I recently received a very complimentary email from a surfer/entrepreneur who had just read The Silicon Lathe.  He appreciated the parallels I tried to draw between extreme sports and trying to succeed in the Silicon Valley.  He spoke extensively about how the book accurately depicts the cutthroat competition of the Silicon Valley, especially for a young, idealistic entrepreneur.  But I think I most appreciated his comments about my treatment of surfing: "This is one of the truest descriptions of surfing I've ever read.  I made my wife read it and now she gets it."

Actually, I think he's wrong,  what I wrote isn't most intriguing example of surfing I've ever read (or written), and I'm pretty sure that without actually surfing, his wife doesn't really get it, but I thought I'd post one of the surfing excerpts here (there are several in the book, most more uplifting):

From The Silicon Lathe:

Surfing is not what most people think it is.  Films and popular culture have presented it as either Beach Blanket Bingo-like parties on the beach with everyone sharing waves, surf odysseys where you meet friendly people around the world as you search for the perfect wave, or hard core life-threatening big wave surfing, where one mistake means certain death.
In reality, surfing is much less romantic. 

First and foremost, it is the hardest sport I’ve ever tried.  You’re skiing intermediate and advanced slopes after a week or two of trying.  You can be soaring a hang glider within a couple of months of your first run down a sand dune.  You can be paddling intermediate Class 3 whitewater after several days on a river.  But with surfing, after two or three years of practicing every day, you might be an intermediate level surfer. 


Part of this is strength, conditioning, teaching your body to do something unnatural, learning the timing of the breaking waves and understanding the differences between waves on a beach break, reef breaks, and points.  You also need to know about tide changes, rip tides, wind forecasts, storm and swell prediction, and even water pollution levels which rise on the season’s first big swell or first major rain, both of which wash decaying matter from the hillsides and beaches into the ocean. I’ve already mentioned sharks.  But more than that, it’s cutthroat competition.  There are tens of thousands of surfers and they all expect to catch every wave that rolls in. 


Most surf spots have locals.  These are the surfers who surf there every day.  Take a wave that ‘belonged’ to a local, and you will be physically attacked by his friends when you get out of the water.  Your car will be vandalized; your girlfriend threatened.


Even when you’re a local, there are often so many people in the water that you’ll be lucky to get more than five waves in an hour.  With fifty-degree water and wind, even with your wetsuit, you get out of the water so cold that you can’t put your fingers together.  You might even have to ask a stranger to open the door to your car because you can’t grip and turn the key yourself.   And then there are the bad days. 

You paddle out, almost reaching the lineup – the place just outside the breaking waves where you wait to catch the oncoming swells, and a much larger than normal set of waves approaches.  You use all your strength to try to paddle over the wave, but it breaks on top of you.  You think this is okay because you and your board have punched through the wall of the wave and you are in the sunlight beyond.  Unfortunately, the force of the wave and the vacuum created as it tubes and barrels towards the beach grabs hold of your feet which are not all the way through.  The wave sucks you back into the hollowed hole from the collapsing tube and you are rolled over and over for what seems like minutes, even though it is only twenty or thirty seconds.  You finally get free of the wave’s clutches and float to the surface.  You quickly grab a breath as the next wave in the set breaks right in front of you.  You attempt to duck dive, to force you and your buoyant board deep under the oncoming wave, but when it’s big, you can’t get down deep enough.  The wave grabs you and your board and hurls you shoreward in a mass of churning whitewater.  You’re thrown upside down, sideways, in circles, sometimes bouncing off the bottom, stuffing your sinuses with water that will flow freely from your nose later in the day when you bend over to kiss someone.  When you finally escape this wave, there are more.  You may successfully duck dive, but with each successive wave, you lose more ground; you’re almost back to the beach. 


On a bad day, it’s all about luck and timing.  You try to paddle out again, and just as you reach the lineup, you repeat the experience.  After several times, you’re exhausted. Shoulders ache. Arms refuse to move.  As you try to get speed to paddle over the next set, you’re too weak and it just gets worse and worse.  In spite of all the energy expended, you’re now cold.  You’ve spent more time below the water than above it and the wetsuit doesn’t help much.  Tired and cold, if you’re a real surfer, you don’t give up.  Ultimately, you luck out, there’s a longer lull than normal and you make it out to a chorus of, “Man, you really got worked in there!”  And now you face the competition for waves. 


Maybe you get lucky.  Maybe your friends feel sorry for you and let you have one of the best waves of the day.  You drop to the bottom of the overhead wave and look upwards.  You aim your board at the feathering lip and feel the acceleration of you and your board as you rise upwards to meet it.  With perfect timing, your board and the wave meet and the falling water forces you back to the bottom.  You repeat this over and over.  It’s a dance.  You’re in perfect harmony.  You look down the line of the wave and you see a concave section ahead.  It’s already starting to pitch over.  You have a choice.  You could turn down and safely end your ride as the rest of the wave closes out ahead.  Instead, you go for it, crouching, then extending your body forward to add speed.  As you reach the edge of the concavity, you squat low and sure enough, you’re inside the wave with small window of light out ahead.  You hold on and pop out a few seconds later to imagined cheers from the beach.  Of course, no one saw it.  The guys in the lineup can’t see the front of the wave and are looking at the next ones in the set anyway.  It’s yours and only yours, and somehow even for just one perfect wave, the struggle and fatigue and stuffed sinuses were worth it.

