So much to do and so little time!

DAY 8 – Wednesday 2 June
ST.MICHEL to ST.GILLES (NR LES SABLES) – 205 miles

An early start after a good night’s sleep. Hint of sun in the almost blue sky, but was soon gone as the grey clouds crept over… is it Monsoon Season in France or something? Packed up in 30 minutes and then we were outta there.

Aaaaand we’re off, to RENNES and the coast beyond, where hopefully we might catch sight of the sun again at some point.

We did well today, in a better mood with each other (rebooted), and we’re only following the main roads which cuts down on a lot of squabbling at road junctions and fairly eats up the miles. Flew passed NANTES, through ST.NAZAIRE and across the big bridge, then carried on down the coast road.

And what was on the coast road? Holiday campsites with loads of children and playgrounds, a bit like Butlins and my idea of hell. ‘I’m not staying anywhere like this,’ I thought to myself as we passed one after another.

Then we broke free of all the Butlins and Pontins places and drove through a forest area. Lo and behold, a normal campsite in the middle of a forest with No children. Perfect. We could even toddle off, armed with a site map, and pick our own pitch.

Ran into an English family in a converted GPO van (how fab is that?) And where were they from? Why, Birmingham no less. Salt of the earth people, us Brummies.

Had a walk through the forest to the nearby beach (very nice) and the road outside the campsite (yay, a tabac for my ciggies, which, incidentally, are no cheaper over here… pah!)

Aaaaand chill.

Another early night. Exactly how much sleep do two people need?

* The roads here, even the motorways, are incredibly quiet, hardly anybody on them except for lots and lots of campervans. The campsites are out-of-season quiet too. Its lovely. But the villages we drive through are spookily devoid of people, like abandoned film sets.

DAY 9 – Thursday 3 June

Woke to clear bloo skies and HEAT. Maaaan, it’s hot! 26 degrees hot. Hello shorts and t-shirt, goodbye fleece jacket I’ve been wearing since we left home (sometimes to bed).

Another 10 hour sleep last night, no idea what’s going on.

Chatted to the couple from Birmingham, who were a mine of camping information and showed us round their converted campervan, which was brilliant… but I still prefer our tent.

Leisurely drive down the coast road to St.Gilles and beyond. The coastline is so beautiful and the towns and villages so quaint… its exactly how I imagined it all to be, so very typically French. Really, really enjoying it, and I didn’t think I’d like camping so much, but we have all the comforts of home – airbed, gas cooker, state-of-the-art tent and sleeping bag – so its no hardship at all.

Ate fresh croissants overlooking the ‘azure’ sea, then drove down and watched the surfers in the waves. Hubs became slightly obsessed with buying a dustpan and brush to clean the sand out of the tent, so bought sandwiches too and ate them overlooking the sea. It’s a great way to live: buy food when hungry, eat with a view. I could seriously get used to this. (Note to Middle Son: Sell house, send money lol).

In the supermarket they sell a lot of fish, obviously, cos its near the sea innit, but in this one they had a tank full of lobsters all tied up and waiting to die. I will NEVER eat lobster. Free The Lobsters! Their fresh produce is local so its all super-fresh. Women were shaking curly lettuce like girls hair, I was mesmerised by the movement. They’re just like the supermarkets in America, only here there’s NO ONE IN THEM. Where are all the people?

My laptop has become a liability because we can’t charge it in the car with the e:can’t converter (berluddy thing). Actually managed to charge it by plugging it into the ‘outdoor’ men’s toilets and putting it on a chair directly opposite our tent so we could watch it for two hours. But at least the lack of battery power has forced me to have a proper break from the keyboard and the internet and work, which is nice.

Returned to our tent to find that the coolbox had turned into a hotbox (its not an electric one, it runs off frozen plastic things which tend to melt). Milk, cheeses and pate had all gasped their last and expired.

It’s really, really hot.

DAY 10 – Friday 4 June
ST.GILLES to SOLOUC SUR MERE (NR BORDEAUX) – 163 miles

Woke in the night because something was sniffing heavily around our tent, right by our heads where we were sleeping. Sounded bigger than a rat but smaller than a dog, and it didn’t sound like a dog sniffing, it sounded more like the nasal grunt of a pig. It didn’t immediately run off when Hubs banged the side of the tent a couple of times either, so it was a fearless bugger. Totally freaked me out.

