We're All Going on a Summer Holiday

Part Three: Tiptoe Through the Poo Bits

I stood in the dark, in the pouring rain with mounting disbelief as my French friends pointed out that not only had our tent got a great rip in it, but the voleur had also grabbed one of our bags, the contents of which were now scattered about the ground. Damn. This was the bag which had all our paperwork in, I hoped to god it wasn't some refugee after a free boat ticket. This was also the bag we had used for the passports on the journey, but luckily Spouse had been carrying them around with him in his money belt. Luckier still, said money belt was in our section of the tent, as was mine - thankfully I had thought to pick it up from the middle section where I had carelessly left it earlier on. I realised I was being slightly reckless, but the campsite had seemed so peaceful it didn't dawn on me we could get broken into here. Ironically Spouse had been telling us about a similar incident which had happened to him in the south of France, but we all agreed the Loire was a less likely venue for such happenings.

Having ascertained that nothing was missing (there was a certain grim schadenfreude from realising that our burglar must have been somewhat thwarted by the contents of our bag - it was full of the children's puffers, my lipstick and nail polish remover, the cover of my mobile phone, the charger for my phone, but no phone itself. I do hope he was mighty pissed off) - our friendly informants told me there was an anglais next door to us who had also been robbed. Damn, that was our friend. I assured them I would let him know, and they went on their way before telling me that the thief had taken the bag from under the head of one of them as he slept. Phewee! You have to admire the nerve of the guy if nothing else...

I found our mate's bag and woke him up. The news for him was not so good - helas our friendly robber had made off with all his credit cards and his cash, and more worryingly his keys. Luckily, I found them underneath his car. By this time Spouse was up, and he asked me where our spare keys were. Damn, they were in the bag I had already been through, and I hadn't found them. There was no chance that the thief could make off with the cars as the campsite had a barrier, but he might decide to come back and take the dvd player (let's face it that would have been a disaster). After much searching during which we discovered, our friend's daughter's bag had been rifled and she had lost her mobile phone, the keys turned up, and after standing around in the pouring rain while he contacted the relevant credit card companies, we eventually repaired to bed. Spouse and I were now so twitchy we woke to every sound, and slept for the rest of the holiday with our moneybelts in our sleeping bags.

In the morning we tried to make light of the incident so as not to spook the children, and then as the only French speaker, I accompanied our friend to the police station, where it transpired our voleur had been through about seven other tents. He was eventually found out by a Dutch woman, who rather scarily heard breathing in her tent, and unzipped her sleeping compartment and came face to face with the bastard. Unfortunately she didn't see his face, and he dropped his knife and ran off, but the poor woman was pretty spooked (as was I when I got back to the campsite and discovered the inside of our friend's tent had been slashed right above where his younger daughter and no2 were sleeping - fortunately they thought this rather cool and didn't have the angst about it I did).

The French police station experience was a lot more stressful then the German hospital, as I was conscious that we should be as accurate as possible, but was about two steps behind the police officer who interviewed us. The bureacracy was unbelievable and we were there for hours. They were evidently bored rigid because on asking if we had witnessed anything suspicious and our confirming that there had been a rather odd bloke who appeared with his caravan rather late and was gone in the morning, they got very excited and decided he must be our voleur. Chances are he wasn't,but he had caught our attention the previous day, mainly because we were all appalled that he let his dog shit on the ground, ready for the next occupant. (We were feeling a bit sore about this kind of thing as people kept walking their dogs by the river and allowing them to go anywhere - a bit trying when the kids were wandering off down there. Mind you, little did we know that we hadn't seen anything yet...)

Eventually we got back to the campsite. The weather wasn't bright enough for the swimming we had promised the children, so we headed off for another castle at Usse - also known as the Sleeping Beauty castle, as Charles Perrault allegedly used it and it inspired him to write the story. It is not hard to see why - the turrets of the towers all look the part, and the wood was pretty magical. The children were not unnaturally entranced, though really there wasn't a lot to see (we were more excited by the dungeons we found later, but hey, you can't expect children to get thrilled by the things that thrill us...), so the trip was a reasonable success. By the time we got back to the camp, the sun had come out, so we all got in the pool, barring no 2, who stoically didn't seem to mind, and then we were able to have a barbie in reasonably good conditions. We actually sat comfortably outside for the first time in the holiday. Hell, we'd only been away for ten days. We had better weather in Poole, where it seemed to rain endlessly...