Congratulations!  You've done it.  You built a successful startup and you've sold it.  Perhaps you have some ongoing obligations: transition, earn out, pay out over time, but you'll soon be financially comfortable or on your way to your next venture.  Now,  are you ready for the disappointment?

Virtually every entrepreneur I've known has ultimately been disappointed after selling their startups.  They go in to the sale optimistic for the future.  Their businesses or the associated technologies will live beyond them.  The demanding work that they and their teams have faced is coming to an end.   They'll have financial success.  They can finally get a life and spend time with their families. 

Sadly, the fact is that most entrepreneurs are disappointed in one way or another.  Here are some examples:

Of course not all startup sales are disappointments.

One entrepreneur sold his struggling business in an all stock deal for $5 per share, worth nearly $5 million to him after a 3 year earn out.  His new job as CTO of the acquiring division gave him control and he became wealthy as the stock rose to $55 per share.  He, too, left the industry, happy with what he knew was a very lucky break.  Had the acquisition delayed even a month, he would have been out of business.

Another sold her very small technology startup to a large company in an all-cash deal, turning her product over to the acquirer.  She walked away and became an Angel Investor, helping several successful startups. 

The reality is, when you sell your startup, you don't really know what's going to happen next.  The economy could change, political winds or industry competition could obviate the need for your technology, the new owners could make big management mistakes, or their companies could fail.  You need to be careful:

And most important: Lower your expectations.  You're selling your business.  You have to be prepared to let it go.  Otherwise, I guarantee you will be disappointed.

First Building Your Startup Post
Previous Post: When Should you Throw in the Towel?

Okay.  I'll try to keep this from being too much of a rant, but the truth is, I hate Daylight Savings time.  I hate it most here in the United States.  I may not like it much in other countries, but the US version makes no sense at all. 

Of course I know all the arguments in favor of Daylight Savings time.  It saves energy.  It helps tourism and leisure businesses as people stay out playing later.  It reduces car accidents during later commute hours.

But did you know that more people die of heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents in the days after a time change?  How about the fact that kids have to go to school in the dark, or that early commuters have more accidents.  Worse, here in the US, the 2007 change that took us out of step with most of the rest  of the modern world actually reduced the energy savings we had before. 

Daylight savings time has been around a long time.  Ben Franklin is often credited with the idea, but from what I've read, this was from an article joking that Parisians could benefit from getting up earlier.   It didn't get officially implemented until over a century later.  Most of modern Europe adopted it in 1916 and the US quickly followed suit, matching the times of year for turning your clock forward and back.  During World War II, the US went on War Time - Daylight Savings Time ran year-round. 

In the 1960's the US and most of the Europe coordinated their Daylight Savings time.  If you're going to have it, this makes sense. 

But then in 2007, the US decided to advance the change in the spring by 3 weeks and delay the return to Standard Time in the fall by a week.  I wasn't happy with the idea before, but this just seemed insane. 

First, it took us out of step with the rest of the world.  And of course it meant that more kids had to go to school in the dark for longer in the year.  The US Department of Energy conducted a study that showed this change had ZERO benefit, and subsequent studies proved that although a trivial amount of energy for light was conserved, there was a substantial increase in the demand for heating, far offsetting any potential benefit. 

I know, I'm biased.  I'm an early riser and like to be in the surf at sunrise.  I hate the fact that in March, I can't get in the water at 6am.  But what really gets me about Daylight Savings time is how illogically it's implemented. 

Let's think about this in terms of its goal - to take more advantage of daylight hours.  Sure, near the summer, particularly in northern latitudes, it makes sense.  Very few people get up at 4:30 in the morning, so why not make the sunrise 5:30am and give us more light in the evening.  I get it. 

But in Winter?  As far as I know, it's still winter. 

Look, if we're going to have Daylight Savings time, it should be symmetric with respect to the solstice.  The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year and the summer solstice is the longest day of the year.  Right now, we start Daylight Savings Time about 10 weeks after the winter solstice.  Europe starts 3 weeks later.  We end Daylight Savings Time about 6 weeks before the winter solstice.  This is crazy.  If it was too dark to start Daylight Savings less than 10 weeks from the darkest day, why would you wait to end it until 6 weeks before the darkest day? 

I heard one argument that the US extended the ending date to make it more light for kids on Halloween.  Who goes out trick or treating when it's light? 

Aside from the loss of early surf sessions and the confusion working with other countries caused by the inconsistent time changes in the US, the lack of any proven benefit to that 2007 change, and the studies that show it has actually caused harm, suggest to me that we should at least go back to the policy from before 2007, or better yet, revisit the whole idea of Daylight Savings Time.

