Sunburn and Hot Showers

Yesterday was hot. We're talking really HOT! Despite the high, wispy clouds covering the sun most of the time, we were hotter than we've been at any time in the holiday so far, so it's little surprise that both Lottie and I managed to catch the sun a little. Lottie, as usual, has been extremely careful with making sure that she's completely covered in factor 50, while I have used factor 50 over everything except my legs, in some vain attempt to de-pastify them. It was not however, my legs which got burned, it was my nose. Now everyone is calling me Rudolph, and humming Christmassy songs at me! Extra factor THERE today!

As usual, we stayed on the beach until the life guards took down the swimming flags at 7pm, and having had two days of cold showers, I walked, with Lizzy, to a different shower block (in fairness, we do appear to be equidistant between two blocks), and succeeded in having the first warm shower in three days! Oh, the pleasure! I returned to our pitch to find Emma ecstatic about her shower, having gone to our usual block and spending an extra 10 minutes (yes, you read that right) in the shower because we've finally got hot water again!

For the rest of the evening, after an unhealthy supper of hot dogs, we went round to our new German friends for a rematch at Kniffle (I believe it's called Yahtzee in England). I had, the night before, while Sina was teaching me how to play, managed to beat everyone. I protested vehemently that it was clearly a case of beginners luck, but Sina insisted on a revenge match, and I subsequently lost! Oh well. Since we're planning to go to the beach to roast marshmallows this evening (WITH Sina and Roman), there'll be NO chance I can get my own revenge. sigh


Emma and Neisha had an attempt at sleeping on the beach last night, but I gather returned at 4 this morning because Neisha was cold. Given the feebleness of her sleeping bag, this is not really a surprise! Mind you, a 3 season bag is usually not necessary at Truc Vert!

So today is the last full day, as we'll be heading off tomorrow afternoon (I plan to go to the beach in the morning before we pack up and leave!), and would you believe it? It's GLUM! Still, there's a chance my nose will revert to just normal colour in this, and the Christmassy songs will cease!

Sardines and Cold Showers

Since it's now the last week of July, I suppose we can expect that there will be more people on the camp site. To our delight, the people in the next pitch who seemed to have taken agin us for no readily apparent reason, and would stride across the middle of our pitch, ignoring any kind of social convention or personal space, have finally gone - we fell short of a rousing cheer as they left, although it did occur to us!

However, the number of people being squeezed into the campsite, and onto pitches barely big enough to take their tents has made me feel, again, somewhat guilty for the sheer size of our pitch. We don't actually have a place to park, our pitch not actually having direct access to the roads in the site, but we have truckloads of space!! I'll get pictures. So when a group of 7 chaps was shoehorned into one of the pitches adjacent to our own, I had to keep mumbling to myself "I booked - this is what they gave us - I have NO influence over where we get stuck, you know!"

All these new people, however, seem to have had an adverse affect on the facilities, so that on our return from the beach, somewhat closer to 7 than I'd thought we were going to come back, the showers were cold. It's rather like getting into the water of the surf - your body's hot, so the shower feels that much colder - brrrr!

However, the reason we were so late back from the beach was that the surf was truly awesome! The beach was packed with sun-bathing bodies as far as the eye could see, but still they kept arriving, and so the little patches of privacy (on a beach - are you kidding me?) kept getting smaller and smaller. I'm afraid the mother in me took over at one point as I guerilla sun-factored a young man who was, it transpired, wearing some kind of sun cream with SPF-0 (he showed it to me) written on the bottle! His shoulders were burning, and despite his eye-rolling, I slapped on a bit of cream.

But back to that surf - you didn't need to get very far in before you were being bowled over by every other wave. Lottie and Lizzy were squealing like, well, girls, as they tried to escape the clutching fingers of surf racing up the beach. Every so often one of them would disappear beneath a particularly large wave, come up gasping for breath, and launch herself right back into the water.

Thankfully the glum weather we've been suffering from (and let me tell you, there's NOTHING to write about on the days we don't visit the beach) seems to have moved on, and while there are a few clouds, we're having the blistering heat we'd expect at this time of year in this camp site. As I came away from the beach just before 7 this evening, I could still feel the burn of the sun on my shoulders.

