We got on the road after our night at the Camping-Car Park. Sure enough, in a village a little way down the road was a pleasant looking free aire. The village appeared to have no commerce so I don’t really know why the aire was there. Often, they are an attempt to bring a few tourist euros in to the local community but I’m not sure where you’d’ve spent them here.
Eventually we approached the insanity that is the roads around Bordeaux and got on the rocade [bypass] going round the north side heading west. We were heading for the northern shores of the Basin d’Arcachon at a place called Arès.
We duly arrived in Arès and headed for the campsite that Francine had selected. After a slightly tortuous approach it proved to be full. “Bother”, said Pooh, crossly.
We headed for our backup destination which happened to be a larger site that we had stayed at with friends about 35 years ago. Full. “Bother”, repeated Pooh, crossly again.
We had driven past another site a short distance down the road so we headed for that. Permanently closed. Yikes! What Pooh said next is not repeatable and is certainly very un-Pooh-like.
It was beginning to look as though we’d have to stay in the manger. All we needed was Francine riding a donkey with towels wrapped around our heads and people would start worshipping us in a few years time.
I had trouble turning around in front of the narrow approach to the closed site’s locked barrier but eventually managed it. There was another site nearby so we pulled in to that. Closed for lunch. “Jesus!” [Blimey, they’d started worshipping us sooner than I’d expected.]
We began heading back towards a big supermarket, wondering what to do, but drove past a fifth campsite unknown to us. “Do you wanna try that?”, I asked Francine. “Why not?”.
There was a handy-dandy gate into a field which offered the possibility of a 3-point turn. I 3-point turned and drove into the unknown campsite. Surprise of surprises, there were two mangers available. This site is clearly going over to wooden cabins for the most part but still had abut 16 touring pitches, two of which were free. One was distinctly unappealing but the other, nestled into the trees with just one other unit beside us, looked good – tight but good. We went for it and after a few attempts at pitching that didn’t work, we eventually managed to find a way to make Frodo fit, just missing trees on either side of him (with one mirror folded in).
We have been camping in France for 40+ years and have never had trouble getting onto a campsite in low season. Just once in high season,many, many years ago, proved a difficulty but they allowed us to stay outside the gates on hard standing and use the facilities, because there were no other options nearby. This was a new experience.
We’re in manger #62. We’ll take a few Magi bearing gifts, if you can rustle them up, but tell them not to bother about the frankincense
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