Ronce-Les-Bains

We made it! After the three-day delay at Gatwick, our flight to Bordeaux was reasonably straightforward. I say reasonably, as we had to be up at 3:00am, to check in by 4:20am, for a flight leaving at 6:20am. Somewhat bleary-eyed, we got down to the check-in for British Airways and found that (a) the self-check-ins weren’t working, and (b) the queue for manual check-in was already quite long, as BA have three flights leaving at the same time in the morning, and two (count’em!) check-in staff for everyone. Eventually a third turned up, and then a fourth, so the queue started to move.

The plane itself was less than half full. One of the many ways that airlines try to maximise income is by charging extra for the seats by the emergency exit, which have extra legroom…but on this flight, not enough people had fallen for this con. The cabin crew asked us if we would like to move, as they need these rows to be occupied by able-bodied people who can understand crew instructions in case of emergency, and we fit the bill. Yay! Legroom! It’s only a 1½ hour flight, and we arrived at about 9, to be greeted by Paul and Sacha.

Bordeaux airport is a couple of hours’ drive from Ronce-Les-Bains, so we took it easy on the drive, stopping for a coffee at a café in one small town, and passing some of the famous names of the Bordeaux region – Baron Rothschild, Margaux and Tour De By amongst them. The chateaux are all very impressive, with conical slate-roofed towers at the corners. We also stopped at Pauillac to go to the wine shop there, and look along the river bank. Unfortunately, like many places, it has been hit hard by the pandemic and many of the shop windows and other businesses are boarded up, or have “A Louer” signs, and it was all rather run down.

We crossed the Gironde estuary by ferry to reach Royan, where we lunched on savoury pancakes and looked around the new cathedral. It was bombed by Allied forces towards the end of WWII, when they were mistakenly told that the town contained only Germans. The new cathedral was built out of concrete in the Brutalist style as budgets were very tight. You can still see the original moulding of the wooden planks that the concrete was poured into. It also boasts the largest unsupported flat concrete ceiling in the…world? France? Europe? Well, somewhere. 

Concrete cathedral

The remainder of the drive was through small towns, many of them purpose-built to be holiday towns, as indeed is Ronce-Les-Bains. It was started in the mid-nineteenth century, and has been added to in phases since then up to the present day.

After getting ourselves settled, we had a light dinner out on the terrace, then went into town to explore the place, and, crucially, to book restaurants for the following night and for Quatorze Juillet, when everything is likely to be booked out.