Sea? What sea? How many millions of gallons?

14th to 18th July
Well now we know it definitely is Bastille Day and everything in France is closed. Fortunately we have loads of food so no need to worry and of course the boulangerie (bakers), are open first thing every day. We are heading for the “best aire in France” according to the book. This aire is reached up a single track road running alongside the port entrance. The main problem with this is that it is not straight but curves fairly sharply around so you cannot see if anybody is coming the other way, we have seen some huge vans having to reverse out of the way. On our arrival it looks absolutely packed and we park at the side of the road and are about to look for somewhere else nearby when the Dutch chap in the van next to us says, just stay there, nobody will mind, so we did. Then about 2 hours later we saw a van leaving a prime spot and quickly nipped in there. The weather is amazing so hot and sunny, having wandered around the village and along the pebble beach, plus of course a visit to the lighthouse we just chilled out on our chairs. This is one of the nice things about aires you tend to sit at the back of your van and chat to the people either side while sipping your drink. We saw a really good sunset at around 10pm and made our plans for tomorrow.

Somewhere along the line we got our lines crossed with Carole and Andy and headed for Le Crotoy some 50 odd miles further up the coast towards Boulogne. This seemed like a very good idea as the children would not have to sit in the car for hours on end. We went to check out the place and stayed on the biggest aire we have ever seen. It holds some 70 vans and so we could not imagine having any trouble getting on, which was the case. As soon as we were set up we got our bikes off and cycled to find the campsite we thought we were booked on for Sunday. We were soo excited as Joseph and Eleanor were coming with a tent to spend some time with us in Normandy. Carole says they are very excited and it is very difficult to keep them calm but I reckon Joan is worse, we keep stopping at shops and she says I think I should get this or that for them.

Anyway having cycled for several miles we arrived at the seaside where there was no sign of any sea? Still we cycled back to the two campsites we had passed and inquired if we were booked in, and received a negative answer. So we returned to the town and enquired at both the campsites there and received the same answer, strange? Having returned to our van we were just chilling out with a drink when there was a very loud noise from a siren. Gosh I said to Joan there must be a factory near here, I wonder what they make? About 20 minutes later Joan who had been reading a booklet from the tourist information shop suddenly exclaimed, “my God!” That’s not a factory siren, 5 hours after high tide they open the flood gates over there and release millions of gallons of water onto the beach. We had this picture in our heads of us all being on the beach happily playing and suddenly this siren goes off and we grab everything and run like hell, weird. What was worse was we could see us hearing it seeing people running and thinking it was some sort of dinner bell! The leaflet also explained that the sea went out for 9 miles!!

Fortunately about now we got a text saying, we are not going to Le Crotoy but a place called Quiberville plage, which was about 5 miles from where we had been when we set of to Le Crotoy! However we had enjoyed the trip and our main concern was to ensure the site was good and we could get a couple of pitches adjacent in the hope that Carole and Andy could go out for a free evening and enjoy a meal or at the least a couple of drinks. On our arrival the site was very nice and the pitches were enormous. It very soon became apparent that we could all get onto one pitch, great. As the lady had no booking although Carole had emailed her we went around and picked one which seemed perfect and booked us all in, then went off to Veules les Roses a free aire about 5 miles away. It was amazing it must be highly recommended in a German book of aires as everybody else had a ‘D’ on their number plate. We had a quick look around to see if possibly our friends Joe & Ingrid were among them but we were pretty sure they had gone home by now. Most of the van’s seemed to be full of children and this raised our excitement levels as we anticipated Joe and Eleanor’s arrival. Sadly we did not go very far as it rained more or less continuously shame for the kids. Next day we went back to the port aire at St Valen Caux which was only a couple of miles further on so we arrived pretty early and explored the area, which was to prove useful later in the week.
To be continued..................................
Love
Joan and Bryan xxx
p.s. As many of you know we are home now and Joan is very ill with pneumonia so I will add here that she is much improved and apart from difficulty breathing is much better. She is receiving antibiotics and very good care. x

I should also explain that this has NOT been veted by management so the grammer/spelling may be iffy.