Writing a novel is supposed to be creative and cathartic.  It's the ultimate expression of great stories through your ideas, emotions, and deep thoughts framed with human drama and moments of humor.  But getting from that first blank page to a work of 300 or more pages is intimidating, even if you've done it before.

When I started my first novel,  The Silicon Lathe, I knew I wanted to tell a semi-autobiographical tale of my life as a young entrepreneur starting out in the Silicon Valley.  After a long career filled with my experiences  of  innovation, creativity, and altruism confronting ambition, greed, manipulation, and downright evil, I knew I had more than enough material for a novel, probably several.  Wherever there's money to be made you will find the best and the worst in people. 

And I was lucky.  Since the novel is about the history of the Silicon Valley, I could just start at the beginning of my career and finish at the end.  To bring the proper context to the reader, I took the logical approach of opening each section with the year's global events.  It was easy to put together a simple outline for the book. 

When I wanted to add sections about extreme sports and juxtapose them with the challenges, successes and failures, all I had to do was insert them in the proper places. 

My second novel, Ethics (unpublished), was a cathartic book.  I started by writing the first and last chapters, then worked from back to front to fill in an outline.   I poured my heart into the novel  and often found myself writing long emotional diatribes.  My early readers pointed out that I'd gone a little far with most of these and suggested some trimming or perhaps more accurately, some serious clear cutting.  But with the outline, this clean up was easy to do and Ethics is arguably my best work to date. 

With The Shadow of God, an outline was essential.  This was my first foray into the mystery/psychological thriller genre.  Imagery was a key part to very subtle foreshadowing as were the clues that I dropped in each section.  As the San Francisco Book Reviewer said:

"Jackowski lays out the information in such a way that everything is in place long before you discover it. This is a very smart book, perfect for both readers who like to try to solve the crime before the characters do and readers who love to reread mysteries to see all the hints early on."

The outline enabled me to decide where to put the clues and even to move them around when I made organizational revisions.   Even better, when I was well into the book and wrote something that required corresponding changes earlier on, those places in the book were easier to find using the outline - certainly easier than searching for key words or reading for situations whose locations I couldn't quite remember months later. 

Unfortunately, in my latest novel, I decided to try to write it without an outline.  It hasn't gone well.  I've written sections to introduce each of the main characters, have set up several ominous situations, have laid down hints to start leading the reader astray, but the fact is, since I'm not sure where I'm going, it's kind of hard to bring the reader along.  I find that I have too many options.  I start down a path, then backtrack or second guess myself.  It has taken me far longer to get less than 25% done than it did to write an entire outlined novel.  I'm starting over with an outline and will refine it to a couple of levels before I start continue writing this book. 

What I've learned is that outlining is not just an organizational tool.  It forces you to think through your story and to make decisions so that when you're heads down, you know where you've got to get to.  Even better, when you hit a block on a particular subject or character, you can just decide to write a different section and come back to the difficult one when you're ready.  

Unlike a building, where you need to lay the foundation before getting into the heavy construction, as a writer, if you have an outline as your plan, you have the freedom to construct the story and then to come back to lay that foundation with clues and foreshadowing.  

For me, the outline is my safety net.  I won't write without one again.

Most of my posts on #startups have focused on how to avoid making mistakes that may lead to failure.  My first post, How to Build a Startup Company - Part 1,  asked some fundamental questions about your motivations when looking at undertaking a startup.  Subsequent posts tried to get you thinking about viability of your product or service, business planning, hiring the right people, and management skills. 

But the reality is that even if you do everything right, there's a chance that you'll fail.  Sometimes markets change.  The economy can turn.  An unexpected competitor may arise.  You or a critical team member may become seriously ill or have an accident.  There are countless disasters awaiting a new startup.  And many very successful entrepreneurs admit to having failed multiple times before finally achieving their dreams. 

You need to be prepared for possible failure.  If not, you could lose more than your business.

As I described in earlier posts, building a startup is not only hard on you, it's hard on your family and those around you.   You'll spend too much time away from your spouse and children.  You'll be interrupted at the worst times and often need to be available 24x7.  Relationships suffer, divorces frequently follow. 

It gets worse if you fail.  Your confidence will be shaken.  You may get depressed.  You could be even less available to those who care about you.  

But absolute disaster strikes when you've led  yourself and your family into financial ruin.  No more savings, no more retirement monies, no more equity in your home, you've raided your kids' college funds, you've run up credit card debt, have no income, no prospects for a job, and no funds to do another startup.  As ridiculous as it may sound, you could end up on the street.  I've seen it happen.  You can't let it go that far.

To use an overused boxing analogy, you need to know when to throw in the towel. 

So, how do you know when to give it up?

In an ideal scenario, you would make this part of your business plan.  Just as you set milestones for success, you should set checkpoints to assess possible failure.  You need to draw lines you won't cross.  These will be different for everyone depending on their financial and family situations. 

