As with all great adventures this one started on a whim. An email popped up in my inbox one day with an invitation to cycle and surf my way from Bordeaux to Bilbao with a bunch of strangers. Could I surf? No. Was my cycle fitness in top form? No; I live in East London and rarely encounter a hill. I was thoroughly unprepared, but thought hell, I’ll give it a crack. Before I knew it, my bags were packed and I was ready to go.
Good vibes
Our starting point was Lacanau, a sleepy, pine-sprinkled surf spot an hour or so from Bordeaux. Piling out of the car from the airport, me and the other girls on my flight found our campsite ready and waiting for us: tents furnished with camp beds and duvets, snacks and drinks under a gazebo and a bunch of friendly faces to start getting to know. After chatting a while, talk turned to how the surf was looking for the evening. The consensus was good and everyone scrambled to get into wetsuits, find their boards and get walking to the beach. I’d heard a lot about this stretch of coastline from picking up surf mags when I was younger (still trying to be cool) and from friends, but I’d never seen it myself.
We stepped off the boardwalk and glanced up and down the golden coastline made up by hundreds of kilometres of sandy beaches with unbroken waves rolling straight in off the Atlantic. Over the next four days we would cycle between 50 and 125 km, catching — or in my case trying to catch — waves on basically the same stretch of beach. My brain hurt a bit thinking about that, so I stopped thinking, strapped on my leash and jumped in the water for my first lesson. It wasn’t a total disaster. Our instructor, Tim, was super patient with the newbies among us, offering words of encouragement while gently pushing our boards at the opportune moment. First surf done, we headed back to camp for food and stayed up talking, eating and drinking until our eyelids grew heavy and our sandalled feet became cold.
The next morning, movement in camp started as the sun came up. Bleary eyed, we threw on our wetsuits and headed back down to the beach. Waves were caught, breakfast was eaten, packed lunches were assembled and wetsuits were exchanged for lycra. Max and Will, who first forged and rode the route we were following, were our guides for the trip. At 125km — thanks to a couple of detours — our first day was the longest, taking us from Lacanau down to Biscarosse-Plage along the quiet, unpopulated cycle paths skirting the edges of the small towns we passed through. Until we reached the Spanish border the riding continued like this: easy, plenty of chat and bookended with surfing and yoga on the beach, when the tide permitted. A short cycle to Mimizan on the third day gave way to a particularly perfect evening of golden light and big waves, enjoyed by the more experienced surfers as the rest of us cartwheeled, read and played with cameras on the sand.
As we closed in on the border, mountains appeared on the horizon, reminding us that the ride would not continue to be so kind to us.
There were grimaces and ripples of excitement as the anticipation of long ascents and descents grew stronger. Let there be no bones about it, the hills were tough, even for the fittest members of the group, but they were peppered with beautiful Spanish villages and towns and the descents, well, they were epic. Lewis, our trusty lensman for the trip, remarked at the end of a particularly harsh, rain-scattered day that he had never realised how fast people could ride bikes until he’d followed us in the car. Of those of us who kept our Strava apps running constantly, a couple clocked over 40 mph at multiple points along the way.
Our day-to-day became a blur of cycling, waves, sleeping and salami sandwiches, with memories scattered incoherently among the blurring landscape. The driving rain of the morning of the second day; the time when, deep in a pine forest, Will’s t-shirt fell from being stuffed into his shorts and snapped his derailleur leaving him to be rescued; the morning where the guys had stayed out in Hossegor, locked their bikes and then lost the keys; the evening island exploring in Leiketio and watching the sun go down over the bay in Seignosse.
My clearest memory is of the final push into Bilbao, Will back in the pack, crew reunited. The ascent was punishing — no sooner had we started climbing than we were met with a sign helpfully informing us that the hill we were wrestling with was a 10% gradient. A 10% gradient isn’t huge, I’ll admit, but after seven days in the saddle it seemed absolutely brutal. Welcome to Bilbao, the sign read, as if laughing at our expense. But we made it. A consortium of excellent people, who decided to follow in the tyretracks of two lads from Newquay who had dreamt up a cycle from Bordeaux to Bilbao.
Like I said, all great adventures start on a whim, and boy, am I glad I got swept along by this one.
For more information on the Ticket to Ride ‘Cycle Surfaris’, click here.