Detante was reached last night with the neighbours. I think we finally wore them down with continuous smiling and saying Bonjour every time we passed. The chap in the same bay as us told Paul they lived in Toulouse, were staying in the aire for a MONTH and then going down to Malaga for the winter. Interesting. It was a good stopover aire for us for a night but I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to stay for a month but it would be cheap living I guess.
Lottie got me up about 6am this morning as she needed to go out, I tied her on a long lead and opened the door, waited 5mins and then pulled her back in. Back to bed. 10 mins later she wanted to go out again. Same procedure except this time I went out with her and walked around the aire in my nightie and fleece, commando style, it was very chilly! The third time I gave up going back to bed and had coffee and breakfast. The neighbors must have loved it, me closing the van door every 10 mins. Paul managed to sleep 😴 through most of this. I waited for him to wake up and then I showered and took Lottie out. There was a back gate to the aire that took you straight onto the canal tow path, we walked along this to a bakery to get a baguette and pain au raisin for later.
All went well on the journey south apart from a slight confusion on our part when leaving the Toulouse ring road. I was looking at my phone when he said ‘I’m not sure if I should be in this lane or if it’s a bus lane’. I looked up and saw a road in the middle with 2 lanes and a further single lane either side. I thought we were in a bus lane so Paul pulled into the middle road, then a motorbike drove up the single lane beside us, just as we saw BUS written on the road in front of us. Quick change back to the single road on the right (no buses or other traffic around to guide us).
Lottie decided to be sick on the doormat in the van halfway down south, it could have been my lap so I didn’t mind.
We decided not to use the toll autoroutes today. A plus was that we saw some lovely towns and villages, the minus was that it took forever to get to our destination – Canet Plage, on the med, 8 miles south of Perpignan. With a lunch / supermarket stop we didn’t get to Canet Plage until about 3.15pm. When we were a mile or so away from the campsite Tom Tom tried to send us through a single track tunnel under the main road which was 2 metres high (we’re 3 metres) 😮 I had to use google maps to find a quick alternative.
The next problem was that the GPS took us around a winding road that ended at the entrance to the 5* all singing and dancing campsite called La Brasilia. They have a very grand, large entrance and before we could turn around a woman came out to greet us, all smiles, asking if we had a reservation, in French. I had to explain that we did not mean to be there, we had in fact been looking for the ACSI 3* site of Le Bosquet. How embarrassing. Her smile disappeared as she told us the entrance was back around the corner, where it had said Le Peuplier campsite. Confused, we made a hasty exit. We found the entrance we needed (not nearly so grand and they didn’t come out to greet us!) and I went into reception to say that we were looking for Le Bisquet. The girl at reception beamed at me and says ‘it is ‘ere’. She said the 2 campsites were now one. Confusing. Anyway, we had a wander and although it’s not a particularly attractive site – 90% statics – we managed to find a pitch that would get some sun, and it’s much cheaper than the 5* site (but I was definitely tempted to go there). It’s really warm and sunny, about 27 degrees, but extremely windy. Fortunately it’s going to die down over the weekend.
After pitching up we went through the back gate in the site, out onto the cycle path, and walked down to the beach. Not far at all and a lovely walk by a river. Dogs are allowed on the beach so it was great until Lottie peed on a wooden block of a game that a family were playing …… embarrassing.
Not sure how long we’ll stay here, definitely 2 nights, 3 I hope.
2019 Autumn follow the sun 