This may seem obvious, but when you're in the heat of it all, when you're fighting to keep your company alive, when you're sure that if you borrow from your retirement monies or take out an equity loan on your house, you'll be able to save your business, you usually won't see that you're about to go too far.   It's hard to step back and take an objective look when you're under live fire.  But you MUST do it.

If at all possible, have an uninvolved observer look at your situation regularly.  It could be your board of directors, a friend you trust.  It might be your spouse. 

In my lengthy career, I've seen many disastrous business failures that ruined peoples lives. But I decided to do this post now because of two recent startup failures.  The first involved a person with no family obligations.  Unfortunately, she didn't draw that line and ultimately burned through savings, retirement monies, and equity, losing her business and owing the government a lot of money.

The second involved someone with a family who originally promised to give his dream a year.  He had sufficient monies to keep it going that long and wanted to see if he could make a living out of what had always been a recreational passion. 

But at the end of a year, monies were not flowing in.  Many of his targeted milestones had not been achieved.  Could he really give up his fledgling startup after investing a year and getting others committed to his vision?   When he told me he was thinking of dipping into his retirement accounts, I sent him a list of questions about what he'd learned about himself and his business opportunity over the past year.  Fortunately, he did an honest assessment of his strengths and weaknesses and determined that at least for now, in the way he's approached it, he wasn't going to be able to support his family via his new venture anytime soon. 

He'll continue to try to build the business part-time, but he's not betting everything on something that's not ready to support his family.  He's now interviewing for positions that will enable him to make a good living.  This was a wise decision.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not suggesting you plan for failure.  However, I think it's critical for you to establish limits on the risks you're going to take.  And somehow, you must find a way to objectively assess where you are and avoid a failure that could destroy not just your business, but your family and your life.  Don't let yourself believe that even though you've missed your goals, if you just put more money and time in, you can save your business. 

You're much smarter if you can walk away before disaster strikes and as the old saying goes, live to fight another day.

The translation of The Shadow of God is finally done - at least we're done with the first pass.  For those of you who may not have followed our progress on this effort, you might want to have a look at Translating My Novels and Another Translation Challenge: Shaggy Dog Stories.  These two posts discuss the approach that Peyo Amulet and I took and some of the initial challenges we encountered. 

Overall, it has taken about a year to get through our process.  Of course Peyo had other translation projects to work on so he wasn't on this full time.  Plus, our process allowed for a fair amount of down time.  Essentially, it went as follows:

Among the open issues we had were what to do with the Shaggy Dog Stories, final formatting of dialogue, and language.  Often Peyo would push for more formal/literary language, where I was pushing for more colloquial French, particularly with dialogue. 

For the Shaggy Dog Stories, we finally decided to translate them into French, then to add a footnote to explain the play on words in English.  I think this reads well. 

We got through the final 50 pages in October and began the somewhat arduous process of reassembling and reformatting the document.  It may seem like a minor issue, but in French, quotation marks are followed by a space.  Question marks, exclamation points, colons, and semi-colons are preceded by a space.  While MS Word inserts these for the French Language, the version of Word that Peyo used would line wrap them and sometimes we'd end up with a question mark, exclamation point, colon, etc.  alone on a line.  Or they'd split oddly across lines.  I finally figured out how to force Word to use non-breaking spaces with these characters and the document cleaned up nicely.

I forwarded the reassembled book to a French friend and she tore through it, finding countless typos and making a number of suggestions.  Peyo reviewed and incorporated these and today, I sent copies out to a well-known French author and to two friends who claim to be Monsieur and Madame Tout-le-Monde.  They wanted to be among the first to read the book. I've asked them to be brutally honest.  Specifically, I want to know:

With luck I'll have their comments back in a few weeks.  While waiting, I'm searching for someone who can redo the front and back cover to replace the English.  Then Peyo and I will make one more pass before seeking a French publisher.  We also need to create a French web page for The Shadow of God (now L'Ombre de Dieu) on this site or perhaps even create a French version of the entire site.  After all, if it goes well for L'Ombre de Dieu in France, I'll want to translate The Silicon Lathe, and Ethics (which I might actually publish there).  Clearly there's still a lot to do.

Wish us luck!

Hoping to accelerate the time to get his service business going live,  one of the entrepreneurs I'm working with recently asked me whether he should have developers build software, find a third party who could deliver something sooner, or find open source software that the developers could customize. 

Of course, I said it depends. 

Obviously it depends on cost versus the benefit of time to market, but there are other considerations including impact on your staff, your support plans, and perhaps most important, your exit strategy. 

Although most entrepreneurs are faced with this decision at some point and most have no problem making a good decision, I thought I'd jot down a few considerations just in case there's something you might not have thought of. 

Build it yourself

I must admit that in all of my companies, we built our own products.  This was largely because our initial products were 'under the covers' - inside operating systems and invisible to users.  At the time, there really weren't any off-the-shelf solutions that we could use as the basis for what we were building.  In fact, most of our products were these tools that others could use to build their products. 

This approach worked well for us for the following reasons:

Of course we had to pay for development and it took more time to get to market, but for us, this approach worked out well.

