Down the coast to find some beach near Royan.

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Fortunately the forecast heavy rain did not materialise, where we were anyway. A bit in the night but once we were out and about the weather was pretty fair and a couple of times the sun was quite hot.
We left the lovely Ile de Re, over the impressive soaring bridge and bypassing La Rochelle we headed due south. We decided to check out Rochefort as not been there before but though there were lots of parking spaces, they were all already taken. After driving round rather aimlessly for a few minutes while we worked out where we should go we decided the best option was to leave.
Back to our southbound road but this time heading across the scenic Marais where we saw herons every 100 yards, we crossed La Seudre, a mighty stretch of water, to the Royan peninsula.
We took the coast road as the map showed it was scenic but unfortunately, though a nice enough run we couldn’t actually see the sea. This because there are massive sand dunes along this part of coast, the Cote Sauvage.
Finding a car park from which we could see a path to the top of the sand dunes we parked and went for a stroll to see the sea. A stroll is perhaps the wrong word, more like mountaineering to get to the top of that sand dune and over the top to the sea. Once we had set off we had to get there as there was a fascinating engine noise coming from the beach and we needed to identify it. Amazingly the engine was the sea itself. Never heard such a sound before. The waves were pounding so hard the noise reverberated across the miles of empty, pure soft sand beach. Quite astonishing.
We staggered up and over the sand dune back to the Tandy and had lunch to recover from an unexpectedly energetic walk. Then on to our campsite at St Georges de Didonne, just south of Royan. We stopped here in 2002 on our first motorhome trip when we were towing the Suzuki Jimny. A very big site, 4 star again, but a little tired in places, notably our sanitaires. The massive heated pool was lovely though and the washing machine 20 metres behind our pitch was quickly put to use.
Quick walk to the beach after dinner but a bit too chilly to sit out. Think our plan for a beach day tomorrow will be thwarted.

Campsite : Bois Soleil at St Georges de Didonne just south of Royan.

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