After the heat of the day yesterday we were braced for another hot one today. The site we travelled to today we knew was much quieter and was well timed. Only 90 mins up the road we headed via decathlon for another football for Fraser, and some more towels.

As a side note I’m going to say that towels are always the thing that drives me mad camping, they take up so much space. I always think you need one each for showers and one each for pool and beach. So this holiday we invested in 4 Decathlons towels which don’t make your hands feel horrible like most light weight towels do for the pool earlier in the holiday. They are so compact and dry super quick. We have been so impressed we went and got an additional 4 for the shower today as they were on offer.

We did a supermarket sweep of the shops as they were shutting soon and got essentials in a haphazard way before pushing on up the road. We drove through the beautifully manicured vineyards of the Medoc region and we knew we were arriving in our destination. Less than 30 mins from arrival to complete set up we hit the pool. We visited this site a few years ago and the children loved the pool they spent 3 hours this afternoon up and down the sldes and generally playing and having a great time. The heat finally finished them off tonight and thankfully they headed to bed early to catch up on some of the sleep they were missing, not before eating huge ice creams!

We have somehow lost the bug candles, so are being eaten alive outside whilst P and F have a fab sleep and are recharged for another top day tomorrow.

So day 9 started hot and got hotter.  This is the one big downside to living in a tin box, particularly with a number of ginger housemates.  We had started the day late enough that the shop had run out of bread  so a quick bowl of cereal started us off.  We hit the pool early and the kids had a fab time.  Around lunch we headed back to the van and headed for shade.  Luckily we have a bag of entertainment for such events and a bit of lego and a pack of domino’s fitted the bill… especially as trying to set up a domino rally on a wonkey table will never be a quick job!

Truthfully the children were very tired and for the first time in a week a bit too hot and bothered.  We packed the bikes and headed out for a cycle to a different beach towards the plage de plya (name to be confirmed!) and this was a much nicer beach than we had previously been to.  We played in the water for hours, watched a windsurfer get rescued from a very angry tide, some naughty boys that were tomb stoning get told off by the water police and had a team challenge of 10 consecutive hits around our group with the bat and ball to win an ice-cream!! with 2 tired children, a steep back and a coordinationally challenged mummy this prove more challenging that you might think!

We dried off and headed for our ice-cream,  There is nothing cheap about Archachon, including the icecream but boy did it taste good!! (15 quid for 4 ice creams!!!!!! ) needless to say the glass of wine I thought that I might fancy with my ice-cream rapidly became some warm wine back at camp!! We had a little walk around the town which had a beautiful church and then headed back.  A quick dunk in the pool was well timed after our ride back up a huge hill and we cooled off.  We had some pasta as the children were getting restless and then started to settle them for bed.  They were total monkeys but we all went to sleep eventually!  It was so so hot in our van that even our fan did little to move the air around.  Stew and I sleep in the top and slept all night with the sides open for air.

The site at Archachon was a hive of activity…. not the nicest site we have stayed at but its certainly a must see place in this area of France.