CTC Cambridge

Saturday 6 June 2026 

Another cool start and another sequence of long straight roads through the Landes pine forests saw us to breakfast in Léon @ 40km. We are nearing the Basque Country and one particular food item, I could not resist.

There's no way to sugar-coat it, but the "hinge" between France and Spain is built-up and busy around the Biarritz/Bayonne conurbations and along the coast. There is some respite with sporadic nice cycle paths, but otherwise we were mixing it with motor traffic for the rest of the day. We stopped in Bayonne for an excellent lunch at an unassuming-looking café whose owner, it turned out, had also cycled to Santiago de Compostela.

Then on over the border (a bridge without checkpoints, which are along the road a little further for motor vehicles only) and onto the Hotel Alcazar in Irûn, which was very bike friendly and very Basque.