After yet another beautiful sunset the previous evening, Angela awoke around 4 am.
The sea now calmed, drifting back and forth, sucking at the sand. The voices of the cicadas could now be heard, no longer drowned out by deafening breakers as they hit the shore. John woke to a beautiful sunrise on his side of the pop-up roof.
The young couple next to us left to spend a night in the Loire, before heading to Calais and taking the Le Shuttle through the tunnel back to England on Wednesday. Angela smiled about the wife's reaction when her husband suggest we look in the rear of their van at the bathroom area. Why do our partners do that? It means us woman are on constant alert that our facilities must be clean, tidy and in order. John normally wants to open the rear door of Marge whilst Angela is having an intimate moment with her Boxio, which results in her shouting, 'I'm on the toilet!'. Did you all hear that? The Aire was both popular and entertaining. The Dutch couple opposite ran a vac over their three dogs before setting off. As you do. As for us, we wished we hadn't spent so much time chatting as the gas strut on the opposite side to the one John replaced bent as he lowered the lifting roof.
Fortunately we had a spare, but come on. What a holiday this was turning out to be. Stress levels were already high, what with Marge playing up. And all a couple from Yorkshire had to worry about was would they be able to plug into an electrical supply each night in Spain and Portugal. Uh, probably not, unless you can find a campsite open. And why do you need to? Oh, of course. You need to be able to use your Ninja air fryer, which is a game changer. Certainly changing your figures! 32 c this afternoon. We know. Marge, please hang in there.
We left after lunch and stopped at a garage claiming to be a 4x4 specialist. Which they really weren't. There was a Land Rover 110 TD5 parked outside. Good start. No they couldn't help. The woman in the office saying, 'we hate Land Rover'. O.K. After trying another garage with a shop attached like Halfords, where we thought we would be able to buy coolant, we couldn't, we were directed to another garage and shop about 12 km away. We'd like to say a very big thankyou to the young man at Noraauto who helped us with advice. And when the last container of the coolant Marge required sold of the shelf, he went out into the workshop and bought a large part used one in which he gave us for Free. Yes, gratuit. We were now in the town of Labenne. About fifteen minutes from Ondres-Plage, and as it was late afternoon by now it made sense to return to the Aire where we'd spent the last two nights. A couple from Preston who'd we'd become friendly with were surprised to see us return. We parked Marge back in our parking space next to a English registered VW transporter van and settled in for the night. Steady heavy rainfall set in for the night. It hadn't been a great day, and little were we to know it would get a whole lot worse. Our English neighbour turned out to be a serial all night you-tuber. The viewing stopped at 2 am, but resumed at 4 am, and he was still watching when we awoke at 8,30 am. That's inconsideration for you. We would, and should have move, but once the roof is up, and the awning put out, and Marge is settled on her levelling ramps it's a bit of a carry on to move. So we just had to stick our fingers in our ears, almost suffocate ourselves by covering our heads with our pillows, and tough it out. And the man (ianz_trips) was no youngster, probably at least our age, so Ian if you read this PLEASE buy some headphones!
