We made our way back along the cycle path, past Kez’s crash spot to Contis Plage, the large beach that most of the tourists in the area head for. With panniers full of picnic food and grapefruit squash we sat ourselves down on the golden sand while the green/blue waves rolled in impressively carrying surfers and body boarders toward the sand. Life guards periodically stopped in their jeep to call swimmers out of the surfing area, bikini girls played bat and ball and topless blotched mahogany sun leathered wrinklies showed just how bad the idea of laying in the sun all day is. We giggled guiltily as a Mr. Bean character made a big show of unpacking his surf board, performing his stretching exercises and jogging down to the water before flailing around uselessly in the choppy foam a few feet from the shore. Kez had developed a slightly dodgy stomach so I enjoyed the delicious melon we’d packed on my own, then managed to eat the rest of the picnic while she sipped weak squash and fascinated herself with observations, assumptions and comments about other beach goers. Eventually we decided it would be prudent to get within safe proximity of the camp toilets so hauled ourselves exhaustingly over the steep dune we’d gleefully slid down earlier and cycled back to camp. A lone bullfinch sat on the path at Kez’s accident blackspot which she insisted was laughing at her, but we made it back OK. I left Kez at camp for a quick supermarché run and when I returned she breathlessly told me of a giant spider attack that had occured while I was away. Apparently whilst tidying the tent a huge spider ‘but not like an outdoors one that are ok while they’re outdoors but not indoors but like a fat legged indoors one that aren’t ok’ had come into the tent from outdoors and waited in a toilet roll tube for Kez to pick up. She had noticed it and emitted a scream that woke the forest flinging the bag of toilet tissue across the pitch and stood hyperventilating staring in turn at the three pink rolls that had bounced into various corners of our camp. In my absence a kindly French lady had noticed the panic and asked urgently what was wrong. ‘Snake!?.. Scorpion!?’ Before finding the spider and despatching it with multiple blows from her campervan broom.
With Kez still off her food we had a quiet Saturday evening under the trees, me on the red mat and Kez watching the forest floor closely from her €1.50 child’s inflatable ring that I had bought for a second chair and which is surprisingly comfortable and wonderfully small and light for transporting when deflated. We are expecting it to fail with an embarassing bang at any moment though.