Mimizan: The Pilgrims' Porch, the Courant and the Atlantic Beach

Required Activities

• Stand in the porch and read it from the bottom up: the carved portal of about 1220 that once opened into the nave, then the 26 m² of Passion scenes painted above it in the later 15th century, then the rib vault whose ribs land on carved corbels — and find the stair turret in the north-west corner that leads to the room hidden between that vault and the roof

• Walk the shore of the Lac d'Aureilhan to the outflow where the courant starts, and find the stretch of bank where Lady Grosvenor pitched the first tents in August 1912 and taught Mimizan to go camping — with the château Woolsack, where Coco Chanel spent her summers through the 1920s, standing back in the pines

• Walk out along the courant's last meander past the salt meadow to the mouth, and see what holds the river in place: two dykes thrown up between 1871 and 1873 to stop it wandering south — then cross to the far bank and walk one named beach on each side, plage des Ailes to the north, plage des Mouettes to the south

• Drive or ride out to one of the sauveté pyramids — Vigon or Cantegrouilles are the best kept — tall garluche spikes of four metres and more, set 1,800 m apart with a cross on top so they could be seen across open heath: inside that ring no lord could arrest a man or seize his goods