A tourist flight down the longest Sandy beach in Europe

[britfrog 180]

Hi everyone, today we are going for a flight along the longest sandy beach in Europe , over 200 miles!!!) we are going to see many pretty sights however treat this thread like a holiday program, or travelogue, especially those who have never visited France, because it is a beautiful country , so each picture of our flight will have a link to the local tourist board, take the time to look at these sites and get to know a bit more of France, I am sure it will give you something to think about when you finish. As you will see this is very much a holiday area mostly surrounded by conservation areas

Oh and by the way the music you must have in your head is "the beat goes on" by Sonny and Cher except in this case it is "the beach goes on"

 

For a bit of extra fun follow the flight on Google Earth

 

Our flight starts at LFJI (Marennes) and will end at LESO (St Sebastian) in Spain

Enjoy!!

As we climb up we can see the mouth of the Gironde river and the sand bank in the middle,

 

this is where Operation Frankton started in the last war, if you dont know what operation Frankton was , perhaps Cockle Shell heroes may ring a bell, serious heroism at any rate .

 

 

As we cross the mouth of the Gironde the first town we see is Soulac-sur-Mer

(http://www.soulac.com )

 

 

We continue over the pine forests and our next port of call is Montalivet (http://www.ot-vendays-montalivet.fr/en/index.htm) you can see how broad the beach is check out the pictures on the web site.

 

 

The third village is Hourlin (http://www.camping-cote-dargent.com/) a very small place which is mostly just a large camping site.

 

 

We then come to Lucanau Ocean (http://www.alternative-aquitaine.co.uk/resorts/lacanau/lacanau.htm) which combines large camp sites with holiday homes and even has (rare for France ) a golf course.

 

 

We then head slightly inland to Andernos -les-Bains (http://www.andernoslesbains.fr/) famous for its sea food on the bay of Arcachon (http://www.tourisme-aquitaine.fr/en/tourisme-aquitaine/169/m1_2352F0EF/bay-arcachon.html)

 

 

we cross the bay and arrive over Arcachon (http://www.arcachon-tourisme.com/) itself  which really hums in the summer holidays

 

 

 

The next port of call is the famous dune of Pyla (http://www.dune-pyla.com/en/) the largest sand dune in Europe, it measures over 500 yards wide by nearly 3 kms long  and is over 350 feet high. It doesn't look much from above but when you are on it , very impressive!! you can see this from well over a hundred miles away when you fly across  France in an airliner.

 

 

Next up is Biscarrosse plage (http://www.biscarrosse.co.uk/)

 

 

The following town Mimizan Plage (http://www.mimizan-tourisme.com/?lang=en)  has an interesting history worth reading about on their web site it is also where you see the difference between the north and the Basque south as there is a bull ring in the center of town. A common feature throughout the south of France!!

 

 

The last holiday town we pass over is Molliets -et-Maa (http://www.moliets.com/) which luckily for them also sports a golf course.

 

 

A bit further on we fly over the large town of Bayonne and onto the town of St Jean de Luz (http://www.saintjeandeluz.co.uk/en) where the cliff has been eroded away to form a beautiful bay.

 

 

and lastly as the Pyrenees fall into the Atlantic Ocean we arrive at St Sebastian, where if you have the misfortune of landing short  (in the water) you will be fished out by the French as the Spanish border starts on the threshold of the runway and goes alongside the runway.

 

 

well I hope you enjoyed our little tourist flight.

[mutley 4,498]

Ah... life's a beach!

 

Nice travelogue Nigel, smashing looking images too.

 

Joe

 

 

[Gunner 69]

Nice pictures, thnx for the trip. The scenery looks great.

[hifly 925]

Nice trip Nigel and love the plane.

[flybytes 34]

Nigel (BF),

 

Lovely screenshots, when I get the time I'll try to replicate your flight.

 

Do remember the 'Cockleshell Heroes', the book about them was thrilling reading when I was a lad - as in so much of history, the true stories can be much more exciting than the fictional ones.

 

Anyone interested in WW2 history should try to read "The Next Moon" by Andre' Hue & Ewen Southby-Tailyour - exploits of a SOE agent in wartime France.

 

Also a good read & reporting on a lesser known aspect of WW2 is "The Last Escape"  by John Nichol & Tony Rennell describing the forced marches of allied POW's around Europe in the last weeks of the war. If the name sounds familiar, John Nichol was the navigator/weapons officer in the Tornado shot down over Iraq.

 

Incidentally, the back seat of the Tornado RAF F2/F3 simulators (nav/weapons systems) required almost 3 times the computer processing power as that of the front seat flight systems.

 

Ray.

 

 

 

[brett 2,316]

 Thanks for making this the longest read post I have seen. From start to finish it took me over an hour due to getting waylaid in my searches.   Great shots and commentary.

 

I would like to argue the point about the longest continuous beach though, doesn't Arcachon Bay break up the continuity.   

[britfrog 180]

Brett I had you in mind when I wrote it, as I presumed you have not been here.

As for the bay breaking up the continuity, well yeah but the actual break in the sand is only a couple of hundred yards and is nearly silted up .

However I am glad you enjoyed it and followed the links to the various communities.

 

and lastly an oversight on my behalf I must give credit to France VFR Aquitane region for the scenery, and JK for the 337 paint job

[brett 2,316]

It is a beautiful area and your scenery addon(VFRFrance) really showed it off well.

 

My biggest problem is I don't just look up something like Operation Frankton, next thing I know I'm checking out what knifes the commandos are using(Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife  ) and looking at the inner workings of Limpet mines.

[britfrog 180]

It is a beautiful area and your scenery addon(VFRFrance) really showed it off well.

 

My biggest problem is I don't just look up something like Operation Frankton, next thing I know I'm checking out what knifes the commandos are using(Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife  ) and looking at the inner workings of Limpet mines.

 

Brett check this out:

[brett 2,316]

Much better than just reading about it, BBC documentaries are the best. A shame how fate intervened in that raid.

 

Here's another daring raid that was just plain unbelievable. If you saw it as a movie you would think it was fiction.

 

[britfrog 180]

As luck would have it Brett, Yesterday I was loosely planning to make another tourist flight but heading north from the Gironde , as it is an area we know very well as we used to fly there from the UK most weekends , just to get away from the telephone. It was during the course of putting together some ideas i used google earth and zoomed into St Nazaire because my wife and I have the very dry dock where this all took place, it is opposite the U boat pens which still exist today. we went onto the roof of one of the pens , where there is a steel cuppola /machine gun post and I kid you not the steel is 18inches thick, nothing short of an atomic bomb would hurt them inside, however whilst i was looking at this thing my wife came over a bit weird and wanted to get away as quickly as possible as she was picking up some really bad vibes. Hardly surprising really as both that building and the pens were built by slave labour and as the workers fell over from exhaustion they were just pushed into the wet cement (well documented) and incarcerated. my wife didnt know about these events but she sure picked something up.

What I find a bit weird about this region, is that in Normandy there is the remains of the mulberry harbour  and loads of museums which tell the history of the last 2 wars, however ST nazaire is different , as you get near the town all around there are huge concrete bunkers/blockhouses built by the germans, but there is no well signed route to the docks , you sort of arrive there by accident, then you find the maritime nuseum, however there is no mention of the war in that museum at all , it is as if it never happened and yet it is 400 yards from these enormous u boat pens, how can they ignore them? they attract thousands of tourists every year!! F-kin sad however later on when i asked someone local why this was he simply said they had a communist mayor as an answer.

 

If you think people will enjoy it I will make another touristy flight covering this area and the the outlying islands.