France day 14 – Saintes-Maries-de-La-Mer
Bit of a lie in and then we broke camp, packed Van the Van and set off to France. We were aiming for a small campsite in the ACSI book.. It is on the coast of the Carmargue and is on the banks of a river. Off we set stopping off before midday to buy a couple of days worth of food. Had to be done before the shops all close on the Sunday afternoon. We continued along the toll free roads, travelling on the ‘A’ roads where they were free. Stopped off at an Aire for lunch. The toilets here were so bad, people had been trampling shit all over the place. Disgusting.
We arrived at 3.30 at the campsite, getting slightly perplexed by the number of vans driving in the opposite direction, yes it was full up. The Aire outside the campsite was also stacked with a hundred plus vans. We looked at the AXI map and were about to head to another site 30 minutes away on the other side of an Etang. But before heading that way we tried another site the other side of the town I had previously spotted. I had not considered it because it was not an ACSI site and looked huge. Yes it was huge, and also tremendously expensive. There were walks along the beach, and into the Etang de Monro. We decided we would book for a couple of nights to allow us to check out the town and site. We could always extend.
The site was packed, pitches are very close together. The people near us all seem pretty good and international, Germans, Dutch, Swiss and Brits. Here there were also quite a few VM camper vans and small vans. These had been missing from the Spanish site.
In the hedge, just next to our van, a very cooperative dragonfly perched under the leaves. It remained there for the duration of the photoshoot, never moving. It was still there after supper.
We walked along the beach, figuring out where the flamingos were for tomorrow’s walk. Near the sluice gates and Archimedes screw there were some very aggressive little egrets who seemed to be attacking each other.
It had been mainly a sunny day, but cloud was coming in and rain forecast for the morning. A cheerful Brit who had been here for 5 days said it had been sunny all the time. Not quite how it had been in Spain.