We woke up on day 18 with one set of plans, and went to bed with another! Always the best way!

The day started for team adamson with a run. I’m sure if I lived in st Gilles I’d be so skinny from all the beautiful beach running. An easy 3.5 miles along the sand of an almost deserted sunny beach was a great start to a great day!!

We got back, showered and breakfasted (the worlds biggest jam is still going!) and hopped on out bikes. Our plan was to head to the market to buy dinner for the evening. Between stew and I we managed some amazing French to buy squid, bullots, prawns, oysters, moules, salmon, crab and of course oysters. We bought the biggest lettuce and some nice salad bits along with some bread. We also visited the bakers to get the children some lunch, and a small but delicious looking cake each for them!

We met up with the Hargreaves at the towns kind of fete/festival thing…. There they showed the local traditional trades, and producers bought their wares. They also had food stalls selling regional dishes…. We met the gang outside the oyster tent, and the conditions were perfect for some of the usual mayhem! We all shared oysters, grilled sardines, and moules, a bottle of wine and chatted about the plan for the next hour…. At this point Steffan thought we should ensure we had fully tasted the wines of the region! With his fluent French and ability to charm his way around a French person, we set about the tasting. Each stall was happy to chat about the teroir, and give us 3 or 4 glasses of wine…. I even noticed that some of the stalls had spit buckets…. But we didn’t bother with any of that nonsense. I couldn’t tell you how many we tasted, but we had red white rose cognac armenac sweet wines and dry wines!!! The children even got involved involved in the action with grape juice. I think it was around this point that Gemma got interviewed by the mayor on the loudspeaker! We made a few purchases, and got back on our bikes and clunked back along the cycle path back to camp.

The plan had initially been that the Hargreaves were going to sleep in our awning as they were maximising their holiday and leaving before 6 to head for the ferry. We decided that given the wine that we’d bought specifically to accompany the fish, it would be prudent to “get Lynn on it” and use my mums encyclopaedic knowledge of ferry crossings to get a better time sailing….. And she didn’t disappoint! Thanks mum!! We also did our usual trick of grabbing as many extra hours in France as possible… We are due in work on Wednesday morning and were trying to get booked on an overnight so we went straight to work…. But there were no cabins so we have pushed back to an evening ferry.

We sat down and enjoyed the seafood and the perfectly paired wine and spent our last night with the Hargraves slightly sloshed, Eating great food With great friends! Fabulous!

Penny slept in the awning too for the first time on her own…. And loved it! She’s getting so grown up!

I really am so not ready to come home….. And I am going to consider becoming a gypsy!!!

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