I woke up feeling spent. Perhaps work, perhaps the long drive, perhaps just need a rest. Anyway a quick breakfast acrosss the road demolishing multiple croissants and half the bakery (the boys 'threshold' appetite is increasing by the day with 'tempo' soon to be the norm) before the 4 hours drive down to Biarritz where we had booked Hotel Florida (or 'Flow Ryder' per the boys). Thankfully this time we avoided the traffic through Bordeaux which can be a nightmare at the best of times and certainly was for everyone going north! The Friday lunchtime slot worked well for us.
I then made a school boy error with the car which is too embarrassing to reveal but basically ended up with the first picture below. No one was impressed. That coupled with losing my wallet earlier in the week has brought its unique set of challenges given it was already 8pm on a Friday night and long into the Basque weekend. I was fearing the worst....
Long story short and after the biggest test of my French since my 1990 GCSEs and 3 hours later, I had the car back in one piece surf boards still intact. It meant missing dinner which was not good with the planned tempo in the morning as well as family morale in general.
The car story is a long one in itself and started to get worried when after 20 minutes we were still driving away from Biarritz with our van jacked up bobbing up and down behind. 'A bientot A bientot' the dude kept telling me.
It got worse as when we finally arrived I had 5 mechanics all nervously looking at the van. There was an even more nervous 5 minutes for me when one of the mechanics said he needed run it past the boss (whatever 'it' was) and disappeared for 5 minutes which felt like 30. The look on his face suggested the worst but surprisingly he then said all ok in his broken English. I did not care and just relieved that we had a car for the next 2 weeks.
60 mins later I was out of there albeit with a dent to my wallet as well as my pride.
Major respect though to the guy you managed to get the van hooked up to his van 'assistance' which basically involved putting little wheelie boards underneath both front wheels and pushing the car out sidewards away from the parked in cars so that he had a clear run to lift the van up. And no thanks to the 15 or so locals who came out to get their own entertainment at my expense!
Before this car drama I had mustered 8ks along the Biarritz sea front mapping out tomorrow's tempo route which unfortunately will be hilly.
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