Using Open Source Software

In my last company, we moved from tools to end-user products and since we weren't the strongest in building beautiful user interfaces, we took advantage of publicly available open source software that was subject to the GNU public license (GPL).  This sped up our development substantially, and since we had a solid proprietary base, the addition of the open source code presented little risk to our products.  We kept the code modularly separate from our main code so we were able to avoid some of the more restrictive aspects of the GPL.  The main advantages to this approach were:

The way we handled it presented minimal risks, but there were disadvantages:

Because we were careful and knowledgeable in how we used the open source code, it worked to our advantage, advancing our time to market while preserving our control of the code, and presented only minor issues during our exit (acquisition).

Buying/licensing from a third party

Although we never bought components from a 3rd party to incorporate into our products, we were one of the third parties that sold components and tools to others to help them get to market quicker.  Our products were closed to the buyers.  That is, they bought functionality and we provided external interfaces.  We never supplied source code and they never needed it. 

From our perspective (and theirs since they paid us), buying from us had the following advantages:

• Very rapid time to market.
• A professional organization who guaranteed responsive support.
• No requirement to hire expertise they didn't have or want to have longer term.

As it turned out, well more than half of our customers were acquired by larger companies.  Because we had assignment clauses for our licenses with clear explanations of what that meant in terms of fees and rights, all of these deals went off without a hitch.  And of course, we were happy to welcome these much larger companies as our new customers. 

So, if you're faced with the choice of build it yourself, use open source, or buy from a third party, each can work:

Build it yourself if you have the expertise and can afford to take the time to debug before getting the product/service to market.

If you need quicker time to market and have some expertise in-house, try for open source.  Be sure to keep the open source separate from other components of your offering if at all possible and to follow the GPL rules about publishing.

If you need to get to market as soon as possible, and don't have a lot of expertise in development, consider licensing from a third party.  They can give you a leg up.  Ensure that you have solid enforceable agreements for customization and support, and that assignment clauses are clear and wouldn't scare off a potential acquirer.  Also, vigorously negotiate the license fees.  Most companies are more flexible than you might imagine and many are willing to 'invest' in new ventures for back-end payments upon success.  If possible, get source code/designs.  In the worst case, ask for an escrow in case the company should go out of business. 

But whether you make it yourself, get a leg up from open source, or license a product, ultimately the packaging and presentation is yours.  You're also the face on the support.  From the public's point of view, this is your product/service.  Own it!

Dare Brittany!  That's the motto that the tourist boards are promoting in Brittany, France.  And from our experiences there, we understand where they're coming from.  Brittany is unique.  It's more rugged.  The people are tougher.  Even the bread is heartier.

Like the Basques from our favorite region of France, the Bretons had a longstanding separatist movement and still maintain their own language.  Many of the road signs are in two languages.

While Quiberon is in Brittany and fascinated us with its varied coastline and nearby prehistory, I don't think we were quite prepared for Finistere.   It was much more stark than we had imagined - almost bleak.   I had heard a lot about La Torche, the surf break with its famous Ascenseur (Elevator) - a current that runs at up to 8 miles per hour and is great for propelling you back to the lineup but we really weren't expecting any waves as the surf forecast wasn't promising.  However, with our great introduction to Brittany in Quiberon, we had high hopes for this more remote area. 

Even the names of the towns seemed intriguing.  Lot's of 'P's and apostrophes in names like Penmarc'h, Pouldreuzic, Plozevet, and Pluguffan. 

We drove through craggy rolling hills, crossing rivers, and rounding the larger city of Quimper.  Suddenly the roads narrowed - all routes seemed to be single-laned.  There were fields but they all seemed to be fallow - nothing was planted - and it was the end of May!  We saw very few houses, just lots of open countryside.   Nothing really changed as we neared the coast and approached our hotel.  However, the architecture of the homes was quite different.  As we later learned, the homes were built for multiple families and their animals - to shelter them from the harsh winters.  Then, there it was - a completely incongruous building with neon lights - the Breiz Armor.  Although the hotel was nice in a Best Western sort of way, it seemed completely out of place on Penhors plage which is officially part of Pouldreuzic.  We decided to cancel our dinner reservations and to search the nearby towns for a more 'authentic' place to eat.   

Continuing on the small country roads, we found some charming villages and ultimately a good restaurant.  On our way back just after sunset, out in the middle of nowhere, we passed what looked like an ancient chapel.   In the dim light, we discovered that outside this chapel was one of the oldest and most famous calvaries -  large granite sculptures which depict the life of Christ - from before birth to crucifixion and the resurrection.  One of the most notable things which I found indicative of the attitude of 15th century Brittany (it was built about 1450), was a sculpture of Mary giving birth - breasts exposed.  I'm surprised this wasn't considered blasphemous but again, I think it bespeaks the practical, down-to-earth nature of the Bretons of the time.  It was getting dark and our pictures didn't turn out well, so the one at left was borrowed from the Wikepedia site. 

