It was at some point on Wednesday at work when I was moaning about how much I still had to do to get ready for holiday and my poor work colleagues listened to me juggling work priorities and printing ferry tickets, that Jo suggested that we went a day early… initially i dismissed it and secretly whilst pouring over a stupid contract looked up the options for a change… nothing.
By the time i got home I had come up with the ideal that I should call the ferry company and see what our options were! by 5pm we had convinced ourselves that we could do everything we were planning to do the following day before midnight and be in a position to leave home just before 6am this morning and head to poole to catch the ferry.
All round it has been the perfect solution…. whilst i missed my night before holiday flap, customary of these times, I channeled my energy into cleaning out the fridge and packing what was left.  
We had also bought a new tent…. this trip for us is only around 11 days (was supposed to be 10) and we have certain things that as adamson holidaying in France we must achieve! this meant that our usual 3 day stop minimum has been reduced to 1 night in places. We have also got a slightly impaired stew, whilst he has recovered from surgery with amazing gusto, there are still a few limitations with his shoulders (lifting above his head) and general strength (probably due to his having every rib broken 6 weeks ago!). This has lead to us wanting to ditch our large (and trusty) awning in favour of something smaller and lighter. HOWEVER last year when camping in the UK a torrential downpour which left every item of my clothing drenched in a small pop up tent… and obvs this was another essential avoid! a few weeks ago we ordered a pop up awning…. the advert spoke of instant errection and completion in 3 minutes…. whilst this was arguably the case, a curry trump could have blown it down and the clear up operation that followed would have resulted in a certain divorce! If i could have chopped it into tiny pieces and sent it back to the manufactureer I would have!

We found another tent called the instant tourer… it claimed to have a 1 minute errection and be super waterproof…. blow me if we didn’t have it up in the time…and then down again! so it all just seemed a bit easy!
The ferry was fairly uneventful… apart from Penelope trying to shop lift a cooked breakfast… she thought it was school dinners! I obviously got travel sick (always!) and had a little sleep, and the speaker in our room wasn’t working so we nearly ended up coming back to England! We got of to a slightly gloomy Cherbourg, but totally grateful we’d not been on the Vomit Comet!
This part of France always reminds me a little bit of cornwall… pretty gardens, windy roads and old buildings…. there were a few villages that couldn’t have been more french had they tried!
We arrived and set up the van in super quick time… the rapid errection of the new “instant tourer” left stew devastated that he didn’t get a beer!

Once set up we put that right and had a few minutes of a gymnastics display and football whilst we had a cheeky beer. We decided that as time was marching on we would pop to the beach for a look at the sea…. what started with a paddle ended up with eh children swimming in their clothes! stew wondered back to get his fitbit steps up for the day and got a change of clothes and the children had a ball in the sea… so lovely and warm too!
Following the beach we headed to the little restaurant on the campsite right by the beach (we are at camping l’ermitage in grandville) where Stew fraser and I had huge portions of muscles, super cold white wine (not fraser) and fresh (still warm) bread, whilst penny opted for a grilled ham and chips option. Coffee and deserts followed and we walked away wondering how so many restaurants in england get it so wrong!
The sun has shone for us this afternoon but as it get towards 9:30 here the wind is picking up and we are wondering when the rain will arrive. This campsite is literally 20 meters from the beach so the breeze is strong, but we are having a perfectly relaxing evening enjoying France, life and Freckle…. vive la france!
Bon nuit!