Your life in their hands

We travelled about 90 minutes East and enjoyed the countryside becoming distinctly more Tyrolean as we approached Switzerland. We were heading for Acrobath (www.acrobath.com) which turned out to be bit like Go Ape except with scant regard for anyone's health and safety.

Lisa and Arthur put themselves in danger for an hour or so, whilst Merri and I enjoyed the composting toilet and a warm can of Orangina.

I explained to the proprietor (by writing 'THIS IS A DEATHTRAP!' on a piece of paper for the express delight of her newly arrived customers) that if we were in England I could probably make a phone call and have her shut down within the hour. She shrugged a nonchalent 'bien sur' at me as the hob-nailed boots of a zip-wiring 18-stone father of four skimmed past my ears. Then we left, all aggrieved like.

We returned to Gannay sur Loir to discover a palpable frisson of excitement. Yes, Thursday is the day that the Pizza Wagon rolls into town. The campsite emptied in a frenzied rush to join the queue to place orders. We joined in to be allocated a timeslot for collection some two hours hence.

We returned, two hours later to stand around in a muddled queue comparing pickup times with other campers whilst the chilled-out pizza lady casually dropped the occasional pizza onto the floor whilst speeding other out to locals 'fast-track'-style from the back door of the van.

Still, those 40 minutes stood in diesel fumes won't harm us and the pizzas tasted quite good in the end.

Hot

It's going to be 32degrees plus today, so we're not planning on going anywhere. A morning by the tent (M&A are colouring) and another afternoon by the pool.

Poolside

Arthur's feet are sore so we drove to Moulins, 20 miles away, to buy him some Crocs in a larger size. No chance. Nothing in the centre of town. We were directed to an out of town shoeperstore - a sort of Le Tommy Balls, where we picked up some knock-off Crocs which will have to do.

Anyway, whilst in Moulins we had a thorough look around and exhausted the fleshpots in less than twenty minutes.

We took in a few villages on the way back looking out for potential restaurants. Nowt. France is even more shut than Spain. It's like that mock town they built to test nuclear explosions in the Nevada desert, except at least they had Indiana Jones in a fridge.

We spent the afternoon by the pool enjoying the local church bells striking a selection of random hours every so often in the distance and guessed how long until tea.

By the pool

We drove to Decize today to pick up my prescription and visit the intermarche. That's the end of our exploring.

We are now sitting by the pool eating our favourite French sweets and reading books. Merri's doing her sticker book.

We have provisions. It may be garbanzos for tea.

Yesterday we walked only 20 minutes from the site to the banks of the Loire. Lovely wide banks... Almost beaches. Had it to ourselves. The kids skinny-dipped and we saw lots of wildlife there and back. We plan to return with a pic-nic.

1,2,3, testing.

I've figured out that without wifi a single blog post with one photo costs about £3 in roaming data charges! I'm trying one without a photo. If that's too dear it'll have to be postcards!

No wifi

There's no free wifi so blog posts will be short and sweet.

We had a reasonable first night on site despite the local polka band cranking it up loud at 10pm. Honestly, it is culturally still 1954 in France. Although, to be fair, by 1am they'd come right up to date and were butchering Nights In White Satin.

I nodded off eventually only to be woken by the local church bells striking four. Five minutes later, they struck four all over again.

This morning Arthur is playing 'whiff whaff' (table tennis) with the omnipresent Dutch. Meredith is listening to Abba and I'm sitting in the sunshine. Lisa's gone off to suss out local services in case I have another do.

Nous arrivons

We have arrived. The mothership is in situ. We attracted a crowd again.

Right now the kids are in the pool enjoying the evening sunshine and we're thinking about food.

I am in House, or La Maison as it's called here

I appear to have fallen over. No clues yet as to why but I'm busy clocking up diagnostics. So far, blood, ECG, ultrasound, X-Ray, Laser tunnel thingy (so House), all inconclusive. Plus Lisa, Arthur & Merri in hotel close-by.

I consider this getting good value out of my travel insurance.

Actually, it's 23.25 French time and I've snoozed all evening - feeling the best I've felt all day. Hope I wake up the same way.