“Shall I go out and see what it is?” Hubs asked.

“NO!” I cried, “That’s what happens in horror films and they NEVER come back!”

Heard every leaf flutter and bat fart after that, convinced we were about to be murdered by the locals or abducted by aliens. Was REALLY happy when dawn FINALLY arrived.

Packed and ready by 8am. Except the reception didn’t open until 9am (to get our security key dosh back), so we drove down the road, sat on a wall by the beach and watched fishing boats coming in off the bloo, bloo sea.

Aaaand we’re off again, to who knows where this time. Terribly exciting. Stuck to main roads but still saw all the stunning French countryside and it’s just so much easier (the ‘green’ roads, not t’motorways). Watched the temperature on the dashboard go up from 24 degrees to 30 degrees! Hot, hot, hot!

LA ROCHE SUR YON to LA ROCHELLE to ROCHEFORT to ROYAN.

Stopped in Royan to get our bearings as the place is a LOT bigger than we’d expected and we needed to find out where the ferry is to take us to Le Verdon (to save us driving all the way down to Bordeaux and then back to the coast). Had the BEST tuna, tomato and boiled egg baguette on the planet – fresh tuna!

Caught the woman just shutting up the Tourist Information place, but Hubs being Hubs wasn’t going to let opening hours stand in his way and bombarded her with questions about the ferry: where it was, how did we get there, what time did it leave and how much was it, while a queue of not so fortunate/gobby people stood beside him waiting their turn. When Hubs had finished, the woman quickly locked the door, and people wandered off muttering miserably.

Finally found the tiny little port for our ferry and waited in a queue for it to turn up ‘from the other side’. Chatted to some of our fellow passengers. “Are you from Birmingham?” a German man asked, beaming.

‘Oh’ I thought, ‘Birmingham is clearly famous throughout Europe. Go Brum!’

“My son is in Birmingham,’ the man said, ‘In Kings Heath’. (At our second campsite the receptionist told us her son was in Chester. “Oh, Chester?” I said. “ChestA,” she repeated.)

“How did he know we were from Birmingham?” I asked Hubs afterwards.

“It’s splattered all over the number plate,” he said.

Ferry for a 20 minute crossing was 25€, but hey, you can’t be staggeringly stingy all the time, no matter how hard you try (and old habits Die Hard). Breeze as we bombed across the water was refreshing – so refreshing I had to go inside before hypothermia set in. The ferry had all these open seats up top, it was dead cute.

As we drove off the other side I could tell Hubs was getting tired: irritable, sighing a lot, fidgeting in his seat. We looked for a campsite and got horribly lost, but we stumbled across a long road full of campsites. Stopped at first one and, surprisingly, it was Hubs who said, “I don’t like this one, there’s just something about it.” It could have been the man sitting outside reception who looked chronically depressed. Next one was fine, nice place.

Put tent up in scalding heat, so hot I had to keep cooling my legs off under the water tap to stop from crisping. As a treat for our efforts we had a cold beer at the tiny bar on site. Hubs was overcharged, which is no minor offence for a Yorkshireman, so we won’t be drinking there again!
And orf to the nearest supermarket to stock up on supplies, and lo, they sell blocks of ice for our poor coolbox.

Spent evening reading and relaxing in the glorious sun, and then, of course, bed early (8.30 to be precise; I think we may have a medical condition).

Cricket-ville here, noise all night.

* The heat is incredible. As we drove south I watched the gardens turn from luscious green to desert plants, and the houses look more Spanish than French down here.

* I’ve barely lifted a finger since we left home. Hubs is SO good at throwing something together for dinner and washing up afterwards. He even toddles off with the dirty clothes to wash them – by hand! Absolute star.

DAY 11 – Saturday 5 June

No strange creatures snuffling round our tent last night (phew), only the relentless sound of crickets. Woke up to unfamiliar bird calls – pterodactyls are still alive!

“Oh, its cloudy,” I moaned, glimpsing the grey windows of the tent, but no, it was condensation and, tsk, another sunny day.

Facilities here aren’t as good as the other sites (I’ll be doing a list of all the campsites we’ve stayed at). Showering floods the whole outside block, but as long as you can wee, shower and clean your teeth it doesn’t really matter.

