Summers in France don’t exactly conjure up visions of heaving overhead tubes. In fact, it’s a good time of year to plan a holiday somewhere in the Indian Ocean where you’ll find a surplus of those things with the added bonus of warm water. Still, we all are treated to the occasional off-season goodie from time to time and are grateful to have stuck around home when we do. For a handful of Basque country surfers, this is the case.
“Is summer becoming the new barrel season in France?” David Berthet asked when he sent The Inertia a short message and some video highlights of this past weekend in Hossegor. The question was tongue in cheek, of course, but a callback to just a month ago when La Gravière turned on for just a few brief hours for those lucky enough to be ready. Now we’re in August and Hossegor is seeing more of the conditions that are pretty rare for this time of year: overhead barrels and water warm enough for nothing but trunks. The folks who didn’t have other plans for this particular spot on the calendar are happy to be on the home front, no neoprene needed.
