Spain Trip 3: Saint Jean de Luz

16th December 2023

We left Saint Emilion in the morning mist. A cold night and a bright morning gave some interesting photographic opportunities, but we needed to press on.

Arriving in Saint Jean de Luz around 2pm, we found the town to be very busy. We were lucky to find a space to park (thanks Jeeves). 

The town is situated on the Atlantic coast of France, near to the Spanish border. There is an apparently mild climate and there were palm trees along the sea front. Indeed we saw some people swimming in the sea wearing normal costumes (not wet-suits).

Being on the Atlantic, there are some good surfing waves and a good number of people were taking advantage of this with many types of water-based sporting activity.

The beach is protected by a man-made lagoon, which makes it attractive to holiday makers, but further out, the waves are more impressive.

Our meanderings initially took us to the small tower to the north end of the beach.

This gave us a nice view back south over the beach towards the old part of the town.

The town centre was dressed-up for Christmas.

…and many shop windows were at their best:

L’eglise Saint Jean Baptiste is an imposing building from the outside…

…and an impressively beautiful one from the inside.

Meandering on, we came across a busy square which was full of people enjoying life in a milder climate:

Visiting with a Motorhome

St Jean de Luz is a very busy town with narrow streets and limited parking, especially for motorhomes. There are many car parks , but also height barriers. Wise to identify your spot in advance. We chose to park on the sea-front at the most northerly end of the road. At busy times, the spaces would be all taken and I feel we were lucky. The one-way system can also be fun!

If you manage to find a parking spot, it will be “payant” and the prices vary according to season, however not too pricey according to the tariff. Again we were lucky as they had stopped charging for the winter, until the end of May.

We had booked onto a commercial camping car site, “Camping Larrouleta” about 4km from the town centre, which cost us 22€ (low season rate). Electric hook-up would have cost an additional 3.50€. An excellent site, with showers, a pool and children’s playground.