Lacanau-Ocean continues to treat us. Great weather, good food, excellent vino.

I’m going to write this weeks blog as I go so you’ll just have to put up with the tenses changing!

Day 4 in Lacanau and the sun is still shining. While we’ve been here the waves have been a little on the big side. I’ve managed to paddle out the back (after a lot of effort, dunkings, swearing...) and catch a few waves. Sunday was very difficult, yesterday was OK and today was hard again, it’s Tuesday by the way. I don’t now how you measure a waves height but these are 1.8M apparently. I’m hoping the official measurement is from the top the the mean sea level and not the bottom of the wave. That would make sense for the waves I saw today, they were enormous, if not someone is lying. They were much bigger than 1.8M top to bottom, I should know as I’m taller than that and I fell of the top of one of them and it was a very long way down onto my knackers.

Helena’s been surfing too on her new board and very nice it is. We’re both sporting very slinky new wetsuits care of Decathlon, the fab French sports store. We even picked up a beach tent while we were there and I now have a degree in origami required to get it back in the bag.

When we’re not in the water we’ve done some cycling, some geocaching and some mooching.

Cali corner on the camp site has thinned out a little (you need to read last week’s blog). We had three Dutch lads, who hire a camper each year for their boys holiday, come over this morning and ask for the Tour du Vern. They were suitably impressed until we told them the price. Worth every penny I say. I can see them trying one out. The Merc they’ve had this year wont do over 100kmph and has a serious speed wobble. Showing them where the chairs stashed was enough to wow them. My mum really would have liked Vern. Having to turn her down every time she asked to borrow him would have been really painful so it’s probably better I bought him after she died. My Dad seems very envious, just a shame he’s too old to make the step up inside.

One more full day here and then we’re off further north. Better have a great surfing session. The waves are due to be a little smaller thank god, nothing like trying to cope with waves almost two stories high.

OK so now it’s Wednesday. We took a big decision today an opted not to leave tomorrow, it’s just too damn nice here. We’ll save La Rochelle and the surrounds for another trip. I always say leave something each holiday so you have an opportunity to return, we’re leaving La Rochelle and Brittany! So another 5 nights here it is then. Loads more punishing surfing, more forest cycle rides, more glasses of wine to the sound of the waves.

No surfing today but we did do a 20 mile bike ride to get one cache. The cycling was great, the bugs weren’t but as long as you kept moving they didn’t bother you. We treated ourselves at the halfway mark to a Demi (a 25cl beer), well OK we had two each, we’re on holiday after all. This afternoon we lounged by the pool.

As I think I’ve said before I’m reading a book called The 4-Hour Work Week (click on the link to the right and order your copy). I know I read really slowly, I think I mentioned it 6 weeks ago! Some of you really should question why you’re working every day, what you’re trying to achieve and what really would happen if you just ‘stepped off’ as I have done? What are you going to do when you retire and why can’t you do it now? Get the book, read it (some of it you can skip) and ask yourself a few questions. I’m really glad I stepped off. Stepping back on it going to be an issue although AO are making it really easy.

Only other news is that after seeing Dad on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at their house in the Dordogne, Dad’s been admitted to hospital suffering severe asthma attacks. Sounds like he’s going to be in a while.

Sunday and our last full day here. Yesterday we had an epic ride on the bikes through the forest to Carcans Plage and then Maubuisson. 22 miles and a lot of hills. It was great fun. We then topped that off with some surfing. Today will be surfing as the waves are bigger again and then some prep for our dash towards Calais tomorrow. We can then do a bit of booze and food shopping on Tuesday before catching the Eurostar home.

We’ve met some lovely people here. First Craig and Rhian and their three kids all here in their converted VW Transporter. Very nice it looked too, a fab conversion. Then on the other side was Dirk and Lorna and their three boys. Campervan veterans. Funny that both families were from Derby.

The next blog will be Week 10, a quarter of the way through my career break, well a quarter of the way through the current career break plan.