Wednesday 12 October 2011

Six Days In France: Biarritz Beaches - the Overview

There are four beaches in Biarritz. From the north: Anglet...


...the Plage Miramar and Grande Plage...


...which is a lot smaller at high tide...


...the Old Town...


...and the Cote des Basques and Plage Marbella...


... which disappears at high tide. Fooled me the first day.



You need to know this: there is no shade on any of them. (Well, except for a couple of square metres of the Old Town). Once the sun has hit the sand, that's it until sunset or a nasty cloud.

Serious surfers and locals go to Anglet, then to the Cote des Basques, and the Old Town is the local's family beach. The Eurotrash go to the Grande Plage. The Cote des Basques was about a hundred metres from my hotel, so I spent two of the four days there.

At Anglet and Cote sdes Basques, I cached my Eastpak courier bag in some rocks and went for long walks. It was still there when I returned. I have no idea how the Police do it (perhaps because they carry guns and look like soldiers), but they manage to keep the, errr, opportunists off the beaches.

It's a very French bourgeois town: everyone else on the beach likely has more money and a way cooler motorbike or scooter that the average English visitor. (High-end scooters are really big over there, especially amongst les filles BoBo.) God alone knows what the place is like in July or August - it felt busy enough in late September, but then the weather was unseasonably hot and sunny - again, thanks to the Seven Dials effect.

Of course, you shouldn't go. It's a dreadful place. Terrible. I'd only go again because I have low self-esteem and don't believe I deserve the good things in life. You should go to, oh, Nice.

No comments:

Post a Comment