France

well, its been a while, I guess I've been a little busy.... anyways better late than never! September was a fantastic month with some good waves at home to start and finishing off in the South of France! We sailed across the English Channel with LD Lines from Portsmouth to Le Havre. We arrived in La Havre around 8am and set off on our drive down to the south with was to take 7 1/2 hours which was quick! The first night we decided to stay in a pine forest just outside Hossegor, cooked some food and got an early night ready to get in the water the next morning. We had travelled down to get some surfing done and to watch the WCT event - The Quiksilver pro France which is pretty much what we did, we headed over to Cote de Basque for a nice chilled out session and to fine some more "longboard friendly" waves. We had a couple or really fun sessions there over the next couple of days. I had the opportunity to surf most or the spots over the next week including Capreton, Hossegor, Ondres, Cote de Basque and best of all Mundaka in Spain. One of the mornings, the surf got up and we made the call to head down to Spain and check out mundaka as the Quik pro had been called off until lunchtime and what a call it was (thanks Rico) We arrived to find some, although not classic mundaka, really fun chest to just overhead waves running down the sandbar. We watched it for some time and checked out the rips and after watching some of the locals getting in and out, decided to give it a go, and what a session in was, one of the best of the holiday!! Such an awesome location with the old church over looking the break with the small village next to it! The next couple of days got really big with 8-10' barrels unloading onto the sandbars at hossegor, this was the time to watch the pro's compete for the title! We had an amazing couple of days watching Slater, Dane, Mick and Taj plus the other CT crew pulling to some of the biggest tubes I've ever seen down there... and making them!! Watching is all well and good but at some point, you just need to get in so instead of risking almost certain death paddling out at hossegor, we drove back down to Cote de Basque down the coast which was going off with some really nice 4-6' surf and a really hollow inside section. We had a couple of hours surf here and then headed back over to watch more of the Quik pro. On our last day in the South, they held the final heats of the Quik pro, big clean perfect surf, full sun and 2 of the best surfers on the planet out in the water, there is no better show on earth! Mick Fanning eventually came out on top with slightly better wave selection and walked away the 2010 Quiksilver Pro Champion, now with the contest over, its always a great vibe out around the town of Hossegor in the evening with all the pro's kicking back and relaxing, we were luck enough to meet Mick Fanning later on in Cafe de Paris along with Taj and Jordy Smith!! All that was left was for the long drive home, we checked a couple of spots at Il de Oleron but nothing really looked worth getting wet for so we made the decision to carry on heading North to La Rochelle which I think is a beautiful place with a great outdoor cafe lifestyle, nice boats and an even better Marina. we went for a drink in one of the bars and a wander around the town before crashing out in the back of the van for the night on the marina. Next morning we were left was to complete our drive back to out ferry home to England after an amazing break. I would love to say it all went smoothly but that would be incorrect.... there were a few minor issues while in France which included half destroying a petrol station, speeding tickets, parking tickets, having to hide from French police and causing chaos in a French McDonalds and so on but I won't go into that on here... Next stop... Hawaii!!