Ending Up Anywhere

  We used to take Eurotunnel crossings for granted, hopping across the channel ten times a year. It's now Easter and it's the first time we'll have been to France since last summer. Just like last July, I didn't really believe we were going until we were through border control. They only asked for our passports this time - we'd uploaded our NHS Covid passes to our Advance Passenger Information on our tunnel booking - so it seemed just like simpler times before a worldwide pandemic brought everything to a standstill. We are having to fit our France trip around a family holiday to Wales which left us five nights at the end of the Easter holiday fortnight. Therefore we decided not to venture too far.  Just 2 hours 45 minutes from Calais is our campsite home for the next five nights. Called 'The Cliffs' because it's perched on top of them, it's a new acquisition for the Huttopia chain we often camp with. This will be our 18th Huttopia site and our 24th H...

We've lost count of the number of times we've visited Île d'Oléron, France's second largest island, connected to the mainland by bridge just off the west coast. Having spend three and a half weeks on the largest island, Corsica, and six nights in the Loire, we were craving sunny beaches again. The weather forecast was perfect and it was just three hours drive from where we said goodbye to our campervan owning friends Jules and Pete. Literally less than a minute after Tony said he'd booked the campsite he declared: 'I've booked the wrong one'. He'd booked Huttopia Les Pins when we prefer Huttopia Chenes Verts. Tony got his pine trees mixed up with his green oaks. It wasn't the end of the world. One campsite is only a 40 minute cycle from the other. Our preferred beach is a further one hour and 20 minutes away right the other side of the island. The mix up would just make us get more exercise. We arrived at 1.40pm and I fully expected to have to wa...

Le Chant d'Oiseau  We departed Corsica with enough holiday days free that we could leave France for another EU country should France have remained on the UK government's ridiculous 'Amber Plus' list. Had France remained amber plus we would have had to quarantine for 10 days upon arriving back home and so had a Hook of Holland to Harwich ferry on standby. In the end, France was put on the amber list before we'd left the island and so we were free to remain in France and mooch around for another 10 days. Our friends Jules and Pete were in France in their campervan and we arranged to head up to their campsite for their last six nights. We arrived at Le Chant d'Oiseau at lunchtime and were warmly greeted by campsite owners Stu and Syb who had saved us the corner pitch we stayed on last year where there were plenty of big trees for our hammocks to hang. This year's stay was to be a far more joyous occasion than last year's when we weren't intending to be...

  Our two planned over-nighters, the night before and the night after the Corsica to France ferry didn't go to plan. We'd have been better staying put at Camping Amurucciu and driving the hour to Bastia port rather than getting ourselves 30 minutes closer on the vineyard we've used twice before. The vineyard was not accepting campers for some reason. Fortunately it was only just past lunchtime and we still had time to look for alternatives. We found Camping A Stella just ten minutes further up the road and checked in for a night for 25 euros. There were a couple of stunning beachfront pitches available but both were close to steps down to the pebble beach and the last thing we wanted was people walking past our pitch. In the end we sited ourselves out of the way beside a dried up river bed and went to spend the day on the sandy beach just the other side of a rocky outcrop. It was pretty stupid for Tony to climb over that with his ankle still recovering from major fractures ...

  It's normal to feel down at the end of a holiday and this isn't even the end, just the penultimate night on this beautiful island. I feel a mix of emotions. I'm sad to leave but I'm enormously grateful for the chance to have had this holiday given the circumstances. Then I feel guilt at even contemplating a foreign holiday while most people have had staycations. I've felt far safer at Camping Amurucciu than I ever would have done on a crowded campsite in the UK though. That said, whatever anyone had planned for a break this year they look as though they've enjoyed which is fantastic; we all deserve it, I think. I thought I'd feel bored having stayed on one campsite for the entire duration. We've made Amurucciu the first site of each of the two previous visits to Corsica because it effortlessly gives us the beach fix we've craved. I think we've stayed six or seven nights at the maximum on either occasion. They don't call Corsica 'Île de ...

  We've found another Corsican beer to try. Kiara seems to come in several variations, each in different coloured labels. It is a six pack and I put two each in the cool box which is still going strong after being plugged in for two weeks. Tonight's dinner will be paella with a reasonably priced, decent sized bag of fruits de mer. Naturally Cleopatra already had paella rice in her store cupboard. We've been eating a lot of pasta dishes for evening meals. We've made pasta puttanesca three times since it's our favourite. One evening I suggested macaroni cheese but Tony didn't want anything so heavy. We compromised on a recipe I found for goats cheese and mushroom pasta sauce. I suggested adding chopped walnuts for a bit of crunch and it was divine. The goats cheese did two nights of the same, broken up by a night where I decided I needed meat and we made mustard lentils with me having beef steak and Tony a grilled aubergine. Last night we thought we'd try maca...

  We've always accepted that a lot of effort is needed to reach a beautiful, sandy, deserted beach. Before all our holidays were taken on Cleopatra's four wheels the Greek islands were our beach holiday destinations. Rhodes became our favourite Island and we spent four or five summers there. We'd stay in an apartment in Lindos where the rooftop restaurants all had views of the acropolis but by day we'd drive our rental car 30 minutes south, drive down a track we would never take a car we owned, and then walk another 30 minutes to Agios Georgious beach. In Crete we'd stay in Matala in the little-visited south of the island and leave everyone on the town beach while we scaled a mountain to get to the 'red beach'. In Corfu we had a few favourite beaches away from tourist resorts, including the beautiful Mirtiotissa. Then Cleopatra introduced us to roadtrip holidays and we discovered Île d'Oléron where our favourite campsite was the opposite side of the isla...