Beaches, goats, and pools

on Jun 08 in General by

This is my second dispatch from our recent Keycamp holiday in France.

Remember, if you fancy going as well you could always see if you could win a free trip courtesy of Keycamp themselves in our grand Hadrian’s Walk Raffle

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This morning I got up before everyone else and headed off for a stroll along the beach. I spent a very enjoyable couple of hours wandering along the shore towards the lighthouse/signal station in Beg Meil.

It felt very civilised indeed. So much so I even went without my usual walking accompaniment of various foul mouthed podcasts, figuring it’s not often you get to have the sound of the sea in your right ear and the dawn chorus from the parallel nature reserve in your left.

Bloody marvelous.

When I got back to the resort Kerry and the kids were up and about and so we all went for an explore of the park. This is our first full day here at Camping de L’Atlantique. We spent the first night in France in Houlgate in Normandy, as a sort of staging post in order to avoid too horrendous a drive. That resort was very nice, but this is even better. Amy and Evan are particularly taken with the playground, which has a rather exciting ship and lighthouse for them to explore.

Personally I’m more impressed with the fact that tucked away in a corner of the park is a little pasture containing a couple of friendly goats. There’s nothing that makes a holiday complete like goading a goat into eating a chunk of your t-shirt in order to entertain the kids.

Playgrounds and goats are all very well, but the real star of Camping de L’Atlantique has to be the free waterpark at its centre.

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We’ve already spent a good hour and a half in the various pools and waterslides, despite the fact it’s only 18?. To be honest we had to drag Amy and Evan out pretty much kicking and screaming. It’s supposed to be hotter later in the week however, and anyway the outside pool is heated to a tolerable temperature so even if it does stay cool we’ll still be swimming every day.

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The other thing we did today was visit the supermarket for supplies. Kerry and I have a bit of a thing for supermarkets in foreign countries. You can walk around a thousand art galleries or historic buildings, but you’ll never find as good as a feel for the contemporary culture of a place as you will in the canned good aisles of the local equivalent to Tescos.

So the things we learnt about France from the nearby Eleclerc are: the French aren’t big cereal eaters, that their bakery’s are full of very nice French delicacies – but very little international fare (no bagles or pitta bread for example), all the milk seems to be revolting UHT stuff, and they don’t have any bags available at the checkout – but they do have some wooden boxes you can steal.

So according to my theory of supermarket anthropology, the French are quite inward looking, less open to outside cultural influence, don’t mind the fact that their milk tastes like rancid battery acid, and have a more positive attitude to the environment than the UK. I have no idea if that’s true or not of course, but that’s what I’m getting.

The forecast for tomorrow is rain unfortunately. Not that that will spoil our fun, but we’ll probably aim for a few indoor activities. We’re thinking of an aquarium in the morning then a indoor play place for the afternoon. There’s always the kids activities laid on by keycamp too, but we’re probably going to leave that to the end of the week. There’s a mask making workshop and a “Keycamp has talent” workshop that Amy particularly has her eye on.

Related posts:

  1. Je ne comprends pas
  2. In which I’m uncharacteristically sociable
  3. Xmas Xenophobia (or “Don’t mention the war”)
  4. Father’s Day Gifts from a bunch of good eggs
  5. Bunking off

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