With the bike to Socoa

On the 29th of April, in the afternoon, we decided to have a ride with the bikes along the coast, from Saint Jean-de-Luz to Socoa and back. The day before we had seen this part of the coast from the seaside, as we were on a boat trip leading us to the Spanish border.

Great little town this Socoa, with its fort and mountains and  its surfing/sailing school…

Once again, like some days before in Biarritz with the wave surfers, I would have loved to have a go myself on these boards. And I thought, what a great childhood these children have… but then I remembered, that in the French Pays Basque it is well know for raining all the time! It certainly looks different under the rain there… and it’s perhaps not so much fun to ride the waves when the sea is grey and bad… although I always loved to swim in the sea under the rain…

Part of the fort… certainly not very accurate , like always… just an impression!

This place was in fact great to sketch, but it was late afternoon, I was tired. I had already done some sketches in the morning in the harbour of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and I couldn’t any more. It is always frustrating though to leave a place with the feeling that one should have done many more sketches, and one does not know when  if one will ever come back. But well… we had instead a fun bike ride on the jetty, with the sea on both sides of us, it was extremely exciting! And the ice cream in a cafe by the sea was just delicious.

Unfortunately on the way back I caught a little cold… must have driven too fast on my bike!!!

Sketching in Saint-Jean-de-Luz

After the lovely days spent in Biarritz, we headed to Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a little bit further down the coast, and quite close to Spain. A nice little town with a harbour full of character, quite a lot of motifs for me, but unfortunately I was a little bit tired of drawing these kind of motifs and I didn’t sketch as much there as the place deserved.

This was my very first sketch in the harbour. As Kevin -who had left me alone and gone exploring the town in search if some internet cafe- saw it, he asked:

“who is that guy?”

To tell the truth, that guy was a Japanese girl, who was sitting there with another Japanese girl, both having  their breakfast. And no, I didn’t try to sketch some Japanese girl, I just found the position nice, and a good element for the sketch. But I do wonder if that girl would somehow recognise herself if she one day finds this sketch on the net…

Complicated motifs in that town really… much stuff going on…. I did my best

At some point when I was drawing heard a young couple discussing not far from me. The guy said:

“When one sees St. Jean de Luz on a postcard, one thinks it is a beautiful Harbour. But in fact, it hasn’t got anything special!”

“Not, really no! But they always find a way to make look places attractive on postcards… a special point of view, a special light… but really, it is not nice here!” answered the wife.

I was shocked, asking myself what more these people wanted?  They must be really spoiled in life and live normally in a magical environment… well, their voices sounded very posh, this is already a sign. Anyway, I hated to hear them say that. I bet they wondered what I could find to sketch in that ugly harbour…

On the following sketch, in the lower right hand corner,  you can see the boat with which we had a trip to Spain. A nice two hours trip, as always I enjoyed very much to be at sea.. I love boats, any kind of boats, they make me feel extremely free…

Please don’t try to understand  the boat design, the sketch is totally wrong, half on purpose…

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