France 89 - a long walk to the sea, a railway line to Biarritz and hello Ondres

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Bonjour again. Our adventure for 2016 is coming to an end . We have been on the road in Suzy for 18 and a half days. Life in the UK feels a long way away. We are getting nicely into the life buying baguettes and croissants from the boulangerie. Eating them with fromage in the morning for breakfast . We are trying to find places to eat the local food. Sometimes with success but othertimes a dismal failure. We have sampled different cheeses, some local ones including a rather nice one from the Comte region. We have found some stonking cakes as they would say in the Black Country and have succeeded sourcing some fresh milk. A good result that one.

We crossed the border to be greeted with the flash. Oh dear - what have we done wrong this holiday? All the years of driving in France, knowing the rules of the road and more or less keeping to them we have fallen foul of the law not once but twice. Ah well we are getting a touch laid back. Who cares? It will all come out in the wash eventually.

The season has moved on quite quickly. 18 and a half days ago it still felt like Summer with just the odd bit of colour in the leaves of the trees. Since getting back to France it looks more Autumnal. The road verges are still in parts full of the pretty pink and white Cosmos plants and creeping over banks are the final flourishes of the perennial Sweet Peas. The trees though are more and more taking on the colours of Autumn. The nights are getting darker and the evenings a touch cooler. There are still birds about . Big white things that look like small storks stalking the tractors and the cows in the fields. Yellow Brimstone butterflies flit from one late summer plant to another. Pampas grass grows everywhere and there is even heather making the verges look like Scotland or the Peak District.

Ondres is a small town in Acquitaine. Quite sleepy on a Sunday. We failed to find any restuarant open. Our campsite feels yet again back end with just a handful of caravans and motorhomes. We saw a British van on site and heard the elderly driver introducing himself to his french neighbour. Bon soir Je m'appele George. As i walked past him he put his head down and ignored me. I wonder why he didnt want to introduce himself to me a fellow Brit. Vans came in, hooked up and filled with water and left before the reception opened again. We got the impression they used the facilities and went out without paying. Naughty french they seem to do a lot of that. Going out before the warden arrives and leaving before he arrives again in the morning. The site was quite large with good size plots. The showers were Ok but we are gradually finding many of the sites look good in the ACSI book but reality is quite different. They look a tad run down and in need of a touch of TLC. The showers can look grubby and a bit dated. The facilities promised like the swimming pool are closed. Even the hot tub was parcelled up for the winter. Still it is a handy site or so we thought for the beach. We started to walk and it turned out it was over 2 miles away. On the beach is an aire free to stay on and I presume the freeloading motorhomers had got their supplies at our campsite free before moving to the free aire. To be fair they probably had a quieter night than us and a better view of the Atlantic .

The train line was just a gnats away with a stop where you could catch the train to Bordeaux which was quite a ride up the line or go to the nearer seaside resort of Biarritz. I think perhaps with hindsight we should have stayed another night and taken in the delights of a day at an upper class top notch seaside resort.

There was a lake next to the campsite with fantastic walks around. Ducks and geese were on it and it was possible if you were interested to fish. It made a pretty walk to while away an hour or so. Before bed the neighbours a young couple started their van up. They seemed to be sleeping in it as we saw no tent. He went walkabout and she stayed in with the engine running. After 30 minutes she stopped it . We couldnt quite work out what she was doing but it must have smelled dreadful of exhaust fumes. We fell in to conversation as we do with our french neighbours. More mime than speech about le soleil which was shining down on them as they sunbathed in their deckchairs . They were travelling in a van with a big motorbike on a trailer. Then the van started up again and went on droning for another half an hour. It turned out the young girl was trying to get power to her laptop and was failing miserably. All she was succeeding in doing was to annoy the neighbours with the drone, alienate half the campsite and stink everyone out by trying to kill them off with exhaust fumes.

I think we would have been better on the aire. The sound of the sea sounds better than a vans engine running all night . The joys of camping are many and luckily she did switch it off eventually when I lied that it was affecting my hearing aids. A white lie now and again doesnt count does it?

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