France Guide
The Pyrenees
The beaches
The ocean here is undeniably beautiful – if not especially clean ( 
www.surfrider.fr documents this), with beaches occasionally closed during spells of extreme contamination – and also treacherous, thus heavily lifeguard-patrolled (June– Sept). White breakers crash on sandy strands, where beautiful people bronze their limbs cheek by jowl with families and surf bums, against a backdrop of ocean-liner hotels, ornate churches, Gothic follies and modern apartment blocks. The beaches – served by local bus operator STAB's La Navette des Plages ten times daily during July and August – extend northwards from plage de la Milady through plage Marbella, Côte des Basques (with several surfing schools), plage du Port-Vieux, Grande Plage and plage Miramar to the Pointe St-Martin with its lighthouse. Most of the action takes place between the plage du Port-Vieux and the plage Miramar, overlooked by the huge Hôtel du Palais (formerly the Villa Eugénie), built by Napoléon III in the mid-nineteenth century for his wife, whom he met and courted in Biarritz.
Just beside the plage du Port-Vieux, the most sheltered and intimate of the beaches, a rocky promontory sticks out into the sea, ending in the Rocher de la Vierge, an offshore rock topped by a white statue of the Virgin, and linked to the mainland by an Eiffel-built iron catwalk. Around it are scattered other rocky islets where the swell heaves and combs.