Woke up this morning with a beautiful view, meadows and clear blue sky on one side……..oh and a motorway service road the other! My faux pas was still fresh in Team Adamson’s memory, but lucky Mr Batard was bought with a crate of Kronnie and Barclays covered the real costs, leaving us to have a nimble down the road towards Nantes, but too late to get into any Aires for the night, hence the services!

Anyway, up with breakfast next to the meadow and a sink wash for the small Adamson’s as they were filthy from rolling on Mr Batard’s workshop floor. We were soon ready to go and Freckle purred ready for the next journey………Nantes.

We popped into the centre of Nantes and wondered where everyone was, hardly any cars on the road and we were able to park in a business looking district, free on the side of the road! A five minute walk across the Loire river and we were faced with La Machine! This is a great feat of engineering, a 20 metre elephant which moves through the park squirting water at everyone! We tried to queue to get tickets to ride it, but we would have been there all day, so settled for following it round and a go on a similarly engineered carousel with lots of strange “projects” like submarines and ugly sea creatures you can bring to life. P and F certainly loved the submarine, where they could speak to each other on an old fashioned telephone, it was like they used loads if junk to create these things.

A quick trip to the supermarket and we were off to Noirmoutier. P and F challenged Daddy with their behaviour which ended up in me chucking P out of the van and driving off…….only 10m up the road………worked through, even though perhaps on the line of too far for a 6 year old?????

Crossed the bridge to Noirmoutier and saw the Island looking at us in the sun. Weird lay by sellers here, they sell salt, not fruit! We got some last year nearby and must remember some for Granny, otherwise she might put a spell on me! Just time for F to watch the same bit of Harry Potter on the iPad for the fiftieth time…….did you know that Harry Potter can speak parcel tongue??!!!!

The weirdest sounding Sat Nav voice (thanks Apple) guided us to the campsite…….Jesus could they get more pitches on this piece of land – no is the answer. All settled in with an adventure on the beach and at the park and back for F to do the worlds biggest poo, which Daddy had to take to the toilet and wrestle out the camping toilet!!!

With a 30 second walk to the beach, just sitting with a glass of rouge whilst Sarah annoys the English neighbours……they are glad they are leaving tomorrow after Sarah has had them pinned in interrogating them for the last half hour, at least my ears are having a welcome break!!!!!

All done for my guest appearance, maybe another might be in order as I still have nearly three weeks away!!!!!