Our aire was just as peaceful this morning – the birdsong gently waking us and the only people on the beach apart from us were three cockle fishermen. This morning was as sunny as yesterday with the same brisk northerly breeze keeping the temperature down and my fleece zip up.

We pulled away at about 0900 and did a quick tour of Le Touquet to see all the posh hotels, they have even got a wake boarding pool with a mechanical winch and jumps on the esplanade!

We continued to follow the coast road for an hour or so while we chatted about where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do. I fancied going to see the site of the battle of Crecy, but by the time I had programmed the sat nav we were already 30 minutes past it. We decided instead to find a campsite on the coast that was roughly halfway between us and Mont St Michel (tomorrow night’s destination) and have an afternoon on the beach. Our campsite directory opened at a place called Houlgate – where the heck is that? It turns out to be a lovely little seaside town between Ouistreham and Deauville. The campsite is great but we had to wait half an hour to get in as we arrived when it was shut for lunch. We got out of the van to wait and found that someone had turned the thermostat to 11. The sun was cracking the pavements and the breeze just kept the temperature bearable. It was so warm Wendy broke out the shorts and had to have a couple of changes of ‘tops’ before she got it right.

After we had had our lunch we walked into the town to get to the beach. As I said it is a lovely town but it is fond of rules. Its got a stunning beach but roller blades, roller skates, skateboards, bikes and more importantly dogs are banned from it, well the main part in front of the Roland Garros esplanade. This meant that we had to walk through the town to the end of the esplanade to get on to the beach. It was worth it. The beach stretched way into the distance in both directions. We also discovered that we had got the second best campsite in town as the best one was right on the beach! We are going to remember Camping de la Plage and come back sometime.

Back in town we had a cheeky cidre in a bar and then dined at the camp restaurant. Would you believe, at seven o’clock it was still to hot to eat outside? It’s a hard life.