EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALNovember 21, 1998
Ondres
Cote d’Argent
Monsieur et Madam Rosaven stand in the door. Monsieur inspects the
metres while Madam checks the armoires and cuisine to make sure everything is in place.
She assures Monsieur that everything is tres bien and he gives us the bill for the
chauffage (metred gas) and the telephone compteur. The bill comes to 1000F ($250). All
those deep baths. We exchange "Enchanter d’avoir faire votre connaissance"
and they marvel at our luggage and Alfi. They wave in the driveway as we roar past the
church and out to the road.
We’re on the red road to Arcachon and the Dune du Pilat.
The day is bright and the night’s frost melts quickly. We are about to meet La Cote
d’Argent, the long stretch of coast between Pointe de Grave on the Gironde estuary
and Bayonne. The Silver Coast is virtually one expanse of shifting sand dunes. Dune du
Pilat is the largest dune in Europe. It is nearly 3km long, 115m high and 500m wide.
It towers at the edge of the Arcachon Basin and when we climb its soft ascent we find a
breathtaking view of Arcachon-ville, the basin, Foret de la Teste (a massive artificial
forest planted to slow the progress of shifting dunes) and the Atlantic beyond. The dune
disappears behind the horizon to the south, flaunting its vastness. The basin is a clear
blue tidal pool dotted with soft white sandbars and tiny boats meandering through the
marked channel into the harbour of Arcachon.
The route from Arcachon to Ondres is a network of connecting yellow
roads interspersed with smallish towns and their section of la Cote. Biscarosse is a few
kilometres inland from Biscarosse Plage, and Mimizan is a few kilometres inland from
Mimizan Plage. St. Girons has St. Girons Plage and Moliets-et-Maa has Moliets-Plage. The
route south is not coastal, but rather a few kilometres inland, connecting the towns and
poking through the forest projects that keep them from disappearing beneath a pile of
shifting sand.
Our gite, Brimborion is at the end of a small road, off the main
route to Ondres Plage. Madam Banicq has led us the short drive from her home in
Ondres-Ville to the little cottage at the start of the footpaths. There is a complex
network of walking trails that find their head at the driveway. Paved trails are leftover
supply routes built by occupying Nazis. Bicycles make enthusiastic use of them today. Brimborion
is a dollhouse cottage, meager and rustic and surrounded by shedding trees. Madam
introduces us to her husband, who is loading his truck with what has been covering the
yard. She is smartly dressed, quick moving, perhaps a little grumpy. He tosses the rake
into the truck, waves "enchanter" and drives away.
Brimborion is simply decorated, with two bedrooms, a dining
room, cuisine and a solarium-type sitting room. There is a tiny salle de bain at
the back of the cottage, with a square tub useful for clothes washing, or dog washing, but
not contemplation. It’s a bath bucket.
Rich has run the piping hot water and filled the bath bucket. He tries
to coax me from the warmth of the bed. He’s switched on the electric heater in the salle
de bain and it breathes a red-hot aura like a hot casserole. I’m sitting in the
bath-bucket with my knees at my chest. It’s deep enough for the water to come up to
my shoulders, and I descend from my Place de Beaumont Bath Ecstasy with a cool breeze on
the kneecaps.
