0730 wake-up call. We're trying to wake up earlier as we go further south - this becomes absolutely essential when you want to beat peak sun. (Ideally, we'd be waking up before 0600. That hasn't really happened yet; the closest we've come is the first day out of Copenhagen, when we were freezing and massively jet-lagged and generally confused about time.) We grab breakfast in the local pâtisserie, then head out through more intensively logged forest on our way to Dax.
The most striking thing is the extent to which logging operations have changed the landscape here. At some point, this would all have been forest; now, some parts remain as fields with lone trees sparsely dotted about the landscape, whereas other parts have young trees planted in perfect rows. We see logging roads and their piles of freshly-cut shipping-ready logs at regular intervals. At one point, we pass an enormous logging terminus of sorts - there are logs as far as we can see, all constantly being watered to prevent the whole mess from going up in flames in this heat. Other than that, the ride is uneventful - although we are getting ever closer to the Pyrénées, as evidenced by the increasingly hilly terrain. (Bear in mind that, by the standards of our route so far, even a modest hill counts for something.)
We end the day early in Dax, allowing ourselves time to rest - given that we still have until 7.4 to make it to Pamplona, we might as well take an extra day here! Some of the signs into towns advertise this as Dax-les-Thermes; apparently they have a number of hot springs here, giving us something to do with all this time...also, we find another four-star campsite to stay at. This one doesn't have a waterpark, but it does come equipped with an outdoor pool, electricity, toilet paper in the stalls, its own bakery and food market...
Which brings me to the next point: as we've said before, Europe doesn't really get camping. Since every last square metre of land is occupied by something manmade, their idea of "nature" is a patch of grass with a couple of trees overhead. North Americans have the luxury of living in large expanses of land, so that we can afford to section off enormous parts of it as provincial/state or national parks. In Europe, on the other hand, civilization took hold long before it became fashionable to do so; for this reason, most European cities have significantly more green space (large gardens being a symbol of opulence and prosperity) but the countryside is tessellated with agricultural fields and small towns and ancient Roman ruins and...well, you get the point. So, Europe: "camping" beside a waterpark or pool is NOT camping. Camping in an RV or temporary home installment or out of your car is NOT camping. (It is kinda fun, though - when showers and toilet paper are anything but guaranteed, it's hard to pass these up!)
Alright, that's enough ranting about camping and nature and blah blah blah for now. I'll close with a strange observation: there are a lot of abandoned hotels in Dax. Although the recession hasn't devastated everything so much as the worst reports would have you believe, there is clear evidence of its effect everywhere. Nowhere is this effect more apparent than in small towns; although there has always (well, for this last century, at least) been an exodus of rural farmers to the larger cities, this seems to be accelerating now. Several of these hotels definitely look recently closed...spooky.
Well, we rest up tomorrow before the leg into Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, from where we will launch our heroic efforts to conquer the Camino de Santiago. According to the elevation profiles in our map, it promises to be arduous in a very mountainous way...