Electricity

A little crie de coeur this morning from Emma and Neisha, in their pod watching Videos had me researching why our electricity supply had failed.

After testing the 4-gang extension (yes, this year I did bring European converters - do you THINK I'm stupid?) in the loos, I established that the problem lay in the 10m supply with the camping plug attached (yes, I also tested the supply at the outlet, by unplugging our neighbours supply and using that for a second or two). A call to Andrew back home convinced me that I had the power to work it out!

In the absence of any kind of obvious screw to open up the wound up end of the 10m supply, I thought I'd best start with the camping plug end, where I promptly hit paydirt! Turns out that when our new neighbours had pitched their little tent, they'd managed to pull our power supply a little - Lottie'd pushed it back in, but on opening up the plug we found that the brown (live) wire had disconnected completely. It was the work of moments to re-attach the wire in the correct place.

I know it's nothing really, but I'm feeling pretty good about myself!

Bugs

You have to expect, when you're on a camping holiday, that there'll be a few bugs.

We discovered, within a few hours of arriving in our pitch that we're somehow host to a nest of wasps rather closer to the camp than we're completely comfortable with. We've managed to come up with a, possibly daft, way to deal with them. A little syrup into a bowl placed a little way from the table keeps the wasps (and indeed many of the other bugs) away from our food.

Less easy to deal with was the very large beetle who'd managed to wander into the tent and was clinging firmly to the side near the girl's pod. Thankfully our German neighbour seems to be a man of imagination, and a cup and a plate later the bug was scuttling off into the undergrowth – in the OTHER direction from the tent.

The European hornet on the beach was quite a trick, as it happens. I knew nothing about this bug until a kindly gentleman was pummelling it to death beneath his croc shoe. I decided to dig up the little beastie, in the hopes of being able to identify it. I'm not sure you can imagine my shock on finding that the creature was still alive, and actually attempting to claw it's way out of the sand. I'm very sorry to say that the squeals of 4 panicking females is quite hard to resist, and so I re-buried the little beastie. A quick google later and I found that far from being the indiscriminate stinging machines I'd been led to believe, these gentle giants are, in fact, quite shy, leading me to believe that this one had been lured to the beach by the smells of discarded ice-cream wrappers. There's a part of me that hoped it survived it's re-burial, and flew back to it's nest to live a long and happy life. There is, however, a huge part of me that doesn't believe that's possible. 

iPad

OK, I was rather expecting that the campsite would be awash with iPads, you know, so it's been a huge surprise (massive) to find that until this morning, I saw nary a one!

Sadly when I did finally see one, and stopped to chat with the owner, he and it were both guarded by a blind, and somewhat grumpy mutt, who wouldn't let me talk to the owner of the iPad, or attempt to make friends with herself. All attempts were met with teeth (thankfully no skin was broken - no tetanus or rabies jabs for me!) and snarls.

Poop!

Equipment

One thing you find yourself doing while on a holiday like this, is to think about what you'd like to bring with you next year. As previously discussed, I want a fridge of some sort – Argos will sell me a mini fridge in either white, pink or pink spots for £19.99, and for a very little more, I can get a lovely “Hello Kitty” version. All of these will hold 6 cans of drink (apparently this is a 4 litre fridge), and should manage to keep butter and milk cool during the holiday. And then you find yourself thinking – “Yes, that's all very well, but for just a tiny bit more than that, I can get a 6 litre fridge...”

And then there's a broom. You see, I've got a brush (I think there may have been a dustpan once, but that's long gone), but actually it'd be nice to NOT have to bend down to brush out the tent.

And an awning/gazebo type thing, so that when it rains I can cook under cover, and not have the rain dripping down my neck.

I mean, most of the ideas I had for this holiday have been OK – obviously the fridge idea would have been better if I had done some long term testing of the 12-volt socket, to see if, on extended use overheating would occur and the thing would cut out in an annoying manner. As it happens, you can get a block of ice down at the shop, and as luck would have it, on our way up the hill today we found a random block of ice melting on the side of the path, so we picked that up and shoved it into the fridge. Milk and butter doing the NOT melty thing by the end of the lovely hot afternoon. The clothes rail was definitely a good thing, although persuading the girls to actually hang their clothes up on it is proving a bit more tricky than I'd expected.

