So after surviving the bull headbutting experience, we had to wonder what else these Frenchies had in store for us. Naked French rowers...enormous burning sand dunes......?? Well, yes actually!

One night we went to a pool party at Lacanau, a surprise birthday party for the wife of one of Damien's rowing friends. And it was all very lovely, a beautiful house in the woods, lots of tasty food and drink, cool music and a few games of boules to keep people entertained. But then, as the night wore on and the drinks flowed more freely, the entertainment really started to begin! The guys, these elite French rowers including world championship medallists, pretty much got naked. Of couse Ange and I were most distressed by this, and definately did not watch as they danced around the pool and built naked human pool pyramids and the like!

And then came the burning sand. Elodie took us to the biggest sand dune in Europe, the Dune of Pyla, which is 3km long and 117m high. Kind of Sahara desert like, but wedged between the ocean and the forest. And so we climbed it, and it is stunning....but it was 39 degrees that day and the sand was soooo hot it literally burnt our feet! We had to do these giant, slow mo running steps on the way down, interspersed with butts-on-towels-feet-in-air to have a break. And then climbing back up was agony! Sinking ankle deep into burning sand, it took us an age. We kind of had to shuffle up centimetres at a time, both feet on our towels. Have never felt sand so hot. The icecream at the bottom was definately deserved :-)

Not content with our sand dune work out, Ange and I then thought we'd better tune up our rowing muscles and we went out in a double skull on the Bordeaux Lake, where Damien trains. Having not rowed the small, unstable river boats for a number of years, we were happy to stay afloat and even managed to row around 3km! Then we checked out the clubrooms, and saw this awesome indoor training rowing pool thing - check out the pics, anyone ever seen anything like this before?

Whilst in Bordeaux we also went horseriding, checked out the famous wine regions of St. Emilion and the Medoc, and soaked up some rays at Soulac sur mer, a cute little summer beachy town.

Overall it was a brilliant trip. Thanks Damien and Elodie, you looked after us superbly and we had an awesome time xx