You may have noticed that there haven’t been many updates forthcoming recently. This is due to yet more ill health brought on entirely by food poisoning and (and I admit I have absolutely no basis in fact for this accusation) the weather.
Two days ago, Wednesday, we decided that as rain was forecast, we would go and visit the nearest large town, Quimper (pronounced Camper), even if only so I could write about the local wine in a blog post called ‘Quimper Vin’.
Having made my driving-on-the-right lifetime debut on Tuesday afternoon when we visited the local fishing village of Guilvinec, I decided that having ‘been there, done that, bought the incomprehensibly arty French tee-shirt’ I would resume my role as chief navigator.
We got to the town in good time – a little over half an hour – but then managed to spend a similar amount of time looking for a parking space, an endeavour that caused us to cross and re-cross the river Odet several times and, bizarrely, end up in the forecourt of the local Post Office (amidst much cackling from the three witches in the middle seats of the tour bus, as that particular left turn had been the first independent decision made by the driver all day!). Literally two minutes after finally finding a space and disembarking the heavens opened, causing the local market to close for the day and drive off. It was heavy and it was an omen.
As the kids went with Grampa on ‘Le Petit Train’, snaking from the impressive cathedral through the narrow backstreets of the medieval town, my wife and I decided to explore. We gallantly but foolishly left the only two umbrellas we had with her mother and sister, who then thanked us for our generosity by spending the rest of the day inside a nice, dry shop. Unsurprisingly, we got totally soaked.
By the time we left Quimper and walked around a hypermarket at Pont L’Abbe for an hour and a half (“the experience of a lifetime” according to my mother-in-law, but “just like Shoreham Tesco” according to me), trench-foot had set in and I was becoming even more thoroughly miserable than is customary. Amusing though, in a more-than-slightly-embarrassing way, was the sight of my mother-in-law wrenching my wife’s card from the Chip’n’Pin gizmo after physically pushing her away from the till, so she could herself insist on paying. Goodness alone knows what the natives thought of such a display.
However, as is always the case in such scenarios, just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, things got worse, as the food poisoning from the previous night’s very tasty, but overpriced and now-quite-obviously-lethal pizza kicked in. Feeling as weak as a kitten and as cold as ice I haven’t left the campsite since and have only twice ventured outside the caravan. Everyone else has enjoyed swimming, go-karting, visits to the beach and copious quantities of food and drink and I have enjoyed reading a Bill Bryson book I borrowed from the Canvas Holidays reps and managing to not throw up.
Holidays are SO relaxing.