And, I'll have you know, those “stupid” solar glow lights that everyone said were a complete waste of money have actually been more use than you'd expect – since I got 4 of them, they provide sufficient light in the tent at night to help anyone wanting to go the the loo, or, as happened, find the tent when stumbling home a bit later on. Bringing last year's roll mats to use as entrance mats on which to deposit shoes on the way into the tent hasn't been a total failure, either.

In fact, those "stupid" solar lights are SO bright that when Emma and Neisha came in last night and failed to turn them off before going to bed, the light was bright enough that when I woke early, they stopped me going back to sleep.

Rain

I was woken in the night, as the first few drops of rain pattered down on the flysheet, by a small voice saying, "Mum! Can I come in? It's going to be a thunderstorm!" "No it's not," I replied, "it's only a little rain." At which point a flash of lightening brightened the whole tent, and I accepted my fate with resignation. Small child wriggled in, and shivered next to me.

Thankfully the storm was quite short, but it carried on raining through the morning, and well into the afternoon. Having spent most of the day in the tent, getting out only for a few minutes between storms, it was with relief that everyone welcomed the suggested trip to McDonalds at about 3 this afternoon! Yes, hang our heads in shame, the height of excitement this afternoon was a trip to Mickey D's!

Sadly the forecast is not telling me that anything is going to be any different tomorrow, so we really need to think of something to do. This reminds me of the year we first arrived, when I asked the lady in the acceuil what there was locally - nature reserves, animal parks - to be told firmly, "There is the beach - that's all you need!" Yes, but not on a day like today - I was strangely unable to interest anyone in a trip to the ocean!

I suspect a plan is necessary in order to stave off boredom - this is a first, you understand. We have never been in the situation that it's rained while at this camp site - well, not for more than an overnight, anyway. Last year there were at least two nights of rain, but it was always bright the next morning - we never actually had to entertain ourselves. I have, however, to be thankful for the electricity, because Elizabeth has watched, Spirited Away, Totoro, Shrek 2, Toy Story 2, and possibly something else as well - and remember, last year this would have resulted in multiple trips to sit in the toilets while the devices recharged.

What to plan for tomorrow? I'll tell you later.

Life's a beach

Our first full day here, and we spent it on the beach. We spent a short time in the supermarket in the morning, but Neisha and Emma wanted to get down to the beach as quickly as was possible, in order to get as much sun time as possible. Sadly Emma failed to keep herself properly hydrated, and has ended up feeling very much the worse for wear by the next morning. We're trying to make sure she drinks loads of squash, in the hope that she'll be good for the beach again later.

Actually, even I felt exhausted after all the surf time, and when I woke up this morning my legs were complaining bitterly about having been exercised without any warning!

We took Neisha to the market this morning, in the hope of getting a cup for her to drink her squash from, but the usual seller wasn't there! Neither was the large stall selling household items – I realise this is something one doesn't need, but I always love to see the range of stuff being sold as “useful”! We did, thank goodness, find the nice Vietnamese man selling prawn crackers – this year I decided to have one of his “spring rolls”. This is, of course, nothing like a spring roll you'd find in the UK, being a roll of lettuce, with mint, round some rice and beansprouts, and some prawns on the outside, all held together with some kind of what looked like edible cling film! Quite delicious! The market wasn't a complete bust, but I was disappointed to find many of the stalls I used to like missing, and many more clothes stalls up.

And may I, for a moment please, have a little go at the prices? DAMN, eating out in France is SO not cheap any more. Well, I suppose I shouldn't say cheap, but inexpensive. It's always been somewhere you can get a really good meal for not a whole load of money, but driving into Cap Ferret I passed an erstwhile reasonably priced restaurant, to find that their Moules-Frites menu is €12.90. This rather puts into perspective the menu €7.90 in the Buffalo eatery, which I thought was just adequately priced. Since the restaurant down the road with those moules has other menus starting at 18 euros, can you forgive me if I think this is pretty damn pricey? The exchange rate is actually pretty close to £1 to €1 which means that an average menu is pretty much £18 - is it me, or is that expensive? And stuff in the market's not cheap, either!