That night we none of us slept too well, I jerked awake to every sound and had dreams in which faceless men appeared with knives. I love camping, but for the first time I felt really vulnerable. No matter that I was sure the voleur was only after petty cash and was long gone, the fact that we had all slept through it and none of us heard a thing was unsettling to say the least...

Still I had learnt a valuable lesson - always keep your money belt with you and have your bags with the zips facing towards you (I had only done so as it was easier to get to them, but it also meant the voleur couldn't reach inside easily either). Our friend's idea is to hang everything up from the middle of the compartment, that way any potential thief actually has to come in and get you, which isn't so likely.

The next morning our friends left to go back home, but we visited one last chateau with them, before they left. The rain came down once more and we waved them off, rather wishing we were going with them. We dripped our way to a pizza restaurant, where miraculously for the first time someone actually understood what we were after and they provided two pizzas cut in half for the children, and they ate the lot. Then, as we got a sudden burst of sunshine we went to look around the chateau. No 3 suddenly announced she had a sore throat, and went all pale and wan on me. Great. Yet another invalid. So I sat with her and no 2 while Spouse and the others explored the grounds.

The chateau was called Azay le Rideau and was really interesting. I was excited to discover it had been owned by Francis I of Cloth of Gold fame, and tried to similarly excite no 1. Alas, she was all castled and historied out and really didn't want to know... Can't say I can blame her really. She used to like history. I do hope we haven't put her off. As we came out of the castle, we had another set to in the bloody gift shop with all of them demanding things which were either a) too expensive or b)weren't worth having. Spouse managed to get a couple of French history books, but the children left empty-handed and sulking, and the faustian pact had still not been sated.

On the way back to the campsite, Spouse decided to detour up the old castle keep, or Donjon, which was nearby. He had visited it alone a couple of days earlier and thought it was fairly derelict. The children by this time were rebelliously not wanting to go to another castle ever, so we wandered up to the gate and Spouse realised he had made a mistake. Not only was it not derelict, it was open and there was a man selling tickets at the gate. An Englishman as it turned out with an incredible story to tell. The Donjon is in fact the first stone keep in Europe, built by a chap known Fulke de Nerra, or the Black Falcon. Fulke was not a nice chap - he had his first wife burnt as a witch in order to marry the second, and did endless wicked deeds, but hey he went to the Holy Land four times on pilgrimage to make up for it, so that's ok then - but he was a remarkable man. In the late tenth century when he was operating most folk had wooden castles, which meant warfare was a seasonal occupation. You fought in the spring and summer, then went back home for the autumn and winter before resuming normal operations the following spring. Fulke, being pretty much surrounded by his more powerful enemies, the dukes of Blois, decided his best bet was to build a series of stone castles or keeps, the Donjon at Montbazon being the first in 991. He was thus able to build up his powerbase in the region leaving his heirs, the Anjevins a wonderful legacy, from which thanks to Henry II, the English people later benefited.

The castle is thus of huge importance, not just to French history, but to our own. But no one is interested in its upkeep. So its current owner, is restoring it himself at huge cost. If you want to know more, visit: http://www.donjon-montbazon.net - but I reckon a French version of Restoration deserves to be made for such an incredible project, and the owners deserve a knighthood at least...

Going back to the car we managed to get the kids interested - the notion that the man who owned the castle actually lived their really awakened their curiosity, and we had a happy half an hour wandering around. Feeling we couldn't leave without making some kind of donation, we allowed the children a toy at the gift shop, and hurrah, this time no 2 found something she liked, but dammit, no 3 didn't. So now no 2 was saying that she was still owed for not getting something in the first gift shop and no 3 was saying she was owed for not getting something in this one... I swear next time we go anywhere if they don't sodding well like anything they don't get anything AT ALL. EVER...

The following day we packed up and headed for the coast. We still had five days left, and we fancied finishing with a bit of beachy holiday. Surely, surely by now our luck would turn and so would the weather?

We had toyed with going to Normandy, but I figured that Pas de Calais might be better as it was only a quick slog up to Calais from there, and we had stayed there a few years earlier and at least knew there were some decent beaches. I tried to ring some campsites the day before we left, but for some reason couldn't get connected. Oh well, I thought, there were bound to be plenty, it wasn't such a long journey, and we should be up there around 4ish.

As if.

First off, packing up the tent of course took longer then expected. Secondly we were in mid pack, when some Dutch people whom we had been chatting to earlier in the week asked (for the second time) if Spouse could help jump start their car. On the previous occasion our friend has used his car, and Spouse was rather embarrassed that as we had only had our car for less then a month he didn't actually know where the battery was. Coupled with the battery was intense irritation, as we had sat incredulously staring over at their tent the previous night, as it was brightly lit, by their car's headlights. I know that I am not tecnnically minded as far as cars are concerned, but even I know that you don't leave your headlights on all night...

