Biarritz was a fishing and whaling village until the 1850s, when Empress Eugénie, who loved the place from childhood holidays, persuaded Napoleon III to build a villa on the headland. Royalty followed, then the rest of Europe's idle rich, and the town still carries that Second Empire swagger: a palace hotel on the beach, a lighthouse, a casino, and a rock with a statue of the Virgin Mary joined to the shore by a little footbridge. Then, in the late 1950s, a film crew brought a surfboard and the town found a second career. It is now one of the oldest surf towns in Europe, and on a decent swell the Grande Plage is full of black wetsuits.
For a rider it is a very good place to start a day, because the Basque interior is only twenty minutes away and it looks nothing like the coast. Head inland and the villages turn white with red or green shutters, the hills are small and steep and impossibly green, and the roads twist between them in short, tight, slightly bumpy sections that reward patience rather than speed. Ainhoa and Espelette are the obvious targets, the latter hung with strings of drying red peppers in autumn, and the Pyrenean foothills start to rise behind them. Go early. The coast road and the Anglet side are slow with beach traffic in July and August, and the ring of roundabouts around the airport can eat half an hour.
Practically, you are in a built-up area of well over seventy thousand people counting Anglet next door, so fuel, coffee and parking are not a worry. Parking a bike near the old port is possible if you do not mind squeezing between scooters. The Atlantic is the thing to respect here: it changes the weather quickly, and a clear morning can turn to drizzle by the time you reach the hills, with a warm, wet wind from the southwest. Take a layer.
Eat something Basque while you are here. A slice of gâteau basque, filled with cream or black cherry, from any bakery is the correct payment for a morning's riding, and the sea air will have made you hungry anyway. Stay for the last light if you can; the sun drops straight into the ocean behind the lighthouse at Pointe Saint-Martin and the whole headland goes the colour of brass.