Biganos and back

Biganos is to the south-west of Bordeaux on the edge of the Bay of Arcachon. It’s on the road to San Sebastien just over the border in northern Spain and during the summer holiday season the road is packed with traffic heading to the north of Spain and beyond. Although still busy, there was far less on it at this time of the year, though.

Nevertheless it was a really beautiful spring day, except for the chill in the wind that’s taking a while to shake off this year, and the day had a holiday feel to it with quite a few vehicles heading south from Belgium and Switzerland. But not, so far, from Holland.

I always say that you can tell when spring has arrived by the ‘grues’ (cranes) heading north from wintering in southern Spain and North Africa and the Dutch heading south after wintering in Holland, but so far they’re notable by their absence. But not for much longer I’ll wager 😉

When I arrived at the huge, sprawling commercial area in Biganos in which the Leroy Merlin store is located it had a surreal look to it. Apart from Leroy Merlin and a few small eateries, everywhere else was closed, so there were hectare on hectare of empty car parks bordered by hundreds of attractively designed, modern, low-rise stores of all types and of every colour you can think of. The French do these places so well, but not surprisingly given the weather in this part of the country.

As usual, I found the Leroy Merlin store very easily using Waze on my mobile phone and parked in a bay in its pick-up area. After queuing to register my arrival I went outside to wait for my tiles to be delivered. Maybe the weather had brought people out, but the car park was very busy and I took the following photo while I was waiting.

My six cartons arrived on a pallet on a small forklift and the young driver gave me a hand to lift them into the back of my car. The last one obviously contained some loose pieces so he said that if I wanted I could keep the pack, in case any of the broken tiles could be used for cut pieces, and he’d get me a replacement, which he did. I then left for home and left off checking until I got the packs unloaded and placed safely on the floor in bedroom three.

The next shot shows that the damaged carton contained 5 broken and 2 undamaged tiles, so a win for me as each tile costs just over 3€.

Here’s a shot of a carton that the tiles come in.

Just before leaving for Biganos a delivery from Leroy Merlin that I’d been waiting for arrived in a white van. I’ve not heard of Sunday deliveries before but Leroy Merlin uses a delivery service called Colisweb that delivers within 24 hours seven days a week using independent delivery agents. I think it’s great and the two items in the delivery that were out of stock and unavailable for pick-up next week with several other items I’ve ordered arrived next-day, on time and with no hassle, so no complaints from me.

You might be wondering why it was so important for me to go to Biganos today. The reason was that Biganos was the closest store to Fleurac that still had stocks of the tile I wanted with the wave motif. Others said that more would be available but on no specific date and one Leroy Merlin store said that the item was no longer available. As another supplier had told me the same thing, I couldn’t take the risk of placing an order, waiting for delivery and then being told that the product had been dropped, so I thought it best to seize the opportunity while I could.

The other reason for going today was that Didier told me last week that men would be along tomorrow to fit the shutters and if I could, I really wanted to be here while they were doing it. And now after clearing my decks today, I will be 🙂