Finally a holiday


We're in France. It's been six months since we were this side of the channel after Coronavirus had us in varying degrees of lockdown. We've missed three campervan holidays and I was only sure this one would happen when the Eurotunnel train departed from Folkestone yesterday evening.

We crossed beneath the channel at 4.50pm and arrived at Saint-Langis-lès-Mortagne, France at 10pm. It was our third or fourth stopover on this quiet aire. It was still light, and we shared a bottle of white wine sitting on the step of the leisure door looking down the hill towards the lake. Cleopatra was parked on the grassy edge of the hill with four other vans, the main parking spaces of the aire already taken. It mattered not - we had the better view.

We were asleep by 11.30pm and awake by 6.15am to get back on the road. As I write this first blog post in months we're half way through this morning's final stretch to Île d'Oléron. I've lost count of the number of times we've been to this beautiful island, connected by bridge to the west coast of France. We'd talked of this summer exploring Croatia or Italy but with borders only just having reopened and so much uncertainty about the pandemic we decided to stick to the familiar.

For this trip we've bought a chemical toilet we can use in the utility tent in which we've previously used a rechargeable portable shower. It means we don't have to use communal toilet and shower facilities on a camp site.

I'm still having reservations about having come on holiday and I'm hoping that in a couple of hours when Cleopatra is settled on her pitch I'll be reassured and pleased that we did. I'm sure when I'm sitting on an unpopulated beach later I'll start to relax and enjoy it.

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