Jeannine & Roger's French Cheese Odyssey

Vieux Boucau - 11th June

This is our last market-day by the coast so we went to the three Anglet markets with the intention of buying something fishy for dinner. The first market was a flea market of the classy antique kind, so it didn’t produced anything for tea.

At the second market we spent ages translating the fish names and then determining how to cook it before settling on a fish similar to Whiting. Unfortunately we don’t have the ingredients in our travelling pantry to cook stuffed squid or anything fancy. I would love to have bought some scallops and oysters but they convert back to a ridiculous amount in NZ dollars. A couple standing beside us bought two kilos of sardines and then went off and did their other shopping while waiting for them to be filleted. We also bought duck for another day, not something you can get at a reasonable price in NZ.

At the third market we sussed out the busiest vegetable shop, and yes shock horror, I bought one green, one red and one yellow vegetable. Most people bring large supermarket bags to take home their fruit and vegetables, we had a small bag to hold our traffic light coloured meagre purchase of 2€.

After lunch and our midday siesta we went north to discover a few more towns. There are lots of accessible beaches along the coast, although quite windy being the west coast. To draw the punters into the area, resorts and campgrounds have been established along the coast and around lakes. Some of the lakes look natural others look like they have been formed by sand dune build up or purposely closed in inlets as the lake level is tidal.

Below are some examples:

• Ondres: actually we didn’t go to the beach there; instead we played a game of mini golf. Roger likes to think he beat me by fair play, big deal I get to wash the dishes another night, nothing has changed there. Napoleon was wondering why you would have rugby posts on a golf course

• Capbreton: No picture of the beach but the surf shop, where we did a geocache, was doing a roaring trade in boogie board sales. It must be the alluring sign that brings them in

• Seignosse: The photo below was taken overlooking the lake. Sandy beaches have been made and all the beachside attractions had been added to give it a seaside feel, but with the safety of being a lake

• Soustons: This lake was between Seignosse and Soustons and was similar looking to peat lakes in the Waikato, surrounded by bush and lots of Maimais - flash, large ones at that

• Vieux Boucau: There is a lake formed by the sea and a coastal beach. There are massive accommodation complexes, malls and restaurants to cater for the holiday makers. Busloads of people were being dropped off or taken away as we arrived. Definitely a surfer’s beach based on the strong wind blowing and the noise of the surf breaking. The header photo and the one below show the two different types of accommodation, and the lake and ocean beach

Cheese Experience No.51 - Soft white cheese salad; To accompany our fish we had a salad with soft white goats cheese, even though the experts tell you that you shouldn’t eat cheese and fish together. Note to self, don’t buy French lettuce, it isn’t washed and was full of grit, slugs and slug excrement; even a thorough washing didn’t remove it all.