Jumpstarting the car set us back by half an hour, so it was gone eleven when we set off. I decided the best route to follow was to go straight through Tours and pick up the road to le Mans. It looked a little complicated on the map and proved even more complicated in practise, partly because the road signs I was following kept disappearing and suddenly we were heading east out of Tours towards Chenonceaux (a chateau I had rather hoped to visit because of its Catherine de Medici connections, but not today). Spouse who was still suffering badly with a sore throat was not impressed by my vain attempts to find the right road again, but after about an hour I managed it. Great. We had been driving for an hour and were about ten miles from where we started... We narrowly avoided missing the right road again, and soon were heading to le Mans where Spouse was most pleased to have the opportunity to drive down the Mulsanne Straight, or at least part of it.

However the next couple of hours were long and tedious as the roads were slower then anticipated. It was only somewhat belatedly that I picked up that running parallel to the road we were on was a spanking new peage - our map being c 1998 the peage didn't feature. Whoops we could have saved ourselves an hour.

Eventually we pitched up at Pas de Calais at about 6pm. We headed for le Crotoy first, but couldn't find the campsite we were looking for. Never mind, let's try Fort Mahon I said. In Fort Mahon the two sites mentioned were both full, so we headed further up the coast, via a few wrong turns as the roads mentioned in our guidebook seemed to bear little correspondence to our map...

After much grumping on both our parts, and a fruitless journey down a country lane, we eventually stumbled across two more campsites, which bore the dreaded words complet. Bugger, bugger, bugger. We then found ourselves following every camping site sign going, which is how we ended up in the middle of nowhere after seeing a sign for Camping Quatre Plages (four beaches) - a misnomer if ever there was one as the campsite in question was miles from a beach and had clearly been created from the owner's back garden.

By now marital relations were severely strained and our offspring were rapidly turning into four terrified rabbits. Which is how we came to drive into Berck Plage with a sense of increasing desperation. By now it was eight o'clock, everyone was hungry, we had to put up somewhere for the night. Having a choice of left or right, we followed a campsite to the right as it was at least near the beach. Big, big mistake, as it turned out, but the first signs were reasonably auspicious.

The campsite was not complet, it was wooded and at first glance seemed pleasant. I was still struggling with the French however, and as I alway find translating money when abroad (and have particular problems with euros - how freudian is that?), being two steps behind this time proved bloody disastrous. I had understood that the campsite was 38 euros a night(a mere snip after our much more reasonable 20 euros in the Loire), and foolishly said we were planning to stay five nights. She asked for some money and not completely understanding I assumed she wanted a deposit. Had I not been two steps behind the fact that she asked me for 190euros should have been enough to ring alarm bells, particularly as I didn't have enough cash on me. Pas de probleme says my cunning friend when I suggest going to ge some more money of Spouse, vous avez carte credit? Naturellement, I have a carte credit , and like a bloody idiot, I give it to her. (I am now panicking I will be a victim of identity theft). It was only when I got back to Spouse I realised that I had just paid for five days up front. Oh bollocks. Now we were stuck here. We could only hope that it was ok...

Our first impressions were soon dashed. We were taken on a rather wild tour of the site by Mr Campsite Owner before he deposited us at a pitch which seemed to be full of dogs. Oh great, I muttered, they'll have shat all over our pitch. Not only that we had an audience as a large (in more ways then one) French family were sitting at some tables opposite our pitch with a menagerie that included several fat children, three dogs and a kitten. For all I know they'd probably brought their sodding hamster.

Still, at least there was a play area. That should keep the kids occupied while we put the tent up. Spouse and I frenzied about trying to get it up as quickly as we could - not easy when marital relations were at Cold War type ice levels - and had just about done it when no 3 came hopping over in tears. She had taken her shoes off in the play area which was covered in sand, and also, as it so happened, some dog shit. Some bloody sod had let their dog crap all over the kids' play area. Cursing loudly I took her to the rather unsalubrious cleaning area which consisted of a few rather dirty outside sinks and taps from which cold water poured. Bloody hell. How much worse could it get. Fing and blinding without a care to my six year old's sensibilities I set about the grim task of cleaning her up, snarling at the others to bugger off when they came near me, before it dawned on me that no 3 who was sobbing all the while thought I was cross with her. Not at all. I was incandscent with rage that anyone could be so selfish to let something like that happen - and lest you think I was overreacting, I have a very good friend who lost her right eye to an infection caused by dog poo, and I was damned if that was going to happen to my daughter.


