Well… today started with a run for stew and I! I know!  Im sure it won’t last but its flat, beautiful and not too hot!  The children went and bought the bread and we had the usual breakfast.  I washed up whilst Stew took the children to the pool and then I joined them for the last few mins.

We headed back and packed for heading to the lake.  Amusingly Stew had to put the new inflatable dinghy into the body board back pack… which try as he might to get on to his bike seat was just too low!  We rode to the lake eventually and set up the boat, after a close call with a missing pump tube.  It was the most eagerly anticipated part of the holiday for the scamps…. we decided that we would row over to an island in the middle of the lake… luckily I had made a picnic, and taken the precaution of adding a couple of cold beers into the cool bag.  We took them over with us and for ages were the only people on the island.  We had our picnic and the children played in and out of the water.  We thought it would be good to have a walk around the island, and around half way we saw some teenagers being dumped on the island with a pizza by their parents… inspired!!  We also found a star fish.

We rowed back, more easily than we had rowed out there…. however at a slight handicap.  We only had one and a half oars…. I could see it coming.  I knew that stew would get in the inflatable Discovery 400 and think that he was in the Oxford and Cambridge rowing race… he rowed with all his mite and snapped one of the oars!  Luckily we managed to grab it before it drifted off.

Once back on the mainland we watched the children play in the boat for ages… there was some kind of race, involving Mo Farrah and them and it involved a sprint on the beach and some splashing!

We dried off and packed away and headed to the beach bar for some refreshment…  The children chose to go on this bouncy castle thing instead of an ice-cream and we had a quick drink whilst they did so.  A short cycle back to camp and the kids chilled out for half an hour whilst we did the same.  I had a quick shower… in the mens showers by mistake (i was in there thinking how cheeky all the men were being in the ladies!) before heading to the best restaurant in the world!  Its perfect… plastic tables and chairs and moules out of casserole dishes.  Totally delicious.  Penny had a pizza in the shape of mickey mouse.  There was a stage set up close by so whilst I enjoyed a cafe Gourmand, i had my own display of acrobatics from penny with some cool moves from fraser.

We headed back and were lucky enough to bump into the local group of people dressed in sheepskin on stilts… Dad if you are reading this, be prepared for request’s to make the scamps stilts!! Its called something landaise… i cant find the info online… but it was cool and had we not been at the bull fight last night we would have gone and had a look!

So we headed back to get the smalls in bed and sit outside in the darkest dark, had a glass of wine and chat about what a fab time we are having, and how our slightly surnburnt bodies are a little pink!

The say started with some fabulous efficiency…. it rained heavily overnight, and whilst still damp and heavy drops blowing off the trees, but wasn’t actually raining.  Over time we have got quite good at knowing what we can all do to pack up and also have accumulated a good selection of equipment that packs down very well.  A man came up to us in the last site and asked us if we call the van the Tardis as they were amazed with how much we could fit in!  Once packed we showered and changed for the journey over the mountains to France.

We estimated that the journey would be around 4 hours however, there were some big jams which meant we were much slower.  Even a traffic in freckle is entertaining with all the other people enthusiastically waving, racing us or getting cross about our ability to pull away fast up a hill!  I was really struck by the size of the infrastructure in places in Spain… road over road over road all filled with cars… all snaking their way through the kills through tunnels!

We had a pit stop into a decathlon to buy some new camper van towels and the scamps bought some new goggles to add to their collection! We had a mcdonalds lunch and then did a ram raid on the spirits department in the supermarket to bring home!  The Gin and such like were so cheap!

We finally arrived at the campsite around 7pm after being slightly delayed by the border crossing.  We were on a tight timescale as the scamps desperately wanted to go to “torro piscine”, so we hastily set up and had a quick bbq before heading out…. rain coats packed!  Torre piscine is hard to describe…. basically there is a swimming pool, there are bulls and the rest is euro pop meets testosterone fuelled mayhem! basically the audience nominate themselves to do games, with a bull in the ring.  It is brutal! No animals are hurt but lots of people… including a child in the “Childrens race”  The scamps love it as does stew… i watch with one eye shut but it is none the less entertaining!

A late night for all of us, but happy faces! When fraser is old enough he is going be a bull fighter!! Great!