Mimizan

10 March 2007

About 30 km. north of Biarritz, forests begin to appear along the Atlantic coast. Large sand dunes line the coast, followed by extensive coniferous forests as we move inland. The soil is predominantly sand laid down in a much earlier geological period. Mimizan is a city based on the exploitation of the forest with heavy dependence on pulp and paper production. Its large mill emits the “sweet smell of success” that pulp towns boast about, so for the tourist industry it has an area about 6 km away, on the coast known as Mimizan-Plage.
Governed by wind and sand, Mimizan is protected by large, more or less stable dunes that keep out the Atlantic wind and water. The wind plays constantly with sand, thus providing employment for the sand shovels; no snow – so why not shovel sand instead?

Perhaps you would like a house on the dunes, so you could shovel sand too.


Then you would have sunsets complete with helicopter flypasts.


Or maybe the wind and sea are more to your taste.
All this beauty carries with it the responsibility to care for the environment, especially the ocean.

The amount of plastics, foams and fish nets and lines drifting in the oceans is alarming. But typically the average person only sees it when it washes up on a beach. Sailors encounter it everywhere, and some of it will circle the globe because it lasts for years and years.

Mimizan, like many of the communities of the Atlantic coast north of Biarritz, has hundreds of kilometres of bicycle and walking paths, extensive beaches, surfing and wind-surfing opportunities galore, and lots of restaurants.