Inspector Clouseau, Doping and Ian Thorpe...amongst others

Well, I 'turned the corner' of this belle pays in Biarritz, where I spent a lovely weekend, and am now positively tearing up the West Coast, and currently in Bordeaux.

I can't really be bothered to structure this entry too much...so it'll just be a few completely unrelated ramblings.

Firstly, the Aussies seem like a nice enough bunch, though I was horrified by the attitudes of a few Aussies I met towards Ian Thorpe and gay men in general. They seem to feel that they and their nation 'owns' Thorpe and his gold medals, and he only retired because he's a 'f#cking poof'. And this was all said without any hint of sarcasm and rather with genuine anger.

The Saturday night, after a foray to San Sebastian and the error of Tapas and Rosé for lunch (which though delicious do not fulfil a 'cyclist's' hunger and get one a horrible afternoon headache), I had to change room at the Biarritz hostel, and found myself sharing with an Inspector Clouseau lookalike. There's simply no way that tache could be genuine...

I then ripped up to Mimizan plage, buoyed by the fantastic news of the pigs' relegation to the Championship. Yesterday saw me visit La Dune du Pyla which, being serious for a minute, was seriously incredible. It's a 117m sand dune and the biggest in Europe. From the summit you have the Atlantic to one side, and France's largest forest to the other. Yesterday it was blowing a gale and raining so there was hardly anyone their, and both the conditions and the solitude made it all the more special.

Back to talking about ridiculous stuff, there was naturally no bus to get from the hostel (in a forest in the middle of sodding nowhere) to La Dune, so I took the 'executive' decision to hitch. In the rain. And in shorts. Needless to say it was pretty grimy, though I was very lucky with my first ride, and the second, with a learner driver (sorry mum, they didn't tell me til she'd dropped me off) passed without incident.

Finally, last night was spent in the cabin in the woods with a chap, allegedly 63, who turned out to be a cyclist who cycles 30,000km a year. Which makes him either a liar - realistically probably the most likely option - or a mentalist. Or he's dopé, which judging by his anti-Armstrong attitude he could never be...though he wouldn't be the first French hypocrite now would he...

Thanks, Ed