In the morning we got up and did a hike along the GR 34.  At over 1600 kilometers, this is one of the longest Grande Randonnees in Europe.  It was a cool drizzly morning and we made our way along the tortured rocky coastline to the north.  To the south there were miles of sand dunes.  Along the trail, there are signs about the area.  Many explain the harsh life of the Finistere Bretons, most of whom made their livings harvesting kelp, then submitting it to an arduous process to extract iodine for sale.  It was a meager living at best.  They also talked of shipwrecks - not from centuries ago, but from the 20th century.  While this group of Bretons knew the ocean, the rocky coast, radical tide changes, and severe weather cost many their lives.

After a bit more exploration of this bleak part of Finistere, we continued our trip  towards our next destination, Perros Guirec.  Along the way we passed though a spectacular national park of rocky cliffs and pine forests, then decided to stop for lunch in Morlaix, hometown to one of our French friends.   The town is built in a canyon carved out by a small river.  On the north end is a harbor which is inland from the coast.  We'll definitely return to do more exploration of Morlaix.

Arriving at our hotel in Perros Guirec, we were blown away.  The  Hotel Manoir du Sphinx is built into the side of a cliff that looks out onto the seven islands.  It sits half way between the two main areas of Perros Guirec - a harbor to the east and a long beach to the west.  We went for a walk to do some exploring and found the people very friendly - even more reminiscent of the Basque region where everyone you pass says hello.    We had an excellent meal in the hotel's restaurant and explored a bit more of the town afterwards.

The next day we did a hike towards the west on the GR 34.  This section of the Grande Randonnee features spectacular pink granite rock formations.  The trail itself follows the ancient Sentier des Douaniers - trail of the customs agents.  Along the trail there are small structures built of pink granite that are camouflaged among the rocks so that the custom agents could spy on smugglers. 

After several miles, we turned back passing through the village of Ploumanac'h, and then catching up to the GR 34 again.  There was some small crowded surf in the afternoon but I decided to pass.  That evening we had another fantastic dinner, this time at La Suite overlooking the beach in western Perros. 

For breakfast the next morning, we stopped at a artisanal bakery where we found some of the best bread we've eaten in France - and that's saying a lot!  We're big bread fans and the French with their 3-4 bakes a day supply some of the best, freshest bread in the world.  But I do love heavy breads like the black breads found in Germany and eastern Europe, so I really enjoyed the hearty fresh bread of Brittany.

In looking back at our quick trip up the west coast of France with our stops in Ile d'Oleron, Olonne-sur-mer, and Quiberon (which is part of Brittany), clearly Brittany wins out.  We felt at home there much as we do in the Basque Region.  Between the history (actually pre-history), the spectacular landscapes, the rugged ocean, the GR 34, and the interesting people, there's much to explore and experience.  Without a doubt, we'll be going back.

I've written a few blogs about les Trois Couronnes, one of the majestic peaks that dominate the Pays Basque in France.  I've also mentioned La Rhune, a higher peak to which many of the Basques attribute supernatural occurrences.  These two dominate the skyline to the south.  But there's one more that rises out of the ocean just below the border.  It's called Jaizkibel.  While we know quite a bit about the first two, we'd never hiked Jaizkibel.  It was a Saturday with rain forecast to come in about noon.  I had hoped to hike west of San Sebastian near the town of Itziar - an area called Itxaspe.  The cliffs are spectacular, the rock formations date from ancient periods, and to be honest, it appears there are some 'undiscovered' perfect point and reef breaks there if you're willing to descend the three hundred foot cliffs. 

But because of the forecast rain, Martine, our hiking partner, suggested we do Jaizkibel instead.   The mountain is a ridge that borders the ocean starting in the now-trendy Spanish town of Hondarribia.  The ocean side is rough with no roads and only trail access.  The inland side is a valley  With the Pyrenees (and Les Trois Couronnes) just a few miles to the south.  If you start at the lighthouse in Hondarribia, it's 22 km (14 miles) to Pasaia at the other end of the ridge.  Martine proposed we start about half way, at a ruined Parador, given the incoming weather. 

I didn't know anything about Paradors.  In our ten years together, Karen never mentioned that she had stayed in many when she lived in Spain.  Paradors are luxury hotels owned by the Spanish government which are located in old castles, monasteries, estates, and other exotic buildings.  They were built by the government to encourage the economies of out-of-the-way places.   I found a site with a map of the Spanish Paradors and clicked on several to get descriptions of the properties as well as things to do in the surrounding areas.  Karen and I will definitely be visiting a few of these (particularly in Galicia and out near the border with Portugal).

The Jaizkibel Parador was torn down in 1999 and all that's left are some stone structures and part of the foundation.  The views are spectacular.  On the south side, you see the valley with Irun below and the Pyrenees behind.  To the north,  the rugged cliffs below, and to the northeast, Hondarribia, Hendaye, and the coastline of southwest France.  On a clear day you can see much of the way to Bordeaux.  Unfortunately, it wasn't a clear day...

