Day one of relaxation!

We woke up to blazing sunshine and had our breakfast outside, whilst we planned our day. For me, this was the real start of the holiday- it felt so relaxing to be sipping coffee in the sunshine outside Gertie and all of the tensions of the day before vanished.

We decided to explore St Denis and its beaches on our bikes. One thing that I have noticed about France on this trip is how ameable everywhere is to cyclists. At every stop so far there have been cycle paths, which cut through the woodland and surrounding areas, away from the road. I’ve never seen so many cyclists in my life, and Jacques and I are both in agreement (after seeing one too many) that men over the age of 50 should never, ever, under any circumstances wear lycra cycling shorts.

The beaches around St Denis are not what you would call beautiful. They are covered with rocks and seaweed all the way down to the sea- not sunbathing beaches at all. I was in my element because I absolutely love rock pools and I persuaded Jacques to get his feet slimy and come rock pooling with me. It was pretty precarious, but we saw some crabs and fish, so it was worth it. We were also struck by how many other people seemed to be into digging around in the rock pools then we realised that they were actually all out collecting shellfish for their dinners. Whole families were out, with things that looked like garden rakes scraping up the rock and collecting things for dinner. I love seafood and was desperate to try collecting some juicy morsels too, but Jacques pointed out that we didn’t have wellingtons, a rake or a bucket so we couldn’t do it. He did promise that we would come back again tomorrow better prepared and give it a go. We had a look in a bucket that a family was loading into their car and saw that they had gathered a collection of mussels and things that looked like snails (that I later saw in the supermarket were called peches).

In the afternoon we drove to a beach further down the island called La Bree and settled down for some sunbathing and relaxing. Oh sorry, did I say sunbathing and relaxing, I forgot that I was with my husband and therefore had to entertain him constantly. There would be no book reading, no quiet contemplation of life or people watching- with Jacques everything has to be ACTION. So, with a heavy heart I agreed to play bat and ball (christened by James and Annie as gay ball, so we call it that). To my surprise, I loved it! I’m not that bad (by that bad, I mean I can hit the ball 1 time out of 3!) and it was good fun, I can almost see where Jacques gets his enthusiasm for being active on the beach from. We cooled off after the game by having a dip- our first swim in the sea this year. It was so gorgeous, really, really warm- I could have stayed there for hours.

Quite an uneventful evening- the routine of camping life takes up most of your time in the evening: putting the awning out, hanging up the wet clothes and towels, cooking dinner, washing up, making the bed, bringing the awning in, packing everything securely away, bringing the washing in... all of these little tasks take hours. Things that are simple in a house (like getting into bed) are a full scale military operation in the van, but its fun and we’re definitely getting better at doing these van things.