8th June - Kitesurfing at La Grande Cote

A bit of a late start, the crows and ripped into my rubbish sacks and it rained - again! This is my office where I struggled to set up this blog. All tidy so I set off to the beach at 17:00 keen to avoid the busiest times.

Here is the Char Voile Ecole, they come out at low tide when there are miles of exposed sand for them to sail on. These are buggies with sails as opposed to buggies with kites.

Wind blowing 17kts, my confidence was in my boots and I was carrying injuries, so I sat in the van for an hour until someone I had spoken to before turned up and encouraged me, so I went for it. Rigged/launched successfully, good water start practice and came off the water with someone to land the kite. Derigged and had everything stowed in the same time as the other guys, so things are looking up at last.

I take a short bike ride to Fromentine round the coast and under the bridge to Noirmoutier. I meet the guys at the sailing school who say the instructors are out in the bay. Scanning the horizon I can just make out two kites in the air. Watching carefully one goes down and stays down, is this an emergency, should it be reported? The sailing school were unperturbed, 'they'll be back'. I go into the centre for a coffee. When I get back I make a point of ringing both schools but only get answer phones, not a lot of good for me with my level of French. I wait watching the guys practicing sailing foils in front of the school. As I watch a rib comes in with six kitesurfers on board with an instructor. So this is the practice, out on the rib to find shallow water, off the beach or off the boat. I meet Francoir a charming instructor, yes he had a space for me tomorrow at 17:00.

In a good frame of mind headed into Fromentene for dinner. Came across a lively 'pub' playing heavy metal and rock with locals dropping in all the time, so stayed until 00:40.