Biarritz and Anglet: Where French Surfing Began

Required Activities

• Take a lesson on the long, slow wave of the Côte des Basques, the beach where Peter Viertel left his board behind after filming The Sun Also Rises — and check the cord round your ankle, because the leash was worked out here by Georges Hennebutte, one of the young men who learned on this beach alongside the founder of France's first surf shop and its first surf school

• Walk the run of beaches at Anglet from the Chambre d'Amour to the Plage des Cavaliers and work out why the surf changes so fast along it: this is the last kilometre of nearly 200 km of straight Landes sand, and the groynes cut it into separate banks — pick the bank that is breaking cleanest and surf that one

• Go into the Cité de l'Océan opposite the Ilbarritz beach, Steven Holl's building shaped as a double wave, and work through its interactive rooms — the polar base, the ocean's moods, the Seaborg machine — then ride the virtual surf simulator before you get in the water for real

• Walk out to the Rocher de la Vierge on the iron footbridge built in 1886-87 by the Schryver works of northern France — it is commonly credited to Eiffel and it was not his — and go through the 75 m tunnel Napoleon III had cut through the Atalaye rock in 1864 on the way

• Find the cast-iron Virgin on top of the rock, bought from the Ducel foundry at the Franco-Spanish exhibition in Bayonne and blessed on 11 June 1865 — she was put there for the Biarritz whalers caught out in the storm of 1864, who said they got home by following a light