Try not to make the same mistakes twice or you’ll never get around to all of them
Friday 17th June 2022
In an attempt to sleep without air-conditioning, we left all of the windows and hatches wide open and I laid my wet scarf across my shoulders. I woke up early to the sounds of various birds greeting the new day and it felt as if we were sleeping outside, which we almost were! It was still 26C inside and outside. I managed to get a bit of blogging done and photos labelled before Lindy arrived, and it was 10am by the time we all hopped aboard and checked out of Camping Pegomas. Just as we turned out of the gates it looked like our old Eileen the Motorhome pulled in! It’s the first time we’ve since one of those since we farewelled Eileen in 2016. I wished we could have met the owners, but we were on our way to Villeneuve les Avignon.
These Provencal villages are very pretty with their pale creamy limestone walls, but on a 38c day the glare and heat reflecting from them, feels even more extreme. Today was the same. The three of us meandered aimlessly from the car park to the fort, to the centre ville, from viewpoint to viewpoint, only stopping briefly for tea and a tart while watching a man clean a roof. Yes, there was a lot of excitement in the sleepy village.
On the way to Lindy’s hotel in Avignon we had our first fridge accident of this trip. A sharp right turn resulted in the fridge door bursting open and throwing a large, already opened, pot of yoghurt across the floor. It was bound to happen once this trip and at least the contents missed Lindy.
Rodney and I checked into Camping Bagatelle on the Ile de la Barthelasse and sweated our way through setting up Reggie. It’s a good pitch with trees for shade, but even with the awning up, everything inside; the table, walls, cupboards, etc., are all hot to the touch. The fan is struggling constantly and only just helping to keep us comfortable. We have a very friendly French couple on one side of us. Sadly we have struggled to have a good conversation as their English is about as bad as our non-existent French. There’s a German couple on the other side, who don’t engage with us at all and just seem to shout at each other and they seem to have a problem with their electricity, goodness knows what, we’re too scared to ask. And opposite us we have another German couple and he is one of the finest Mr Boobnbellies we’ve seen. In fact we’ve upgraded him to a Mr Boobnbumnbelly, cos it’s all hanging out….tres magnificent !!!
At 5:45pm we met up with Lindy in the centre of Avignon to sip on cocktails in L’Opera Café in the Place d la Horloge. We then picked Le Petit Nice for dinner. Well, we think we did. When Lindy kindly paid the bill, we had to go into the pizza restaurant next door; weird. As Rodney and I walked back over the Pont Edouard Daladier (not sur la Pont d’ Avignon), a rock concert next to the campsite was in full swing. When we cleaned our teeth, we thought the female singer was being murdered!!! It was an appalling noise at full blast and we hoped and prayed it wasn’t going to be an all-nighter. We really didn’t think much of ‘Silver Balls’, or ‘Two Fingers In The Noise’; it wasn’t music in any sense whatever.
Saturday 18th June 2022
I was still sleepy when we got up on yet another hot day, after yet another sweaty night. We left the island and walked the bridge over the Rhone to meet Lindy at 10am in Avignon to spend just a couple of hours wandering around Les Halles and an open-air market. Then Lindy left us to catch a train to Marseilles to continue her holiday in France and Greece. Rodney and I wandered around for a while longer and bought some much-missed sushi for a lunch snack. By 2pm it was 38C and the heat was so draining we dragged ourselves back to Reggie to sit in the shade. A cool shower before bedtime, the fan whirring, the old wet scarf and no rock concert, all helped to get a better night’s sleep. And now we are two.
