It took until day 3 of our travels for me to realise that Gaz has been posting little titbits to Facebook. Uh oh! Anxiously I opened the app to see the unvetted posts that he's been merrily posting, expecting to see awful photos but instead I discovered that Gaz's fondness of shouting out "Zut Alors!" at random moments since crossing the channel has extended to his social usage. Facebook of course automatically translates this to 'Damn it!'. Knowing that Gaz never checks his posts, I asked him whether he actually knew what the phrase meant. It turns out he doesn't. So instead of posting phrases intended to mean "hey, I've arrived. I'm here in France", he actually posted "Damn it! I'm here in France" which I'm sure you'll agree is quite different. I think he's going to stick with it though, because "to change it now will just make me look stupid".
France so far has been brief but beautiful in the most part. As we passed through, I made a note of a number of towns that we should visit on the way back through, including Vivonne near. Poitiers, Confolens, and Pierrepont Buffiere, all beautifully picturesque.
We are now in the south west of France just outside Pau and a few kilometres from the Pyrenees National Park. We're staying in a Bivouac tent on stilts that is genuinely pretty comfortable. We arrived to find it all set up, with deep mattresses in place, fresh pillows and a cover. The tent is erected on a large elevated platform which effectively has a large sturdy picnic table on the front that whilst incredibly practical isn't huge fun tackling what amounts to a climbing frame at 4 in the morning when you're desperate for a wee. We are about 10m from the toilet block and showers, nestled amongst other cabins and cabanas. The site itself is situated on the edge of a lake with its own sandy beach, water slides and water sports.
There is a bar and restaurant - not budget friendly (€6 for a large beer so we treated purselves to 1 each and left lol) so we've been cooking up dinner at the tent and reassuring ourselves that "this is the life". I'm pretty sure if the prices at the restaurant were cheaper, that would become the life pretty sharpish.
In France there doesn't seem to be a rule about no noise after 10pm - the parties carry on way into the early hours but if I'm honest I like listening to the chittering chatter and low level music bubbling up from the tents. It's comforting in a strange way.
The day we arrived here was shadowed by a problem with the landrover - it had started making what i can only describe as mid pitched whirring noise when slowing down or accelerating and this became high pitch and intense when turning the wheel sharply. Gaz said the car was sluggish and all signs pointed to the power steering. We knew that whatever was wrong would need to be fixed or Gaz would develop his upper body quickly and he would become top heavy and it would look strange, oh and the car was becoming tough to steer of course.
On our first morning we set off to find a local mechanic. Gaz had checked the power steering fluid and it was low. If it needed a pump changing or anything more complex we knew that we might be stuck here for longer than intended which would cause problems with further bookings and ultimately see us lose money.
Luckily the 1st mechanic we tried seemed to understand what Gaz was getting at and despite only having a few words of English himself, the Perez Franglais concoction worked and he had the right fluid in stock. 10 mins and €10 later, the car appeared to be fixed and we were blissfully replanning our day.
We ventured out to Nays, a small town about 4 miles away that is full of character. The fresh market was bustling with fromage and charcuterie sellers, fresh fruit and vegetables. The market square is surrounded on both sides by small shops, cafe's, bars, patisseries and boulangeries which we sampled extensively because I'm a greedy carb lover! We sat in the square and enjoyed the music emanating from the town hall and the general hustle and bustle of a French saturday eating fresh Baguette filled with cold meats and cheese, feeling very lucky indeed that the car seemed to be fixed (we're still crossing fingers), that we had fresh food to eat and generally just to be there in that lovely French square.
Tonight we drink wine and play cards and watch The Wrath if Khan in Gazs laptop in front of the tent as the day disappears to darkness. its been lovely. Tomorrow we venture into Spain through the Pyrenees.
Campsite: