Hossegor, France. Right there in the kink of the Bay of Biscay where an undersea canyon serves up the sorta milkshakes that make a surfer boy, or gal, want to stay there forever.
Recommended By...
Here’s the long-term plan. An apartment in Sydney for the months, December through May and for the remainder of the year I’ll be in a house designed in the Basco-landaise style, parked just behind the sand dunes at either Les Culs Nuls, Les Estagnots or Les Bourdaines.
Hossegor, France.
Right there in the kink of the Bay of Biscay where an undersea canyon serves up the sorta milkshakes that make a surfer boy, or gal, want to stay there forever.
All beachbreaks. A couple of hundred clicks of sand all the way to Arcachon in the north.
The quality of the banks gets patchy the further up the coast you go, and you ain’t getting none of that canyon juice, but you can find a little isolation, which is necessary sometimes.
If you visit Hossegor, and this I suggest you do, if only to feel the ghosts of Maurice Cole and Tom Curren who showed how the joint should be ridden in the nineteen-eighties, I’d suggest booking your lodging at Surflodge Seignosse, a short bicycle ride out of town.
This Landaise-style house is camped behind the sand at Les Bourdaines, three hundred metres from door to drink, and is owned by an old pal of BeachGrit’s, the German surfer Tom K.
Some years ago now, Thomas was the German translator of the pan-European surfing magazine, Surf Europe, which I was the launch editor of. I enjoyed his company very much and was thrilled, recently, when I saw that he’d bought a vacation house and had spent a year doing the joint up.
More than a superficial renovation, Surflodge Seignosse breathes summer: the late dinners, music, pretty lights strung up among the pine trees, fresh fish broiled on the outdoor grill.
For those who want to challenge ‘emselves in the autumn swells of September and October, you’ll kick the fireplace in the lounge room to life.
“When I stepped out of my vacation home for the first time, barefoot, board under one arm, I realised what a treasure I had found in this house,” says Tom. “Living the New York hustle for over a decade, I found this perfect moment of bliss knowing the waves are literally at my door step. Surf Lodge Seignosse is my attempt at sharing this very moment.”
Life sometimes can be transformed.