The campsite itself is actually like a dry football pitch, and we’re right in the middle with the ‘permanent’ campers on the outside. There’s no shade and no privacy. A couple of women from a static caravan walked by and stared at us like circus attractions – feels like we’re the entertainment for the residents (“Hey, look! Brits!”). Another woman walked around the site carrying an ENORMOUS cat in a blanket like a baby. (We saw a woman at the second campsite walking her two dogs AND A CAT on leads – they’re very strange aren’t they, the French).

Drove to bottom of road to have a look at the beach, which was magnificent; sand like flour, water bloo and clear. I love the sound of crashing waves. Picked pretty pebbled and left our footprints in the sand.

As luck would have it (we’re always lucky… the power of positive thinking is a wunnerful thang) the town of Soulac Sur Mer is having a fete this weekend, so we went to have a look.

Fete? Pah! HUNDREDS of people were dressed up in costumes from the 1900s, the place was PACKED. Dozens of stalls sold everything from bread to hats, jewellery to antiques. It was bloody marvellous, all these French people milling around to French music. Street vendors played their music boxes and sang to appreciative audiences. The women were extraordinarily pretty (as Hubs kept pointing out to me, “Oh look, isn’t she PRETTY.” Slap, wallop.) Horse-drawn carriages and classic cars drove around the square outside an old church, all in staggering sunshine and blistering heat. I felt quite pretty wearing a dress (me, in a dress!), until I caught sight of myself in a shop window; ‘That can’t be me,’ I thought to myself, ‘I’m MUCH younger and MUCH thinner than that’. Tsk.

I was desperate to buy Hubs an old-fashioned swimming costume (think long johns with red stripes), but he adamantly refused.

A really lovely day.

Came back to the tent exhausted, had to follow the shade of a lone tree around to cool off. Messed around with the e:can convertor which is SUPPOSED to charge my laptop as we’re travelling but doesn’t. Gave up, but actually found a powerpoint AND an unsecured (argh!) connection to the internet at reception. No urgent emails or work, so that’s good.

Hubs would rather cut off his own leg than admit it, but I think the driving is making him rather tired. He was a bit ‘off’ today, not himself at all: distracted and distant (could be all the pretty girls he keeps eyeballing). Had a look at the mapbook and decided we can’t possibly go round the entire coast of Spain without really pushing it, and this is supposed to be a holiday, so planned a new route inland and then down to the south coast of Spain via Andorra.

Watched a DVD on the fully-charged laptop in bed (Hubs didn’t know I’d brought them: Taken, his favourite). Laptop now flat again.

Huge thunderstorm over the sea at 5am. My lasting memory of this road trip will be of Hubs crouched by the tent door absolutely naked watching the lightning explode across the sky. It hardly rained at all though.

DAY 12 – Sunday 6 June
SOULAC SUR MER to NEAR AGEN/TOULOUSE – 150 miles

Berluddy goddam cricket ALL NIGHT LONG. Thought it was actually in the tent somewhere, motionless and relentless, but when we took the tent down it was actually under the groundsheet – big bugger too – along with an alarming number of crawly things.

The rain, eet comes.

Headed off to Bordeax, through wine country, driving passed umpteen fields of stunted grapevines, just mile upon mile of vineyards. My dad would love it here.

Heading inland there are fewer sites than on the coast… in fact, the only one we came across around lunchtime was closed and derelict. Hubs, in MUCH better spirits today now that there are no ‘pretty girls’ to ogle, said we’d camp next to a river if we had to and not to worry.

Successfully navigated the ring road around Bordeaux (yay!) and headed towards Agen/Toulouse, but missed our turn-off and ended up on a toll road instead (curses). Countryside and tiny French villages are just gorgeous, you couldn’t be anywhere else but France, everything is just so French.

Spotted people selling cooked chickens along the roadside. “Let’s get one,” Hubs said, which of course was the kiss of death and we didn’t see any more after that. Had Doritos instead, laughing at the road signs which pointed towards ‘pique nique’ areas… it just tickled us (pique nique).

FINALLY spotted a small ‘campings’ sign and headed down a long country lane. Really long. I had visions of us camping outside a farmhouse next to a barn filled with rusty, bloody blades (because I watch far too many horror films). It was actually a fully-fledged campsite, so full of trees and green stuff it was like camping in the middle of a forest. The owner was just lovely, really friendly. Her farmhouse looks like it used to be a water mill, very quaint.

