The journey to ile d'Oleron

Arrived at Le Havre and the sun was shining- we could tell this was going to be the start of something great. Having suffered through weeks and weeks of rain and dreary grey skies in England, this was the tonic we both needed. We skipped down the stairs of the ferry to find Gertie still in one piece (despite Jacques horror stories about how cars are sometimes found piled on top of each other at the end of ferry crossings). Things were looking up- it was the start of our great adventure. We disembarked, getting pulled over by immigration (we have now been stopped at every possible turn- Jacques thinks its because Gertie is left hand drive with GB number plates, I think its because he refuses to wear a t-shirt when we’re driving and wears his cap backwards...) Fortunately the new Mr & Mrs Woolston passed the passport test with flying colours- James told us that French officials are much more amenable to married couples and its true that as soon as the guard saw we were married his demeanour towards us visibly softened. I knew I got that ring on my finger for something!

The journey out of Le Havre does not need to be repeated- suffice to say there was arguing and shouting between this married couple as we missed the exit for a second time and had driven roughly 60k only to end up exactly where we started. Then the heavens opened- now I am not going to pretend that I laughed and saw the funny side of this. Jacques, bless him, was good natured about it-‘hey its only a bit of rain, we’re on our honeymoon, life is great.’ I disagreed, but didn’t say anything and took to grinding my teeth some more, whilst I thought about the repercussions of garrotting him with one of the many wires coming out of our cigarette lighter (don’t ask!)

The drive was long and arduous - we planned to get to Ile D’Oleron for the night, but it was taking much, much longer than the 5 hours that we anticipated, due to the fact that we had forgotten to take into account the fact that Gertie’s average speed is 70k. To make matters worse, and pretty terrifying there was a huge thunder and lightening storm and the rain was bucketing down. Loads of cars gave up and pulled itno the hard shoulder to wait out the storm, we continued on but at a really slow speed and I was gripping the sides of my seat for dear life. Jacques was pretty blasé about the fact we were driving through a deathtrap and was much more concerned with taking his eyes off the road and looking into the back of the van to see if Gertie was leaking anywhere. This, of course, made me feel even safer on the road and I wished for about the thousandth time that day that I had learnt to drive (the law being that you can’t criticise anyone else’s driving if you can’t drive yourself). We made it through the storm alive, and with our relationship still just about intact and drove on towards Oleron.

Oleron is beautiful, really gorgeous. My mood was already considerably chirpier as we entered Rochefort and suddenly there were miles of blue skies as far as the eye could see, then we took the bridge over to Ile D’Oleron and I seriously couldn’t think of anywhere I would rather be. The only drawback was that it had taken us about 12 hours to get there, so it was fast approaching dark and we weren’t sure where we were going to stay for the night. We had consulted our official Guide to Camping in France, which is all in French (but we think we’ve got it sussed) and there were two areas for camping cars on the island. We found the first one in Boyardville but it was full, so we made our way to the second one praying that it would still have a space for us. We were seriously grubby and exhausted by this point. It had been such a long day, and remember we had only had a few hours sleep on account of the snorers the night before. Fortunately when we pulled into the town St Denis (weird name for a Saint I think, but there you go) we saw sings leading us to a camping area and it was really, really nice. Set in woodlands, with loads of room and privacy for each camper and (joy of joys) a shower block! We both showered and ate and as darkness fell we retired to bed- it had been such a long day and we were just so pleased to finally be stationary and in such a lovely sopt.