by hand. Sadly there was a downside.
Somehow the removable rear fin that stabilises the board must have fallen off when we trundled it back yesterday. It's not a disaster, it's a standard SUP component and available on Amazon for about £10. However, replacing it will have to wait until we get home which puts the kibosh on any further attempts to stand up on an SUP.
Has it been fun at Camping le Tedey? I guess so. Would we come back? Probably not. Maybe the same is true about the south west coast of France generally.
Its big beaches and opportunities for 'fun in the sun' make it a great area to come with kids. Other places such as northern Italy, Denmark, or the Costa Brava I think are our preferred late Spring destinations. They are a little further but Denmark is welcoming whereas France is somewhat 'sang froide'; Italy and Spain are alluring too - the Mediterranean in late May and early June is gorgeous. Then there is the ferry to northern Spain, we are due a return visit to Galicia and the area around Porto. All preferable to France, I think. "Not more baguette and cheese for lunch!" I groaned. We declared ourselves officially 'Franced-out'.
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