Southern France

After passing the perma-tanned packed beaches of St. Tropez and Cannes, the first campsite we found was practically on a building site. Either side of it for mile upon mile was nothing but a cheap casino and swathes of harsh pebble beach. After cooking our dinner of tomato and potato stew, washed down with ten of Lidl's cheapest beers, we went out to sample the night life. The night life happened to consist of sitting on a rough built rubble pier, listening to a coach load of Young Americans. Sat in the middle of Europe thousands of miles from home the most fascinating thing they could find in common was how, like, incredibly different their own accents were, "I do not, like, sound like that," "You, like, so totally do," "I do not, like, totally sound like that." Regional variation aside they did reach mutual agreement that it was, like, totally a good thing to be an American. "Whatever, at least we can go back home and get cellphone coverage, like, everywhere."

In between eavesdropping on our transatlantic cousins there was time to enjoy our backdrop of moon dappled mountains sinking into the darkness. As the night chased the sun from our beach and the sea slapped at our stony seats the lights along the coast to Nice blinked into existence. Dirty graffiti flecked seaside towns turned into one long flickering sea snake. Two fishermen cast their rods off of the end of the outcrop, and a lone ferry winked way out to sea, a full moon shone and the Americans decided that Canada, "was, like, practically a different continent."

There is only so much earwigging a person can or should do, so we went for a walk along the beach. We walked through vacant lots and building sites, private beaches unoccupied and lonely, passed disused factories with boarded up cataracts of windows and down to a broken down jetty. Looking back towards the land, with not a sole in sight, it was as if we were the only survivors in a decaying world. The natural world already seemed to be reclaiming ours as its own. The waves were inexorably eating away at our concrete jetty, the salt had turned the bare metal of the factories to rusty earth brown, weeds fought the cracked up pavements and choked the dilapidated machinery in the alleyways. From the buildings' blind eyes bats and birds flew freely and sand billowed in. Looking forward, sat twenty metres out to sea, the crystal waters shook with azure hues and a mighty jut of an island punched out of the sea several miles to our front. On the end of our skinny jetty, looking out at the unknown island it felt as if we were escaping the drowned world on a raft, just the two of us, making out to some brave new one.

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