I have not got enough signal for phone calls but just a squeak of data for blogging and Twitter - so it's a useful way of updating people.

However, battery nearly gone and no means if charging now. More tests in the morning and no visitors until 1pm :(

Anyway,tomake everyone jealous, here's a picture of hospital food before Tim Difford (& you know I'm not fussy):







And after my intervention (I should point out that that is my feet under the sheets. I wasn't that excited about creme caramel).







Anyway, they've given me a drop of the hard stuff now, so about to fall asleep. More tomorrow.







Down in one, down in one, down in one.

We're Up... Just

Just up and about. Reasonable night other than a spell about 1am when we had lots of noise for about half an hour when a new caravan arrived.

The tent's very wet so we'll need to dry it when we reach our destination after we've put the mothership up. Don't think we'll hang around this morning.

Sar Nav says it's 3 hours to destination.

We're in France

We've arrived at our stopover site south of Paris. Good journey but busy around Paris. Busy site too, but ok. Glad we're only here one night. we're sandwiched between Dutch and French. A bit like Belgium.

There's only 20 minutes free wifi so it's gonna cut off in a

All Aboard

Well it rained all night, but our plan at staying near to Dover was sound. We're now watching the diving on the flash new Moliere SeaFrance ferry, ready to set sail.

No free data in France so expect less updates until I find free wifi!

Meredith has retired to her chamber

Setting up temporary camp

Kingsdown Scout Camp Dover

Merri's Unwell

Saying Goodbye to Fidget

Creak...

Nearly ready for the off...

Packed

Just the bikes to get on and we're almost ready to go. Pulled a late shift to get the car loaded. It's a neat job. Getting it all back in in the same order is going to be a challenge.

There's more room in the car without Grace, but we'd rather have less room!

So, today is the first day if the holiday and the main challenge will be where to find cake.

New Year, New Holiday...

...we're still off to France though.

Getting ready. Hectic!

Don't Say It's Over

Well, we're back after our adventure. We eventually arrived about 10.30 pm last night after a quick Costa Coffee break at Watford Gap. It's now pouring down of course and we have a wet tent still in the back of the car which will need drying at some point.

Reading through this lot, we obviously packed a lot in. Here's to our next adventure.




This holiday has been brought to you by:

Acer, Apple, Microsoft, Guess what... I don't guess, Lutti Surfizz, Heroes, La Romaine Patissier - Airvault, Estelle, The Hold Steady, Top Gear, Scouting for Girls - She's So Lovely, Fuji Finepix, Huttopia Rambouillet, Camping de Courte Vallee, Fleet Foxes, Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, Room on a Broom, Dan Brown, the Dutchies, Kronenbourg Pur Malt, Torsade au Chocolat, Au Bon Accueil - St Generoux, Georges Herrison, backward serves, Armor-lux, il est froid! (Little France), Orangina, goats cheese and figs, Pizza ATM, Twister, Isles Flotantes.

Le Retour

We arrived back at Rambouillet and got the tent up in combat config
(sideways, no porch, no guys, few pegs) fairly quickly. We even got a
quick swim in their unusual freshwater pool before pizza and salad. A
little ping pong and then it was on to feeding the ducks on the lake
and a bike ride for Arthur and Merri.

Later on, with A&M watching Mr Bean again, Grace went on two bat-
hunting forays. We saw lots of different types, plus another one of
those luminous bugs.

Once tucked up in bed, the rains started and didn't stop all night
making putting the tent down a pretty miserable affair this morning.
The tent will need a thorough airing at some point.

Of course it brightened up as soon as we hit the road. We got to
Calais in good time and headed for our favourite restaurant where we
tucked into moules frites, salade nicoise and a steak for Grace.

Arriving at the port we found it queueing round les maisons to get
through immigration which they were taking very seriously today. In
the end we were too late for the 15:15 and got bumped to the 16:45 :-(

Anyway, we're on the boat now waiting for O2 to kick in so I can
upload this (the wifi at Huttopia was down) and so Grace can contact
Agent Gash who is back from his missionary work.

It'll be a long drive from Dover.