A French Fleecing!

Decided to leave today and head north, first stop 30 mins along the road was Dune de Pilat.  4€ for the car park.  The walk up the dune was tough, plastic steps built into the side were subsiding and very difficult for Morgan but using the rope helped; next time we'll just climb up the sand. It’s the biggest dune in Europe and so unlike anything we’ve ever been on before.  Quite strange but also a truly amazing site.

The dune is growing between 1 and 5 metres inland a year so all the campsites in the forest around must be under threat.  Its 2km long,  we walked to the top Chris thinks about 105 metres high.  Evan ran up and was so full of energy – I found it a little harder!!!  We all enjoyed the slide down though! We didn’t have to pay the motorhome prices as we were narrow enough to get through the car exit and thankfully there were no height barriers!

We then started to drive north to begin our planned island tour up the west coast.  Horrendous busy main roads through Bordeaux but as we got the satnav to avoid all toll roads we quickly came off onto beautiful country lanes and through millions of vineyards again.  Really pretty.

We needed to shower so decided to find a campsite for the night, found one in the book that just said only 15€ a night with a pool at St.George-de-Didonne so headed there. Arrived, checked in, gave all my details to the woman and then she charged me 60€!!!!!! I nearly cried!!  But I just had to pay it – I’d conducted the whole conversation in French, all children’s dates of birth, addresses, names etc so I couldn’t change my mind… NOT impressed at all!!  We were shown to our pitch, opposite was a group of really dodgy looking 18 yr old French lads whose body language was awful – they just stared at us.  Then we realised that the couple next to them were complaining about them to who we assume were site managers or could have been the parents of some of them, they’d obviously had a loud night and were being made to apologise!!  Still, put Chris right on edge and we really weren’t comfortable.  We put up our beach tent and put everything inside it.  I bought 1 hr of wifi for 2€ for Chris – another ripoff, and a laundrette token for 5€.  I put as much washing as possible into the machine and hung it out to dry, bought a washing line and pegs for 3€ at the shop which sells everything!!  Despite a rather grey day it was now surprisingly clear in contrast to the weather forecast.  Chris went for shower and shave and to his delight the block right next to us has cubicles with toilet, sink, shower and heated mirror all together with a moveable heater!!! – so it should considering how much we’re paying!! Ha ha!!

I then took the kids to the pool, it had a small 2 ft deep pool for Morgan and Seren  and the main pool which unfortunately got deep very quickly so I had to watch Evan very closely- managed to get him swimming again.  I hope that he can show his instructor in September!!  He was real proud of himself again, and I was so pleased that he could remember!  Came home to spaghetti for tea which the kids were ravenous for!  The French lads were no trouble as they were obviously on best behaviour after last night!!  The site’s music and entertainment in the evening skit was unpleasantly loud, such a mistake to have come her but at least we made use of all the services that we could!!