Eventually after using two lots of toilet roll and two flannels which got chucked, I had managed to get it all off. By now it was really late, and the kids were all starving and knackered. The town was only a stone's throw away so we walked out to get yet more pizza. I had never been anywhere like it. It was so tacky it made Blackpool look posh. In fact it was rather like going to Blackpool on a bad acid trip. And to make our cup of happiness complete, there was dog's shit on all the pavements. Doesn't anyone in France clean up after their dogs? I thought they invented the pooper scooper. I thought the French were supposed to be sophisticated, was no 1's response when we circumvented yet another pile of poop. Hmm, you do have a point there...

Still at least we got everyone fed before midnight. We went back to the campsite feeling glummer then at any point on our trip. We had discovered by this time that the toilets were grim beyond belief. They even had a female squattie, something I've never seen anywhere and the toilet they did have had no seat. So my daughters got a quick lesson in that age old technique perfected by drunk females in nightclubs everywhere of pissing when you stand up. You're never too young to learn...

By the morning no 1 was refusing to go near the toilets, it was raining again so we couldn't face breakfast on the campsite, so we headed for town and found a cafe which did hot chocolate and bring your own croissants, purchased bizarrely from the patisserie next door.

The rain held off enough for us to get on the beach, which was so windy we indulged in some kiteflying. At least Spouse and I did, the kids barely seemed interested - making sandcastles being more fun. As we went back for some lunch the rain came down once more. I've had enough, said Spouse, I want to go home. I did too, but I was also desperate to get some beach time Shall we see if it gets better tomorrow I said in desperation. Surely, surely our luck must change...

The afternoon seemed brighter, so I began to feel more hopeful, and we got back on the beach for a bit. But Spouse was desperate for the loo, and he and nos 1&2 disappeared for hours looking for one. Tripping through yet more dog's poo on their return Spouse came up with a song, to the tune of Tiptoe Through the Tulips, they all came back singing, Tiptoe through the poo bits, the Doggy Doo bits, in France. Never a truer word...

That evening we had an indifferent meal in an indifferent restaurant, the rain held off, but it was cold and windy. I lay awake that night listening to the wind roaring through the tent and hoping that we wouldn't be blown away. In the morning we got up to a grey and cloudy day, but at least it wasn't raining. Spouse bravely went off to have a cold shower in the grim toilet blocks - I couldn't face it I felt I'd end up filthier then when I started. I was beginning to fantasise about how to get everyone clean - my initial thought had been to get them in the sea and shower off on the beach, but the sea was miles out and there weren't any showers. We visited the municipal showers, but they looked grimmer then the ones on our campsite. Spouse had found a swimming pool, but it looked the kind of place where you might pick up legionnaire's disease.

Spouse had set up breakfast and I started pouring the kids cocopops. As they sat down to eat, the heavens opened again. By the time he came back they were sitting sheltering under the car, eating their breakfast. Sod this for a game of soldiers, I said, let's go home. I rang the travel company and for the mere sum of £7 we were able to exchange our tickets and go home that afternoon. Never have I parted with seven pounds more gladly. We packed up as quickly as we could - the tent was soaking but it couldn't be helped. The children were happily ensconced in front of a dvd and didn't seem in the slightest bit bothered about going home. We'd been away for a fortnight anyway. Enough was enough.

Nobody could face the toilets at the campsite, and despite my efforts with Mrs Campsite Owner to get our money back, it turned out of course that there were no refunds available. I complained about the dog shit and the filthy amenities and got a gallic shrug and Desolee, Madame. I'll give you desolee I thought, but decided I didn't want to compound our problems by committing murder and ending up on remand in a French prison...

We left Berck with happy hearts and set off for Calais. Ten minutes out no 1 announced she needed the toilet, and it took us nearly an hour to find one in a McDonalds outside Boulogne. Poor kid was red in the face and clearly in pain by the time we got there, but luckily there were no disasters. And ordering McDonalds in France proved somewhat easier then in Germany, where they got the order completely wrong.

We got to Calais in plenty of time and were able to get on the three o clock ferry. Just as we came into Dover the rain came down in sheets, but as we got in the car and headed for the M20 the sun came out. We looked back across the channel where a huge black cloud was louring like some ugly ogre, and breathed a sigh of relief. At least tonight we weren't going to be sleeping under canvas.

Boy was it good to be home.