Our decamping is still very disorganised and time consuming, we’d awakened reasonably early, quite refreshed, but by the time we got everything back in the panniers and on the bikes it was gone eleven. The cycling was gorgeous though. Along quiet country lanes without any traffic at all, onto busier roads but with wonderfully designed cycle paths. We passed wetlands with swans, geese, ducks and other weirder looking birds bobbing around on the water or stamping on clumps of floating weed. Fields full of lazy looking pale yellow cows and dark maned horses. After 25 miles of wonderful cycling we were both feeling a bit saddle weary, so decided to head to a campsite at Le Crotoy. We stopped at a little supermarket so Kez could grab something for the evening meal, and while she shopped I had quite a fun conversation with a french cyclist, neither of us spoke each other’s language, but with sign language and guesswork I think the conversation went something like:
‘hello’
‘..err hello!’
‘where are you going?’
‘I’m England, err English’
‘oh, I don’t speak English’
‘me neither, French I mean’
‘where are you going?’
‘nice bike you’ve got there’
‘Where are you going, on your bike with all those panniers?’
‘oh! Espania’
‘Ah Espania! Here is flat, South is hills’
‘Ah yes.. Pyrenees!’
‘yes Pyrenees!’

Having found an instance of understanding, we bid each other Au revoir and I was left feeling quite pathetic for having not managed to learn even the basics of French before coming out here.

The GPS failed us with it’s directions, with the marked campsite being somewhere else entirely, and the next three we tried had signs on the window saying ‘reception closed on Wednesday afternoons’. Easy life they have these French. Everything was closed on Monday, which is normal apparently, everything seems to close for three hours at midday, and now we find Wednesday afternoon is a time for relaxing too! This was a little worrying, since we needed to find somewhere to stay, but at the third site after reading the same sign and wondering whether we should just pitch up anyway, the site attendant appeared on a golf cart and checked us in.
Kez had bought some strange sausages to have with a huge bread roll and salad with olives, lardons, cheese and egg. The sausages sort of exploded, belching their nasty looking chunks of various pig snippings into the pan and I asked Kez if she’d got them from the pet food aisle.
As we were eating we became aware of a constant thundering in the distance, coming closer actually. We managed to get everything in the tent, and were washing our plates up when the heavens opened, lightning flashed, thunder crashed and we dived into the tent just in time. It was short lived thankfully, but quite exciting nonetheless.