Within an instant, the two surfers had passed by and were again obstructed by the vegetated banks, as they rolled on upriver for another several hundred yards. As I helped Wizard clamber up the bank, he seemed undettered by his abscence on the wave, and we were both stoked with excitement for another attempt at this phenomenal wave the next morning. We were indebted to Fabrice for bringing us down here from the closed community of St Pardon to witness the variability of the Mascaret. We said our au revoirs, and, as the red glow of the dyeing sun sunk over the western horizon, we headed back along the windy country lanes for another evening of feasting at Chez Ani's.

Ten hours later we were once again racing down the country lanes in the direction of the Garonne river. This time under our own steam, with Fabrice's maps and a brief reminder from Bruno embedded in my memory. Silver, looking particularly worse for wear, was at the helm. Sunlight was only just starting to penetrate the dense fog that weaved through the treelined vineyards. It had been Pierre's party at Ani's the previous night. We had again eaten copious amounts of meat, supped wine, talked bores, and ended up in front of the widescreen watching Lilles in the Champions League, as I conversed further with Coco. Lack of sleep had finally overcome us, we had failed to wake in time for the St Pardon dawn patrol, and so, resorted to racing straight on to Spot X where we hoped to meet up with Bruno and, distance record holder, Pascal.

The fog hung densely over the river, as we stood shivering in apprehension of the encroaching wave. Finally, I saw the source of the previous nights excitement, as, through the grayness, a small undular swell, injected with energy from the following wave, walled up to a solid five feet and barelled with unforgetable hollowness out from the bank. All I could do was let out a unpenetrable hoot, as I turned, clung to my rails, and was scopped up by the frothing soup in midstream. Pascal had taken the shoulder drop, but was soon intervened by Silver who had stealthily snuck to the outside, while Wizard and I played safe ensuring we conquered this river's Mascaret. Bruno faced the full force of the wave as he was spun out on the inside towards the bank, and the rest of us rode it until it died out a quarter of a mile upstream, narrowly avoiding some unwanted debris.

Back in St Pardon, the fog lifted, revealing a glorious autumnal day, as hot as any we had experienced all summer in England. Unfortunately, Silver had been overcome by food poisoning and spent the day in the tent. Wizard and I meanwhile leisurely feasted on giant pain au chocolat as we relaxed by the banks of the Dordogne. Entertainment came with a quick repair job on Wizard's brand new gas cooker, which had been inadvertently run over by Pascal on departing Spot X! Then, Pierre pointed out a rather unusual looking object protruding from the gradually falling river by the jetty. It was the aerial of a car which had been abandoned that morning by joyriders before the tide came in. The gendarme arrived several times with additional reinforcements to survey the car, and once completely exposed, it took the best part of the afternoon for them to remove it.

As we said our farewells to Pierre, who was returning to his hometown of Nantes, we were invited to join the boat captain, Marco, and his missus, the delectable Florence, on an afternoon boatride down the Dordogne, to the port of Ambes just south of the Gironde estuary. A gesture we could simply not refuse. As I paraded around the boat filming every piece of apparel, Wizard was quickly put to work assisting Marco in hoisting up the anchor. The Dordogne really is majestic as it gradually widens out towards the estuary on its slowly meandering course. The only interuption to the tree lined banks is the occasional abandoned shack at the perimeter, or a grand mansion nestled back far enough to avoid flooding. We observed numerous points of slack water where a potential Mascaret may break over shallow sandbanks, but at well over a quarter of a mile wide, the tides energy would be widely dispersed, and it made sense that most Mascaret riders had stuck it out at St Pardon rather than looking further afield. Our voyage took us under the massive freeway bridge that traverses the river. The same bridge we had travelled over three days earlier, as we had caught our first glimpse of the river. Reminiscing, I couldn't believe what we had acheived in such a short space of time. The high water mark on the huge stanchions was over twenty foot above the river and I wondered at wether extreme tides would breach way over the banks. Parked up at Ambes, supping herbal tea, we could make out in the distance the small river port of Bourg, which overlooks the confluence of the two rivers, at the point the incoming tide is separated into two Mascarets following their own unique courses. I was busy filming the raised anchor from the free floating jetty, that rises up and down on large steel girders, when I was disturbed by an inocuous grinding that suddenly became quite intense. It was the incoming tide, and, with a dramatic onrush of water, the river had suddenly changed it's direction, and was flowing upstream from whence we had come. The eagle-eyed Wizard pointed out several small undular swells half a mile away against the opposite bank. It was a thrill to see the reversal of the flow, and we felt privileged to have experienced something that very few Mascaret surfers had probably ever witnessed. But then our thoughts turned to a more pressing concern, as we observed Marco and Florence leisurely sprawled out on the foredeck soaking up the early evening sun.