Rant over.

Roll'd again

Yesterday evening, as Lottie and I deserted the wifi area to explore the site, we strolled past the bar just as the opening notes of "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley rang out.

We did chuckle.

Glamping at the beach!

I haven't actually set up the blog yet, and this is being written off-line, in the hope that by the time I get down to the wifi area tomorrow, we can upload to our chosen blog. The choice, it has to be said, is hardly dizzying! What to do, create a whole new blog, or use the old one.

Regardless of that particular dilemma, let me tell you how the glamping is going.

As you may know, the plan was that we were going to have 3 of us driving – after the interesting fiasco of getting Emma added to my insurance, last year, with the specific proviso that we were going to be driving in France, and then having to cancel the policy because, actually, she was too young to legally drive in France, regardless of her driving licence status in the UK, we thought that we'd be just fine getting two 18-year olds onto the insurance. Sadly, this has, once again, proven futile. Apparently last year's insurers would have put them on, but this year, it appears I'm with a different bunch of people, who think the girls are too young!! Anyway, with all that in mind, we were going to make a really early start on Saturday morning, and take turns driving all day, so that we'd be pitching up here before 9pm, and it'd still be light enough to pitch. Well that didn't happen!! Since it was, once again, only me driving, we had to take two days to finish the trip, although the ludicrously early start meant that we were able to push on substantially further than Gacé, and parked up just outside Poitiers. And because we hate striking camp so much, we decided to stay in a small hotel for the night.

This was a huge treat! Having stopped (briefly) at Futuroscope to see how expensive the hotels were, we realised that the chances of finding something within our budget was SO not going to happen at a place like that, and pressed out into the country. A little fiddling later and we arrived at Le Moulin Vert, a very nice place which provided two perfectly nice, if not particularly modern rooms for just over 100 euros, including a decent breakfast. Enquiries led us to a Buffalo eatery, where we consumed, not the steaks we all so richly deserved, but the somewhat less expensive Steak Haché.

Exhausted, I fell into bed well before the girls had finished the film they were watching on Lizzy's laptop, and slept until Elizabeth kicked something off her bed, which hit the floor with a huge crash. Thankfully it was the plastic tray in the vanity box, which cracked a little, not her laptop, which was my first concern!

A short, and relatively relaxing drive today brought us to Le Truc Vert. Our favourite camp site (sorry Camping du Planet).

This year we're using a huge, great, 8-person tent, because we've brought Emma's mate Neisha, and I have to say it's lovely to have all that space. I have a small, 2-person pod all to myself, which is quite a treat. Lottie and Lizzy have a 2-person pod to share, into which we have managed to squeeze 2 single blow ups. Emma and Neisha have a 4 person pod to share, and seem to be quite happy with that arrangement. We're all quite enchanted by the amount of space in the middle of the tent, and while there is a fair bit of “stuff” lying round, we're having none of the problems we've always had in the old 4-person tent. I think a huge “Thank You” should go to Vesna, who researched and chose this particular tent!

We've put up a clothes rail for the girls to hang their storage on, and make sure their clothes are either hung up, or at least clustered round it. Hmmm – we'll see how long that lasts, shall we? And electricity! No, this is too important, it should have it's own paragraph...

ELECTRICITY!! Yes, we have electricity this year. Although the connection is further away than our 10m cable, we've got a long 4-gang socket and a plastic bag. If I can find a camping shop, I'll see if I can find an extension. But no matter – we've got electricity, which is exactly what we wanted.

On a completely unrelated matter, one thing that partly freaked me out and delighted me was that when we rolled up at the automatic check-in at Eurotunnel was that before I'd had a chance to shove in the card on which I booked the trip, some kind of recognition had read my number plate, and put up a welcoming note on the screen “Welcome Mrs Day! Your hanger is being printed out – hang it in your windscreen and carry on!” or something like that anyway. Delighted because it was a beautiful use of computing power: Freaked out because it's a dangerous use of computing power! I'm torn.

OK – let's bimble down to the wifi area, and see if we can't upload this...