Found an isolated corner to camp – nobody can see us at all (yay!) and there’s shade (double-yay!).

Pitched up and wandered back to reception to place our order for bread and croissants to be delivered to our tent in the morning (service!) and bought a bottle of local wine, which wasn’t overpriced at all, only 4€… and VERY nice it was too.

Spent the evening yakking, yakking and yakking. A perfect end to a really nice day.

I LURVE road trips.

DAY 13 – Monday 7 June

No crickets last night (phew), just the noise of what sounded like a dog eating a duck – no idea what that was, and don’t like to dwell on it too much.

And behold, ze bloo sky!

Owner delivered our bread and croissants at 8.30am with a big smile. “Excuse moi,” I cried, “Avez vous wifi?” Her eyes widened for just a moment, obviously wondering how anyone could strangle the French accent in such an abominable way. I’m taking French lessons the minute we set foot back on British soil.

She didn’t have ‘wiifii’. Hardly anyone does.

Drove into Agen, some of it on the wrong side of the road (and neither of us noticed until a car came speeding towards it, the driver’s face just a series of startled circles). Streets were closed off for a market, how exciting. Luck again gave us a prime parking spot right next to it, despite it being busy, but I had a funny feeling. It didn’t feel right.

Market was interesting, had a Moroccan feel to it with lots of shiny jewellery, bright clothing, and lots of Islamic items. Hmm, Islam, they don’t approve of women wearing shorts do they. I suddenly felt naked. And more.

I turned to Hubs. “Are you happy about where we parked the car?” I asked him.

“No,” he said, and as one we both turned back.

Odd feeling.

Drove on through the beautiful countryside to Villeneuve Sur Lot. Popped into Tourist information but they didn’t appear to have very many leaflets, our campsite has more. Admired a brick-built church and then drove back to the campsite at midday to chiiiiiiill (Hubs still claiming that Katie Melua is definitely bonkers, whilst playing it over and over again on the car stereo).

Relaxed in sunshine and read book whilst Hubs did a Ray Mear’s type adaptation on tent opening to turn it into another canopy using a washing line, a stick and some ingenuity – he loves stuff like that, just HAS to keep busy. Watched dozens of dragonflies – red, blue and green – skimming the water of the stream that runs through the site. If my gorgeous granddaughter had been here (and I miss her bucket-loads) I would have told her that they were fairies… she would have loved that.

Campsite is brilliant. It even has a swimming pool! Hubs tried it out while I sat reading. I looked up at one point, the sound of silence alerting me, to find Hubs balanced precariously on the edge of the diving board. I thought briefly about our insurance policy cover before he dived in – like a whale performing a belly-flop.

Chatted to owner, such a nice woman, and planned to eat at her outside tables tonight as chicken curry is on the menu and I would ROLL OVER BROKEN GLASS for a curry.

There’s a young couple on site with a small baby. They walk or push this baby all around the campsite incessantly. It doesn’t cry, they just seem obsessed with it. They look very weary. I had the almost irresistible urge to rush over and say “We’ll look after it for half an hour, go and get yourselves a drink,” or offer them some baby advice gleaned from decades of child-raising, but I didn’t.

Hubs wants to stay here another day. We’ll see what the weather is like: if it’s raining we’ll move on, if its not we won’t.

Eating area at campsite is beautiful, outside the old farmhouse/water mill, next to swimming pool and beneath a grapevine-strewn gazebo – splendid stuff. Not so splendid was the chicken curry, which had no discernible spices in it at all, but with such pleasant surroundings it didn’t really matter. Chatted to elderly couple from Newcastle at the next table. We all fussed over a kitten and I made plans to sneak it back to the UK, but not sure Sam would be pleased (argh, I miss Sam too!).

We were up way late tonight… 9.30! I actually bought a wind up LED lantern for the trip, but we haven’t used it once because we’re in bed before darkness falls.

Photos soon (I'm too busy living it to download and shrink and upload), plus I've got a couple of Really Good videos... one showing our near-death experience over the pyrenees, one of our near-death boredom in a rain-lashed tent. All coming to a blog post near you shortly. Until then, adios mon amigos.