After a wee visit to Scotland we headed south to France, to a caravan park near La Rochelle in West. We were crashing some Scottish friends’ three week French holiday by joining them for the first week. We looked up the park and booked a cabin that was close to them – apart from that, we knew very little of the area. (After all, research is great when you’re only going away for a few weeks but when it’s months, we can’t possibly do all that so piggy backing off others is great for us!)

French caravan parks are a bit more upmarket than Australian ones – well, this one was at least – with kids’ clubs, activities like exercise classes, nightly shows, a nice restaurant, a proper shop with fresh bread daily and even a weekly market on the grounds. Some pretty impressive stuff – especially the market which we thought would be tacky but the French are very keen on local produce and it was mostly local businesses showcasing their goods, including a local Pineau des Charentes producer. (Yes we sampled and bought a bottle – I mean, we were in France after all and supporting local businesses is important!)

The one thing we didn’t plan on was the heat – our stay collided with a European heat wave and we were in a glorified tent with no air conditioning or fans 🥵 We were lucky that the bedrooms had fly screens so we could at least keep the windows open overnight without letting too many mozzies in. Plus, our wonderful friends lent us a couple of mini fans that created some airflow. 33C is quite unpleasant here and we tried to escape to a library one afternoon only to find it was closed (as it was a Sunday 🤦) and we ended up at MacDonald’s with a lot of other families.

The park had several pools, some water slides and a lazy river (where you float around on an inflatable ring) which was great given the weather. To be honest, I was concerned it would be too cold to even go near the pools! The funny thing about France is that they have hygiene concerns when it comes to bathers, so there are often strict rules about what you can and can’t wear in public pools. Our place had a rack for shoes before you entered the pool area with a foot bath to walk through for example. Also there was this sign up on the gate:

Much to M’s horror, who usually wears board shorts. So we needed to buy him some new bathers – of course the onsite shop sells them. Impressively for not too much of a rip off price – only €16.90!

Luckily the pools themselves were pretty good and although busy, not too crowded, so it was definitely a worthwhile purchase given the heat!

We ventured to Île de Ré – a nearby island with easy cycle paths – once the weather cooled. We hired bikes and rode to another town for lunch – cheese, bread and some dessert. However, we had no knives so had to improvise by using the bread to cut the cheese. Crude though it was, it worked! (with Esti’s help!)

Unfortunately, our parking had run out so we needed to cycle quickly back and top it up. Lesson learned to not underestimate our parking needs and / or lack of skill in time estimation 😁

We also had an afternoon the historic town of La Rochelle for a bit of a wander and a drink at a harbour side cafe. It’s a lovely part of the world!

Our favourite activity though, was catching up with our old friends over dinner – usually a BBQ cooked on their (more fancy) cabin’s verandah with a few drinks. One night we brought over the Nintendo Switch for all the kids to play after dinner. At one point one of ours came out to grab an olive and commented how hard it was to deliberately lose at Mario Kart (our kids are older than theirs) – very sweet!

As we parted ways, our friend commented that it was just like we’d never left Scotland and we’d picked up right where we left off. That’s a pretty good thing in my book! ❤️