Simon and Jackie Annals

……..Completely Different.

I woke up 6.20am with Jackie bashing my leg to inform me that there was an animal rummaging around outside the tent. Under sufferance, I donned my boxers and went to investigate. There was nothing there, but we later deduced that it was a flock of sparrows attacking a stale slice of bread we had kept to feed them in the morning.

Needless to say I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I sat outside, completed my blog and watched an episode of Boardwalk Empire on my iPad with coffees until Jackie finally surfaced over an hour later.

The weather was cloudy and didn’t reach above 24*C, but that didn’t stop us sweating profusely as we disassembled camp. It took us about two and a half hours to pack everything away into the car until it was bursting at the seems. Luckily we didn’t have an extra keel to load us down even further!!!

We did have one major issue in that I had tightened the valve on my airbed so tight that we couldn’t undo. Our fingers were red raw with trying. After all our attempts had failed, I resorted to carrying the fully inflated double airbed across the site to a foreign couple of campers with a catamaran. He kindly produced a pair of adjustable pliers that did the trick. Note : We need to buy some tools.

We drove out of Camping Campéole Navarrosse Plage at 10.50am loaded to the gunnels apart from our stomachs. Jackie informed me we would stop for breakfast once we were on the road. The SatNav was set for Moilets-et-Maa on the longer, but lower emissions route.

An hour and a half later, we rolled into Moilets-et-Maa having passed numerous patisseries and boulangeries that for one reason or another didn’t appeal to Jackie. I knew she secretly wanted a McDonalds.

We stopped at Moilets-et-Maa because it apparently had a child-free (adult only sometimes means something entirely different!) campsite and one of the best beaches in the region. The town centre was like a fairground, so we headed to the beach and encountered tourists/surfers that apparently thought it was acceptable to walk down the middle of the road looking at their phones and oblivious to the oncoming traffic ie me. Jackie prevented me from hooting my horn at these idiots and thus road rage was averted.

At the end of the road to the beach there was a turning down a narrow private road that our SatNav was sending us to the ‘child-free’ campsite. Jackie insisted we drive down it, which i stupidly did with a couple of snooty locals looking at us in disbelief or maybe disgust. Two hundred metres down the road we encountered a locked gate to the campsite that clearly was closed and unoccupied. Brilliant!! We looked for somewhere to turn round but there was not a hope in hell of such a manoeuvre. Instead we had the indignity of reversing the entire 200 metres back the way we came with local residents coming out to watch without a hint of an offer to help. We drove out of Moilets-et-Maa with no intention of ever returning.

At a convenient moment I set the SatNav to take us to the little and apparently quaint coastal town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz. The route took us alongside Lac d’Hossegor and on to Capbreton, whereupon I espied a suitable Boulangerie that Jackie couldn’t find fault with. The Boulanger spoke perfectly English and was very helpful. I ordered a massive slab of cheese and bacon quiche, whilst Jackie bought a ham and cheese baguette along with a couple of cafe au laits.

We ate it outside under a parasol to keep the fine drizzle off, whilst keeping up to date with the test match cricket score. We can’t actually listen to the BBC commentary while we are abroad…..much to Jackie’s relief!

My lunch break was ruined alas, when I received a couple of gloating WhatsApp videos from my brother of him and his family, who are also holidaying in France, stand-up paddle boarding. I was impressed briefly, until I realised they were actually having paddle board lessons with an instructor AND they were wearing wetsuits. They probably also had a central fin on their boards!!

We continued our journey now in Basque Country, passing through the outskirts of the regional capital city of Bayonne (Famous for its chocolate apparently), then took the bypass around Biarritz. Shortly after 3pm we arrived in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, once home to whalers turned pirates and now a popular beach holiday destination with stunning French Basque architecture.

We drove through the ancient town centre streets to the sandy beach surrounding the crescent shaped bay and instantly loved the look of the place. We vowed to research the possibility of camping in the area. We didn’t stop to explore as we needed to get to our next campsite and in any event we never came across an empty parking space.

It was an hour and 48 minute (60 miles) drive eastwards on non-toll narrow rural roads to our next campsite at Navarrenx. Our journey passed dozens of ‘Fromage’ establishments and farms and it was slow going as we encountered numerous farm vehicles including a ginormous combine harvester. We followed it for several miles before I built up the courage to overtake the monstrous vehicle.

Just after 5pm we arrived at the fortified town of Navarrenx in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. It wasn’t how we imagined it. We had visions of it being up a mountain surrounded by higher mountains, but we hadn’t spotted a single mountain or even big hill on our drive!

We located the Beau Rivage Campsite, parked up and introduced ourselves to Lydia in reception. Lydia was English with a West Country accent and most importantly extremely helpful. We advised her we had a big tent and she ensured we had an adequately large pitch. She advised us about walks, places to visit and restaurants.

We then set up camp in our spacious grassy pitch no. 7 and even managed to squeeze our car along side the tent. We somehow managed to develop an unsightly bulge on the floor entrance to our tent. We shifted the tent poles backwards and forward, loosened and tightened guy ropes, but nothing would flatten the bulge. I can guarantee it won’t take long for one of us to trip up on it.

It was getting late, so we changed and made ourselves look half presentable. We walked into the fortified town centre and to Le Taverne de St Jacques. We ordered a couple of burgers and fries, because the menu was in French and the waitress only spoke a little English. We couldn’t be bothered and too hungry to translate the menu. We also ordered a litre of house rose. It was all very lovely. Thank god Jackie didn’t get her way and stop for a Big Mac earlier!!!

We waddled back to camp whereupon Jackie promptly fell asleep in her chair. I sent her to bed and did some googling on my iPad with the luxury of free fast campsite WiFi and a glass of wine. The silence was golden around the campsite that has a strict quiet time between 10pm and 8am.

At 11.30pm, I decided to call it a night. I silently crept off to the shower block with my toothbrush in hand. I descended a small wet grassy slope, when both my feet skidded from under me and my back hit the ground with a massive whack and a cry of pain from me. I was winded and battered, but the worse part was that my Apple Watch started bleeping loudly with the message ‘It looks like you have taken a hard fall’. SOS Emergency Call. It was a right kerfuffle as I struggled to turn the my bleeping watch without calling the emergency services.

What an end to the evening. We have definitely announced our arrival!!

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