We started our hike with a descent of about 200' towards the ocean along a closed dirt road.  About a mile later after trying a small trail that led nowhere, we encountered the GR 121 - one of Europe's Grand Randonnees.  This is the 22 km trail I mentioned above.  It is a well-maintained, easy trail with gentle slopes.  We turned towards Pasaia and followed the trail into the mist as we climbed towards the peak of Jaizkibel.  Along the way we had views of the rugged, mostly inaccessible coast below us to the north and off to the west.  There were numerous trails that branched off the GR121 towards the ocean below, but given the impending weather we decided to save them for another day. 

During most of our hikes in the Pyrenees, we've encountered wild horses called Pottoks.  They are small and very tough-looking.  As we climbed, we encountered a group of horses, including a foal, but we weren't sure if they were wild or not.

We continued upward thorough a forested area crossed by numerous creeks but decided to bypass the trail that led to the tower-laden peak, choosing instead to follow the GR 121 along the top of the ridge. 

Three and a half miles into the hike, we decided to stop for lunch at one of the ruined lookout posts similar to the one near the Parador.  We set up our lunches and of course, it began to rain, hard.  We wolfed down as much as we could under the improvised shelter of our rain jackets and decided it might be a good idea to head back.  Fortunately, about a mile later, the rain eased up and we got a few sunny breaks.

We made our way back through a few sprinkles, but it was clear from the increasing winds that the main part of the storm was on its way.  It had been nice hike of about 7 miles round trip.  In addition to the impressive views, along the way, Martine pointed out a few things of note.  The first picture below is of a very small pinkish plant that is a carnivore.  It secretes a dew-like drop that attracts insects, but is so sticky that they can't escape.  Then the leaves enshroud them.  We were able to trigger the closing with pieces of grass. 

We also encountered some interesting rock formations with large hollows in them.  Martine explained that these volcanic rocks were formed with glass balls inside.  As the rocks erode, the balls become exposed, fall out, then eventually roll all the way to the ocean.

After our return, Martine send me a few pictures from one of her previous hikes on a much nicer day.  She had taken one of the lower trails from the lighthouse in Hondarribia.

As you can see, it's a remarkable area.  Most of it is inaccessible except by foot.  We're looking forward to another, longer hike at Jaizkibel starting at the lighthouse.  We'll be exploring many of the lower trails that lead into small protected coves. 

Although Les Trois Couronnes and La Rhune are still the most imposing peaks of the coastal Pays Basque, if you're in the area you should consider a hike at Jaizkibel too.

After our stops at Ile d'Oloron and Olonne-Sur-Mer, we finally reached our much anticipated Brittany.  We started with the Presqu'Ile de Quiberon.  'Presque' is the French word for 'almost', so the name literally means the almost island of Quiberon.  And it is an almost-island.  Quiberon is divided into two parts, Saint-Pierre-Quiberon and Presqu'ile de Quiberon.  The latter is separated from the mainland by a sliver-thin peninsula that is only about 70 feet wide.  Driving over this narrow stretch, it's hard to believe that with the radical tide changes in the area, the road isn't sometimes underwater making the Presqu'ile, a true island.   Still, the Presqu'ile feels like an island. 

As you can see from the satellite photo I borrowed from the Quiberon tourism website, it's about as close to an island as you can get.  With an area of less than 9 square kilometers (less than 3.5 square miles), you can walk around the entire  presqu'ile in about 4 hours on the sentier littoral which is part of the Grand Randonnee (GR) 34.  The differences you'll see are amazing.  On the mainland side, you'll find miles of sand dunes like we've seen along most of the west coast of France.  Not far down the west side is the Cote Sauvage,  a rugged rocky coastline with just a few small beaches.  As you enter the main part of the village of Quiberon near the end of the island, you find small harbors and points which block the swells from the rest of the island, and as you round the east and northeast side of the island, you find long stretches of pristine beaches and harbors with calm crystal clear water reminiscent of the Caribbean. 

Karen and I arrived in Quiberon mid-afternoon.  We were a couple hours early for our hotel check in but the staff was kind enough to show us to our spectacular ocean-view room.  They also recommended a restaurant called Les Viviers on the Cote Sauvage.    We drove over to the restaurant that stands alone on the cliffs, parked, and started walking the trail that runs along the cliffs for several miles, passing Menhirs, giant stones that date from about 5,000 BC.  At one point we saw a ruined chapel on the edge of the cliff and not far away was a section that was cordoned off.  It was an archeological site, a six thousand year old tomb. A sign indicated that most of the contents had been moved to the Prehistory Museum in Carnac, a few miles away. 

We had a superb dinner at Les Viviers, consisting of broiled clams as an appetizer, mussels for a main course, and very nice Muscadet from the Loire Valley.  Karen and I are mussel fans and these were the biggest mussels we've ever eaten.  It's not the shells that were unusual, it was hard to believe the meat fit inside the shells.  We walked a few more miles after dinner enjoying the memorable sunset.

