One week trip to Leucate

As windsurfers living in the middle of Poland (7h ride to the seaside), preferring to windsurf in 15C+ and with wind 5bf+ we don't get to visit local spots a lot. That's why every year we try to make at least 3 week trip to some warm and windy spot. So far we managed to visit a few places in Greece (Kos, Crete, Vassiliki, Rhodes, Naxos), Garda in Italy and Leucate in France. All our trips were planned in advanced so there was always no telling if there will be wind (probably because of our "luck" it was unwindy more times than it should).

This time we decided to do it a little bit differently. As there was a nice, 7 day forecast for Leucate we booked our accommodation in Mer Sables Soleil just 3 days before our leave. Because we have more than 2300km to Leucate a lot of our friends said that this is a crazy idea. On the other hand (as my windsurfing friend pointed out) the whole idea of windsurfing in Poland is kind of crazy (high equipment prices, uncertain conditions, etc.).

Leucate is one of the places that we already visited more than once in our windsurfing life. It's great for spending time with your family, doing some sightseeing, riding a bike and with some luck windsurfing.

Usually our road to France is quite pleasurable (there's highway practically from our house to Mer Sable Soleil). Unfortunately this time a part of a highway in Germany was closed because of a traffic accident what made our trip a few hours longer. We left at 7:00 and despite difficulties on the road arrived around 13:00 next day so there was still some time to make use of the first day of the one week forecast (despite 10C and rain).

Every next day was only better (day after our arrival temperature went up to 17-22C). Although Leucate doesn't offer "dream" windsurfing conditions because of an extremely strong (very often 35-50knts) and insanely gusty wind there are so many various windsurfing spots that you can always find something for yourself no matter the conditions. Though having small sails (3.7, or even 3.2) and a small board really helps. Unfortunately out smallest sail is 3.9...

Bottom line... We windsurfed for 7 days, every day for the average time of 4 hours. There was no time (or energy) for anything else, but as windsurfing was why we were there it did not bother us. One tricky thing was that it took as a lot of time to get used to sailing overpowered, so progressing our windsurfing skills was extremely hard. On the other hand Magda managed to land quite a lot air jibes (she landed her first one on the last windsurfing day last year).