Day 9

Today has been such a nice day. After visiting the incredible Dune du Pilat yesterday, we decided to stay in a nearby town called Cazaux. For the first time this trip we paid to stay somewhere overnight - a little aire called aire du lac. It was €12 to stay but definitely worth it. There were electric hookup points for each camper which meant that we didn't have to use the power invertor running off the leisure battery, clean drinking water and it provided a great parking space whilst we spent the day at the beach/lake.

The lake was absolutely huge, there were lots of boats and windsurfers and me and Tom went swimming too. We had a little fun with the gopro and took it in the water for the first time. Hopefully will have some cool underwater shots when we look at the footage later. 

We haven't done as much driving in the past couple of days which has been nice.  Yesterday we drove straight from St. Medard de Guizieres (the stop for our 7th night) to the Dune du Pilat. It cost €8 to park the camper there for 4 hours, or it was free for half an hour, but it would have been impossible to climb the dune in that short a time. 

The dune itself is the biggest in Europe, and luckily when we arrived the weather was slightly overcast, meaning that there were slightly less people. Don't get me wrong though, it was still pretty packed! Tom found the climb up the dune pretty easy, but my little non-skiers legs struggled with the incline...

The view from the top was awesome. On one side as far as you could see were pine trees, making it look like we were in the middle of the forest, and the other, the sea. Rather than stand in the midst of  all the people we decided to venture a little further across the dune. 

Tonight we are popping to the supermarket before heading a little way to Biarritz. After eating pretty unhealthily for a week, we seem to have finally settled into a rhythm of eating dinner at normal times and even incorporating fruit and veg into our diet! 

Cooking and cleaning etc, though shared with Tom is definitely making me more independent. I'm glad I have basic culinary skills, or we would actually be living on sandwiches and the family pack of quavers we bought with us from home. Living away is making me feel a lot more prepared for the challenges uni may bring, and though I used to moan about my mum making me do things on my own, I'm really starting to appreciate it now. I'm able to stand on my own two feet, which is something a lot of people I know are not able to do.

Missing everyone a lot now. It's hard being away from people you spend so much time with! I'm really excited to tell everyone about everything when I'm back though, and I hope you're all having some adventures of your own back home.