23rd September (rain, drizzle, cloudy, cool, windy) 18 km

It’s weird the things you happen across in campgrounds.  This campground not only didn’t supply toilet paper, lights in the toilet are apparently also considered a frivolous non-essential.  However, they make up for it by having a campground light thoughtfully positioned right outside our tent.  You don’t notice these things when you set your tent up in daylight but you sure notice them at night.

So woke this morning at 8am after an interrupted sleep just with people talking and walking past the site, our pitch being on the back boundary. The wind was still blowing and it seemed like another opportunity to get some washing done and hung out to dry, providing it didn’t blow away. Forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog that the best thing about the ride was drying off my undies and socks on the bike. For the afternoon yesterday my socks dangled from my handgrips and my undies danced gaily in the wind from my handlebars. It did arouse the interest of many a passer-by, in cars and on foot. I will be patenting the idea when I return to NZ as a fitness/drying aid for travellers.

After a cuppa, I aired our sleeping bags and inner liners, whilst Julia washed some of her gear. We’ve been keeping up to date with washing, but tonight we’ll put a load of clean gear in the dryers, just because after sitting in the dry bags during a trip of this length, it becomes damp and sticky. At present we have been given the use of the French couple’s line next to us, to dry our wet clothes and I am using a vacant holiday home’s balcony for the airing of the other stuff.

Phil and Elizabeth are off into the town to check shops opening hours and then they are off for a ride around some of the island. They took off at 1.30pm, but it still looked dodgy with spits of rain, although as I write this an hour later, it’s still not amounted to anything. As we were blogging on the bench by reception, we met a couple from Monmouthshire with their dog Percy. He was beautiful, an Italian Spifaldi (Toff, you can correct me on that one). Heather and Glynn are touring in their van and mentioned a couple of towns further up the coast were really lovely.

We had mackerel and tomato for lunch, something we haven’t had for a while, so that will become a different choice of food, as we’re both eating camembert by the truckload. I can literally feel my arteries closing up. Bought Julia a bottle of red Bordeaux wine today to have with our main meal tonight….yes, it’s Chilli Con Carne tonight…perfect with a red wine. I’m very much into this Dutch beer, 8.6. Trying a different type of that brand tonight. The local brassieres charge an arm and a leg for the stuff you can pick up off the shelf for a fraction of the price and that way we can drink it anywhere we like…plus I’m a tight git and don’t like getting ripped off.

Forecast for tomorrow is for fine weather, but more importantly, a tail wind to speed us on our way down the coast.  

After lunch, we decided to go and visit La Flotte and Saint Martin, further up the coast of the island.  The rain looked like it could chuck it down any minute or just stay looking oppressive for the rest of the day.  Of course as soon as we took off from camp, leaving our washing out, it started to hose down.  

Yahoo it's stopped raining!!!

We took shelter behind some trees for ten minutes and when it had eased off, visited an old fort and an abbey ruin.  Then we cycled into La Flotte which was a very beautiful seaside town and the moody sky just added to the atmosphere.

It started to rain again so we took shelter by the tourism office where we got into a conversation with a French woman.  We told her we couldn’t speak much French but that just made her speak faster, almost as if she thought if she spoke more, we’d probably understand more.  Well we didn’t but we just smiled and nodded until the rain stopped and then with an “Au revoir”, cycled to St Martin.

We’re really glad we came out for a bike ride this afternoon because St Martin was also beautiful, despite the weather.  After looking around this lovely old town, we saw yet another set of dark clouds heading our way so hightailed it back to Rivedaux where we are staying.  We had a tailwind, so we made excellent progress and Phillip and Elizabeth had just got back before us.  They had to spend much of their afternoon sheltering from the rain as well.

Cycling into La Flotte - beautiful colours

La Flotte

Another old fort at Saint Martin - the colour of the water looked so inviting but only about 17C today

Saint Martin was a beautiful and affluent little town

We all gathered in the common room to have our dinner together and a few pre-dinner drinks as well.  Our washing was too damp to try and do anything with so we left it out on our neighbours line (she invited us to use it) and hope the wind will dry it out overnight as it is about as ferocious now as it was last night.  Unlike last night however, it is forecast to drop to just 8C tonight whereas last night was very warm.  We put a load of almost dry clothes and stuff that generally just needed airing out, into the camp dryer while we blogged and did dishes.  Then folded our stuff and off to bed.