So, just to recap, on what we've done since the last post:
Weds 18/07/07
We decided that it would be rude not to spend a day at the beach in Oleron, given the fact that the sun was blazing and the sea was 20 degrees- bliss. We spent the day lying prostrate on our towels punctuated by frequent (at Jacques' insistence) games of gay ball, which I am pleased to report I am getting much better at (we can now achieve a rally of 4 hits without me missing the ball!). The day was long, the sun shone, the sea was warm- it was paradise, until Jacques pointed out that I was looking a little bit pink. Now, I know about the dangers of the sun, and how important it is to reapply cream but in my haste to get the the beach I seemed to have missed large patches of skin, which were no looking a rather luminous shade of fuchsia. I wasn't the only guilty party- Jacques was also sporting a lovely bright red line across his shoulders, which had already started to peel. Not good. In our defence, I think the lack of sun in England made us forget the basics of sun safety. Lesson learned- we've now invested in factor 30 and it won't happen again! Suffice to say, we spent the evening in Gertie trying to keep as far apart from eachother as possible (not easy in a small van believe me) in order to avoid the waves of heat emanating from eachother's burnt bits and we made VERY good friends with the aftersun.
Thursday 19/07/07
More travelling- great! Now, don't get me wrong the idea of a road trip is fab: the wind in your hair, the open road ahead of you, the scenery, the beautiful places you would never see otherwise.... The reality is two sunburnt grumpy people sitting in a van where the fans have broken bickering about directions and being freaked out every ten minutes or so by crazy French drivers haring at you at a rate of knots with no regard for that fact that the road is very narrow and you are in a very wide vehicle with cars on one side and traffic on the other- it is a good way to raise your heartbeat to say the least. I have now bitten off all of my nails and have taken to covering my face with my hands whenever I see a car coming towards us, which Jacques has pointed out isn't very helpful, but it makes me feel better.We had a plan to take the Royan ferry to cut out about 100k of the road journey to the South West coast roads and then stop at Sulac sur Mer on the other side for some more beach action, and hopefully some waves. Well, we made the ferry and had a seamless crossing. But Sulac sur Mer wasn't to be: nowhere for camper vans to park overnight.
So we consulted our handy French campingcar book to find the next place along the coast with an area for camping and headed for Carcans. Now, I have a bone to pick with the publishers of this 'handy' little book-
the directions in it are obscure to say the least, the vital information about the fact that you have to contact the police in the town if you want the camping area to be opened up was omitted, and 2/3 times the places published in the book don't exist! We have been on a magical mystery tour around many towns now in search of mythical camping areas that really aren't there (believe me we have looked hard for them) at the hands of the book. The book has now been relegated to the back of the van and we're relying on sign posts and intuition, which has proved to be much more effective!
Using this combination we found ourselves in Lacanau, a surfer's party town, which we couldn't party in given our very small funds, but the atmosphere was brilliant. One thing that did freak us out thouhg, was a large procession through the town centre by a travelling circus parading a lion in a caged van. It was horrible to see, having been brought up in the UK where you just don't see these things because we're told that its cruel to the animals. I don't know if the lion was distressed or not, but we felt uncomfortable looking at it, and decided to get back to the van for some relaxing under the awning, wine drinking and baguette eating-much more civilised. One thing we've noticed about ALL of the towns we've driven though is that every single one has a travelling circus, whihc is advertised on every single lampost with a garish red or yellow flag depicting one of the most creepy and disturbing clowns that I have ever seen- I mean a really freaky clown with a huge, maniacal grin and melting eye make up: the kind of thing that would give children nightmares. I can't believe that anyone would ever want to go to the circus having seen one of these posters, especillay not a small child. Obviously IT was never released here in France.
Friday 20/07/07
A lovely chilled out day updating the blog and going for a bike ride. Not much to report, just one of those great days where the sun is shining and your sunburn has gone down enough to take the leggings off and get your legs out for a bit more tanning!
Saturday 21/07/07
More travelling! This time, we were set on making it to our destination: Hossegor. We thought that we would break up the long journey with a visit to Europe's largest sand dune Dune de Pyla. I'm so glad that we did. The dune was breathtaking (literally, it's 100m vertical climb up soft sand) and the view from the top was definitely worth the punishment on the thighs. The best bit, thoug, was running down the other side! I was so scared, the view from the top was about as steep as a black run, but small children were brave enough to fling themselves over it- so I couldn't really wimp out! Jacques, in his inimitable style, had decided it would be a good idea to bring his skimboard to the top of the dune (despite me warning him that it would make the climb a lot more arduous). So everyone was staring at the crazy English couple with the skimbboard, wondering what Jacques was planning to do with it. All eyes on him, he threw the borad down the slope, jumped on it....and promptly fell off it, because the sand was too soft and wouldn't hold the board and Jacques without it sinking! Fortunately Jacques never worries about looking like a plonker, so he wasn't bothered! Anyway, i did the running off the edge thing, after watching a father doing it with a small baby in his arms (I kid you not!) and it wasn't half as scary as it had looked from the top. It was all quite exhilarating actually, and set us both up for the other half of the the long drive down to Hossegor.
We arrived, weary but happy to see our favourite place (Hossegor) again at about 7pm. Checked into a nice little wooded camping spot in Seignosse and hunkered down under the awning for the night with vin rouge, dinner and the occasional disturbance of huge pine cones crashing down from the trees overhead onto our van throughout the night (but fortunately none on our heads, which I was surprised about given how things like that always seem to happen to us!)
Sunday 22/07/07
Beach, sun, surf and factor 30 all the way: no burnt bits today!
3 comments:
I just want to add that I did actually fall off my board a coupld of times trying to sand skim the not so steap parts and looked like a prize idiot, who cares what you look like tho?? I did successfully manage to skim to really steap bit that kate was scared of walking down, alothough the sand was so soft I was traveling at a slow walking pace - not all that excilorating and I wouldn't recomend it if you want to get your pulse racing...
Oh!I have visions of more broken bones...must be a mother talking! It all sounds fabulous, just go and enjoy :)
Glad you two finally made it out of the Country, didn't get stopped at customs then? Good work, good work!
Its raining here, which makes a nice change from the blazing Summer we have had so far.
I like the flowers around the wind screen - Suits you sir, sure it makes for a special background for gay ball (What ever that is, I dont want to know).
I see AdSense is tuning in well to your page...Not!
Give me a link back to Visitor World? Please? :)
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