Iain's Week Off - Grottes de Bettharram, Lourdes & Anglet

We've been humming and hawing for weeks over what we should do with Iain's week off. With the ever looming threat of Coronavirus and the feeling that cases are spiking all over Europe, we accepted that it probably wasn't that safe to travel in the middle of the school holidays and end up holiday-ing with half of the french and spanish holidaymakers. We decided the best bet would be to stay at home and do some day trips. We had a few things that we were interested in such at the Train d'Artouste, and I suggested we could go to the Grottes to Bertheram, and we both knew that we definitely wanted to visit the coast. 

Monday was chilled. Iain got to experience the Big Shop at Auchan and we invested in some holiday entertainment - a 1000 piece jigsaw. Eeek! It's of the universe and it looks like a right toughie. Tuesday we packed ourselves a decent picnic and headed out to the Grottes. Its essentially an enormous underground cave network which is accessed at different levels by foot, boat and little train. It's spectacular and the tour guide even provided some english commentary so we understood quite a bit about what was going on. The whole thing was really well organised and set up and we really enjoyed it. Even William, who started to moan by the end about his tired legs. Coming back up to ground level via the train was definitely his favourite part. The photos don't really do it justice but it was pretty impressive.

Rather than heading straight back to Pau, we decided to really make a day of things and we drove further down the road into Lourdes. Finally, we managed to check out a couple of things that I / we hadn't seen. The first was the Lac de Lourdes and the next was the château. It did feel like no one wanted us to visit the château though as it was impossible to navigate the roads around it and find a suitable parking spot. Once you're stuck in the Lourdes one way system, you feel like you're never going to be seen again. We actually found an Indian restaurant and figured it was as good a time as any to check it out but I'm disappointed to report it was another average curry. Humph. 

On Wednesday we went out for a family run. We timed in poorly but the time we were coming down the Boulevard, the heat was almost unbearable. But in another way, our timing was amazing, as we ran right into Seta Taminivalu and Britney Coates who were down from Bordeaux, visiting mates for a couple of days. Talk about a Naki reunion! Last time I saw Britney was in the West Bar just after William was born and we were making videos for a Mini Team Challenge! Mental. On Wednesday night we invited ourselves over to Fish's place (no pun intended) for a BBQ. It provided a perfect opportunity for me to teach him how to make the famous bacon & broccoli salad. 

On Thursday we had agreed that we would go out to the coast but rather than getting away at the crack of dawn we chose to mosey around here in the morning and head out there for the afternoon and early evening. We'd taken some advice and headed to Anglet. Seemingly, so had half of SW France, but our timing was great and I reckon we caught a wave of people who'd been there for the morning and early afternoon stint and were heading home. We got a parking spot right at the beach. Perfect. It was blooming hot thought and the waves were mental so there was no way we were heading in to the water, never mind taking William in but it was just lovely to be back at the ocean again. It's so good for the soul. We had sundowners at the beach bar and William crashed out in the car on the way home. A good day all round. 

It was still roasting on Friday - here's William cooling down as only a Street Urchin knows how:

Lorna :)