The Gironde department is extremely diverse. Atlantic sensations at Lacanau, city excursions in Bordeaux, forests and vineyards in the Entre deux Mers or canals and swimming at the Canal de la Garonne. What do you like best? Decide and spend your time in the place you like best. To help you, I’ll tell you about my trip.
Travel experiences in Gironde
We begin our journey in search of our vacation apartment. My GPS tells me we’re almost there. We pull up in front of a 70s-style building. There must be some mistake, I suppose, as I don’t notice the expected charm of Lacanau’s world-famous surfing community: no blonds wearing their surfboards shirtless and no young surfers in wetsuits. A passage through the building leads Maxime and me to the Atlantic. The sun suddenly burns my eyes, as it’s low this afternoon. The sea is about to recede, exposing the beach and soothing me with its gentle roar. And here we are. Welcome to the Gironde department.
Lacanau| surf spot in gironde
Let’s go to the beach. It’s a busy Saturday afternoon. Children swim in the shallow water wearing T-shirts and two teenagers try to paddle their surfboards. Lacanau-Océan has been known as a surfing spot since the 70s. Surfers from all over the world meet here, around 60 kilometers west of Bordeaux in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Many of them spend the night in vacation apartments, on the many campsites or in their own vans in the parking lot just off the coast. We decide to rent two bikes. We ride along the coast, see some surfers and head south. We’d go all the way to Spain if we followed the road. The other way, it would go all the way to Norway. But at a certain point, we turn inland. Lac de Lacanau, one of France’s largest inland lakes, is our destination. We ride along beautiful cycle paths through pine forests. The salty, damp smell of the sea fades into the background, replaced by the resinous scent of conifers. We follow the Boucle du Lion for almost 18 kilometers, a circular route between the seaside resorts of Lacanau, Carcans-Maubuisson and Hourtin and the lakes, dunes, forests and sea.
Bordeaux wine capital
The Médoc peninsula stretches all the way to Bordeaux. Here, Maxime and I spend the night at Le Village du Lac campsite, on the outskirts of the winegrowing metropolis. City-hopping and camping: Bordeaux shows that the combination is possible. In the evening, we rent two city bikes from the city’s transport service. Directly in front of the campsite is one of 174 rental stations. Prices are €1.5/hour, €7/week, €10/month and €30/year, so low that it hardly pays to have your own bike, even if you live in the city. The streets of Bordeaux are very busy, with lots of roadworks and traffic. A friend, whom we meet by chance in Bordeaux and ask why he gets around by bike, tells me how practical the bike is and how quickly he can get around the small town. At the Cité du Vin, I learn that 57 million bottles of wine are produced in Bordeaux every year. In the evening, we taste one of them. In the evening, we leave the bikes in town and take the streetcar home.
Between two seas | vineyards as far as the eye can see
The next day, Emilie explains to us in Haux, a commune in the Entre deux Mers region, how wine is produced before it flows into the French gorges. If you think (as I do) that Entre deux mers means the continent between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, you’re wrong. It’s true that the name represents the hilly country between the Garonne and Dordogne rivers. But it’s also true that the Voie Verte passes through here and takes you to Toulouse, then along the Canal du Midi to Sète and the Mediterranean.
But back to Emilie. She’s a winemaker. The family vineyard at Château Peneau, in Haux, covers 30 hectares. It produces reds, whites, rosés and Crémant. But above all, Cadillac, a white wine that becomes particularly sweet when a mushroom is added shortly before harvest. While I annoy Emilie with my questions, she guides us through the wine cellar and shows us the family treasures that are not for sale. The oldest wine dates back to 1975. I don’t know much about wine, but I’m very interested in the history of wine, its production and the winemaking profession. At one point, we talked so much that we didn’t have time for a tasting. Luckily for us, Emilie gave us more bottles of wine than we could carry.
Canal de la garonne | between locks and plane trees
The next day, we meet Alain. This year, he opened his bike rental business, Les Cycles du Canal, in Castets-en-Dorthe. He shows us his bikes, his garage and his workshop. He radiates the pride of a young entrepreneur, coupled with a friendly nervousness. We take our time, chatting with Alain, filming him repairing his bikes and in his garage. Maxime is persuaded to take a small black folding electric bike. We then ride down the hill from the center of Castets-en-Dorthes to the canal. From lock number 52, the Garonne Canal begins. Once again on this trip, I feel like I’m in another world. The diversity of the department is remarkable. We meet cyclists “just” from Brittany, anglers after lunch, yachtsmen discovering the canals and sailing up the canal under the plane trees, from lock to lock. The canal was originally created to transport goods. But at the same time, the railway industry was flourishing and, soon after its completion, the canal was beautiful to look at but completely useless.
