Another day of rest, relaxation, contemplation, recouperation…. But mostly washing. We decided to stay in Jumiéges, another night the pitch was nicely secluded, the facilities were good and an unladen bike ride along the river seemed like a good idea. We also had a load of washing that needed doing. Since we’ve been camping in France we’ve not once managed to catch the bread van. These vans normally speed round the camp sites at about 8.30 blaring their horn angrily, driving off before we’ve even managed to fight our way out of our sleeping bags. This time was different though, maybe because the site was fairly busy with Dutch, German, French and English caravans, somebody had managed to throw themselves in front of the bread van so that when I blearily staggered out of our awkward front flap, doing the usual dance of trying-to-get-the-shoes-on-without-stepping-on-the-dewy-grass, there was still an eager queue, and something we began to think we’d never see - a stationary bread van.
We breakfasted on wonderful fresh pain au chocolates, a large white baguette, and had a lovely grainy seedy one left for lunch later. The morning was mostly spent trying to hang too much washing on too little washing line, strung on too bendy saplings, but eventually we left our little pitch looking like Wishy Washy’s Laundry and walked down the road to find something for lunch.
A couple of beers and a very reasonably priced white wine in a café by the abbey was our reward for doing our washing chores, and we returned eventually with a camambert, some large tomatoes and a packet of crisps to eat at the picnic tables under the trees.
I wondered vaguely while we ate, why there were instructions for heating on the back of the packet of ready salted crisps, but it just goes down on the list of weirdnesses we’ve discovered while travelling in foreignshire.
A dozy afternoon snoozing the in tent followed lunch, with a cycle along the river to see how we were going to get across. The camp site is situated right at the bottom of a big horse shoe shaped loop of the Seine, and worryingly the GPS suggests heading all the way back North to get out of it, and over a bridge to the West, adding a good fifteen miles just to cross. Our hopes were proved well founded, and we came across a ferry taking maybe 6 cars at a time every 20 minutes, with plenty of room for a couple of bikes. The only worry now was how we’d get up and over the huge white cliffs on the other side of the river.