Today started well with some granola, fruit and yogurt…

We got up and dressed and the children even helped with the washing up… I however needed to do the weekly wash! In a van the size of ours, we only really bring 5 days of clothes and its always necessary to wash a few bits every couple of days, but the weather has made this tricky! This morning however I got it all sorted, and hung, widow twangy style, everywhere!

We headed into the town of Sain Matin for a ride and a shop. This really is such a fab place to come… there are many tandems available to hire…. for some reason we were not permitted!

We managed to get an oyster glove thing for stew as he now has several puncture wounds in his hands from the hundreds he has opened this week! The shops are exquisite and offer only the most unique of products.

We cycled home via the shops for some essentials (melon and pate) and then had some lunch.

The kids hit the pool and i took advantage of the golden thing in the sky to do some washing! We all had a great play in the pool for a few hours, before happy hour in the bar and pétanque for the children.\

Back at the van a delicious BBQ was very much the order of the day before trying to get the children to sleep with a background bass sound of euro pop whist catching up on many days of the blog!!

Sorry for the interrupted service, but normal service will resume!

Our time in Noirmoutier had come to an end… for the fire time i felt ready to move on… the nights in the campsite had been very rowdy and showed the impact of reduced security on the campsite… in fact, someone in the neighbouring tent had had their boards stolen the previous night.

We headed off waved away by the Lealan’s, but had to stop for one more bag of Oysters… these Oysters were so sweet and delicious…. we all wanted just a few more.

We got off the island quickly with no traffic jams and headed down the coast. We realised quite how far it was to the other side of le Grois as over some wine we had considered a project for next year to pass over the bridge and the Grois in one day… but its a long long way!!

We stopped in La Rochelle…. shopping supplies needed (wine) and we headed to decathlon as poor Fraser’s bed has been deflating and we thought he deserved a new one!! We nearly bought a larder unit for the van, but then found what i will call a plate hammock which fits under the table and cost 5 euro!! It’s amazing! Heather, you need this! In fact all my camping friends, a table hammock is the business!!

We made our way to the campsite… there is a story here. I forgot to book a site for the busiest 3 nights of our trip… i don’t know why… but i did so we have ended up staying in a site which we said we would never stay in again!! It noisey, dirty but well located for Saint Martin which is THE MOST BEAUTIFUL town I think i know of. I love it here.

The evenings bingo sound in the background,with its over amplified crackled helped the children off to sleep around 11 after a few words and a competitive game of pétanque! At least we got through some pages in our books!!