17-05-2025
It's tee time! Golfing and gastronomy on France's Basque coast
The rain is teeming down on the first tee of Hossegor Golf Club, but Diane — a local player hailing originally from Edinburgh — is showing us what locals use umbrellas for. It's not always to shelter from the rain.
Turned upside down, they can be used for catching eels, of course. Her French husband's family lived on a farm and would use a piece of chicken attached to a strand of wool to lure them out of drainage ditches that connect with the sea. Pull the wool with the determined eel clinging on into the umbrella and, voilà, dinner hooked.
I can't say for certain the glint-in-the-eye Diane wasn't pulling the wool over my eyes, but it put me in mind of the delicious