The next morning we got up at first light and raced to Port Blanc on the Cote Sauvage to find some surf.  After a two hour session, we returned to the hotel for breakfast and then walked around the tip of the island to the east and north.  The points were lined with Cypress trees, and much of that part of the coast looked like Monterey and Pacific Grove.  As we went further east, we passed old forts and encountered new harbors and long stretches of those beaches I mentioned.  It was hard to believe how clear the water was - this was the North Atlantic Coast!

We were a bit reluctant to leave Quiberon and wanted to explore more but decided to make a stop at Carnac a few miles onto the mainland to have lunch and to check out the museum and the local Menhirs.  Karen and I are not big museum people but the Prehistory Museum in Carnac was fascinating, probably because it represented local history and prehistory starting 450,000 years ago.  In addition to the finds, it chronicled the changes in the land mass, the effects of the ice age  (which at one point froze the English Channel), and showed on maps where to go to see the original sites.  It explained the construction of the Dolmens, tombs dating back to 5,000 BC, and how the massive stones were placed on top - they filled the area with dirt, dragged the stones onto the dirt and then removed the dirt.  It also proposed numerous theories for the more than 4000 menhirs in the area and their unusual alignments. 

We left the museum and had a leisurely drive to our next stop, Finistere - land's end (or world's end) depending on your interpretation.  That is where we got a sense of how rugged Brittany can be.  Quiberon, even with its remarkable coastline was tame in comparison to what we'd see next. 

There's no question we'll be back to visit Quiberon and the surrounding area.  Between the beaches, the history, the great food and the surf, it's a place we want to take more time to explore.

The real target of our trip was Brittany so after the Ile d'Oleron, we picked a point about half way: Olonne-sur-mer.  I knew there was surf in the area, and from the photos and the bit of research I did, the place looked interesting. 

There are miles of beaches ranging from very rugged rocky areas to large sand dunes.  Just inland from the ocean is a forest, which Napoleon had planted to protect the inland areas from the sand blowing off the coast, and just a bit further inland from the forest are marshes which are stops for migrating birds and home to many exotic orchids.

The forest and the marshes are crisscrossed by almost 75  kilometers (~45 miles) of biking/hiking trails and kayaks and canoes are available for exploring the marshes. 

The area has a remarkable history dating back 2500 years.  The Romans occupied it because of its prosperous port.  England owned it beginning in the 9th century and Richard the Lionhearted considered it his favorite hunting area in France.  

Olonne-sur-mer is a community of about 14,000 people, just 5 minutes from the city of Les Sable d'Olonne.  Contrary to its name, Les Sable d'Olonne doesn't have much sand and the city is trying to find ways to save its main beach.  There's some discussion about unifying the two communities.


We arrived at the Logis Des Maraichers Monday night after a 5 hour drive that was supposed to be half that.  Philip greeted us and showed us to our room.  The Logis has 4 very elegant rooms in a closed courtyard with an outside dining area (for breakfast), and a swimming pool.  Philip then invited us to the office where he showed us maps of the area, indicated surfing spots, and made some restaurant recommendations.  He thought most would be open since it was a holiday. 

Unfortunately, his first recommendation was closed so we chose another on his list - touted for great seafood.   I'd have to say that although the service was excellent, the food was mediocre. 
  

After dinner we drove around the city.  Although there is much history in the area, it seems a bit hard to find or perhaps just incongruous with the city itself.  The Chateau St. Clair which houses a museum and has a lighthouse on its tower is interesting as are the Menhirs - standing stones that may date from 9000 years ago.  But as evidenced by the photo of the main beach which I borrowed from the city's tourism site, it seems like the city is trying to take on a very modern Riviera-like look at the expense of its history.  It probably doesn't help that during World War II, as the Germans were retreating, they destroyed the port, mined the beaches, and wiped out much of the city.   

There's a nice port, but a lot of industrialization in it.  The city doesn't have much charm.  We tried to find some cohesiveness but couldn't.  Some buildings were very new.  Others probably dated from the late 1940s.  But we didn't find much that was fascinating.  Maybe we just didn't know where to look, but in  most French towns and cities, you get a feel for them right away.    Overall, Karen and I agreed that Les Sables d'Olonne felt pretty disjoint - a city trying to find its identity.  Philip, our host at the Logis, agreed.  He's British and came here several years ago in search of an opportunity near the coast.  He seems to have found it in Orlonne-sur-mer, just a few miles north of the city, as the area is popular with the British and with people from the low countries who love the biking trails.  

We got up at first light the next morning and went to one of the prime surf spots called Sauveterre.  It's also a naturist beach, though on that day, it was a bit chilly.  The surf was too small to be of interest, but with miles of sand dunes to the south and reefs from there northward, I could see the potential. 

Giving up on surf, we decided to go for a hike through the Foret d'Olonne.  Like many of the forests that Napoleon had planted along the coast, it was composed of pines growing in sand or sandy soil.  We had a nice walk, but there wasn't anything really remarkable there.

Apparently it wasn't the best time of year for bird viewing so we didn't bring our kayaks and didn't take the time to rent some to explore the marshes.  Since the area didn't excite us too much, we were anxious to move on to Brittany and our next stop, Quiberon.