The mercury's rising.  41° set for tomorrow.

We've fallen into a gentle routine and late summer somnolence.

Yes the weird wailing cat wakes us up each morning but I don't want a lie in.  We crash into bed at 10 pm and the next morning isn't wasted.

Les Landes has to convince me each time I come here.  I arrive in its strange flat lands and feel cross about everything.

I remember being 20, scared of being in the suicide seat Of Chris Green's VW after a year of riding the metro in Paris.  Normandie, Britanny, La Rochelle, both sides of La Gironde and the long, straight, flat stretch of forest and coast down to Biaritz.  The sky was a heavy grey above the endless pine forest, the campsites were full of Germans and Dutch and cost a fortune.  I just wanted to get the Pyrennees out of the way (the vertiginous bends with C.G at the wheel) and arrive in the comfort zone of the Mediterranean.

I play hard to get with Les Landes but am seduced after a night and a day.

After a night and a day I see things differently and know that the magic is at work.  I fall in love and want to make this place its very own flag.  It would be a tricolore; Green, white and blue.

I've always loved the ocean, the dunes are always hard work but I get to love the interminable forest too and, when we take the long slope back across the last dune, I have to turn round to see what I'm leaving behind.