Changing plans

It's May half term and for several weeks our plan was to visit the small island of Noirmoutier off the Vendee cost of France. 

As our holiday got closer and we began looking at the long-range weather forecast we were disappointed to discover we'd have a whole week of thunderstorms. The rest of France was expecting the same.

Fortunately we hadn't booked the campsite and so our plans could be changed. We carefully checked the weather many times and I even started researching Denmark or considering the possibility to write off our Eurotunnel crossings and go to Scotland.

On Thursday, the evening before we were due to travel, we decided the south of France was worth a risk. We'd have rainy portions of a couple of days but otherwise the forecast had improved somewhat, and so we planned to drive to Provence. On Friday morning I looked once more at the weather outlook to find it was back to five days of rain. It was back to the drawing board.

By about 9am I was emailing Tony at work with a carefully compiled fact sheet about the north-German Baltic coast, the first image an expansive white sandy beach and the second a screenshot of a week's worth of forecast sunshine. I added in details about the surrounding national park forests and ideal cycling and that the journey time was similar to driving to Nice.

'Book it,' exclaimed the email I received back shortly after. And so our beach holiday was rescued and a new place would be discovered.

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