Today was HOT. This morning we took a wee while to get going. Roni up first and went to the camp cafe for a ‘real’ coffee as she tried to make a dent in the backlog of photos to be labelled. Bray emerged eventually, feeling a bit rubbish – not used to the treats (chippies, beer and choc!) consumed last night. He kept Roni company then went and struck camp.
We relocated to the ‘saloon’ to scope out campsites online for the next few days while charging camera batteries, phone and laptop before checkout around noon.
Hit the road and it was HOT. A whole lot of traffic too so we were travelling uber slowly in 35+! Eventually pulled over and parked near a random beach to munch some lunch before hitting the surf to cool off. It was real surf too – like at home! Nice. Then we found a supermarket so stopped to re-stock...was actually pretty economical which we were happy about. On entering the supermarket Roni spotted a young guy in an All Blacks top...he spotted Bray in his NZ Indoor singlet and suddenly Bray had a mate! Throughout our grocery shop experience he kept bumping into us and chatting away to Bray like a long lost friend. Though the conversation was largely in French Bray loved every minute of it!
Back on the road again and hours more driving – the GPS was telling us the campsite was 3 or so hours North of Bordeaux while the Google map in the morning had said an hour...We were concerned with this discrepancy as due to traffic and various stops we were WELL behind time. So we popped into the Bordeaux info site...unfortunately they only focus on the city centre so had no info about the coast but tried to be helpful anways.
Nonetheless we carried on – heading for Bourg which was a small town a little bit North. We thought that maybe they could have the info we required...
Meandered through the French countryside, many vineyards, small villages and tiny roads. Eventually we discovered Bourg and its tourist information office. Office hours were over so the lady was NOT up for letting us get a map or anything so we took a few pics of the village square then headed to a campsite we had spotted nearby.
Next to the water, find your own site, next to a cliff with doors and window in (to be explored tomorrow), cheap and WITH GRASS! Stoked. Got the tent up before dark and made dinner. A lovely French couple with a small dog pulled up in their mobile home next door and set up shop. When we got to eating our pasta for dinner the Bordeaux wine we had purchased foiled us as we had no corkscrew! Bray went and asked to borrow theirs and they obliged. Either inspired by the fact we were from NZ, how cheap our wine was or that we were eating out of a saucepan the lady popped over later...to gift us two pieces of baguette with REAL French salami. Y.U.M. We appreciated it - tasty! We had a cuppa with pan au chocolate to round it off before hitting the hay. There was a trainee DJ down the way who kept it rocking until quite late but we got sleep nonetheless. A warm night too for the first time in a while!
