Holiday 2019 D2

The road trip phase 2. After an OK night’s sleep in the hotel we got up and had hotel breakfast on their summer deal – kids eat free and adults are 2 for 1 so €15 for all of us. On the road before 9am, having read the riot act to the kids about quiet when we ask for it as we’ll be tackling the peripherique later.We made the peripherique with perfect DVD headrest movie timing. Silence from the back seat as we navigate the slalom of many lanes and exits every couple of hundred yards. Glimpsed Monmatre and the Eiffel tower, following weird double decker cow transporter rocking and stinking with cross bovines. Made it through and right past signs for the suburbs where my company is headquartered.

Strangely no temptation to divert to the office!

After picnic lunch in a very nice aire we decided to come off the motorway early cos we were a bit early and fancied a jaunt through the countryside on our way to the first campsite at Chateau de Marais. We came through Beaugency which looked very pretty and over the Loire before turning towards Chambord.

Arrived campsite mid afternoon and it was really hot and humid. So a quick unpack and straight to the pool. Large boy has only been swimming since February but did a fantastic job swimming without arm bands. Small boy after 5 lessons didn’t drown once with just arm bands and splashed on his front and back. After an hour though the sun had gone in and we were a little chilly so back to the caravan for showers and activity books while himself went hunting and gathering milk, water, & coke.

Once we were all clean the boys started their activity books. Large boy read some kindle and then got out a Lego magazine while small boy got a space book, colouring rockets and trying to copy pics. He designed his own planet and wrote it’s name all by himself: fixx apparently. This meant that I managed a cup of tea – sorely needed.

Takeaway yummy pizza for tea (major coercion of 4 yr old, bribery with milky ways) and then a little wander down to the playing field with the stomp rocket.

One of my strongest memories of childhood (proper tenting) camping holidays is the playing with random kids, often with no shared language. Today the boys got their first taste of that this year. They shared their stomp rocket with two Dutch boys, took turns, laughed when the rocket fell over and cheers when it went high.

And so to bed. Small is exhausted as demonstrated by his lack of appetite and tears when he noticed a tumble from 10mina earlier had resulted in a scrape and a tiny amount of blood.

Gin has been partaken and chocolate will follow once the boys have been dispatched to bed. Night all.

To see what else we got up to on our 2019 summer holiday, see Holiday 2019 Round Up.