18 August 2024

Holiday, again 😁

Monday = work and evening of packing and playing tetris loading the car and its roof-box.

🕹️ On the ferry over to France, the boy and I played Front Armies, connecting two phones via hotspot to play the LAN version. It's the first time I've played a computer game for ages. It certainly made the crossing go faster.

🐚 We had three beach days. Utah beach was good for sandcastles and a game of Mölkky. It's not so great for swimming. At low tide you can walk out a few hundred metres and you're still up to your knees only. On Plage d'AnneVille-sur-mer it was 1km walk to the sea from the dunes where we set up camp. A sign warned us not to swim because of strong currents. Later in the day, kite surfers appeared as the tide came in. Omaha beach was third time lucky with swimming.

🛶 We paddled three Canadian canoes downstream for an hour and picnicked. Beautiful, picturesque countryside, bales of hay, cows and horses watching us as we meandered. Coming back was physically hard. It was upstream and windy in the wrong direction. It took two hours of constant rowing. If I stopped, we went backwards. Occasionally we got spun round and headed in the wrong direction because of a strong gust. Massive sense of achievement at the end!

🐠 Our only rainy day was spent at La Cité de la Mer. The Ocean of the Future exhibition was excellent and the boy really enjoyed it, which isn't always a given. Aquariums and interactive displays in the dark. A quick caffeine break resulted in a coffee with whipped cream; order a cappuccino at your peril in France. We queued 1.5 hours to go aboard the Le Redoutable which was well worth the wait. Being up close gives you an appreciation of the engineering required to manoeuvre a submarine, sustain human life for months, run a mini nuclear power station to fuel and keep the sub quiet, let alone house atomic missiles.

After each day out we came back to the campsite, swam, drank local beer, made food, played games, kids went feral with other camp kids and slept soundly. Go there.