The very pretty French town of Hossegor, four hours south-west of Paname by train or fifteen hours in a car squatting in July traffic, is often on my mind, its combo of shark-free, world-class beachbreaks and beach lifestyle unequalled in the world.
As I’ve often written, but repeat here for anyone new, for a couple of years at the turn of the century I lived in a beach house built into the sand dunes of La Graviere, the weeks passing in a kaleidoscope of pretty good, though rarely epic, waves, despite the rep, and excellent, and often epic, Dutch and Wales-sourced ecstasy.
Coulda bought the house back then for two hundred and fifty gees. Didn’t. Split to Bondi, doomed to bad waves forever more although did buy in to the insane property market there so not all bad etc.
Hossegor locals, however, are incensed that the joint has become flooded by bourgeois beginner surfers from Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and so on, crowding the beaches, who can forget the town teetering on the brink of war two months ago after a wild male-on-female clash at a German surfing contest there, and pushing property prices into the stratosphere.
Left-leaning newspaper Le Monde has reported a “new wave” of bourgeois families “in BMWs and Teslas” treating a Hossegor summer vacay in the same way as a winter trip to the Alps.
Christophe Guibert, a sociologist and tourism expert at the University of Angers, told the newspaper: “Twenty years ago, councils saw surfers as hippies on the margins of society. Today, tourist professionals love these rather bourgeois customers who come for a week, rent houses, pay for lessons and buy materiel.”
In Hossegor, houses have surged 50% in five years, while hotel bookings in the are are up twenty percent. Budget hostels once favoured by 20th-century surfers are being transformed into upscale hotels charging premium rates.
I often scroll through the listings on Leboncoin.fr or La Figaro, seeing what I can get around Les Estagnots, a little north of town and where all the sexy people live. Ain’t a damn thing under a million American dollars.
Pretty epic and perennial left just out front.
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