Thursday started out bright and sunny, but with still no news on the pump, so we decided to walk to the local beach and spend the morning there. We duly carted our deck chairs the 300m to the beach and set up facing the sun, which 10 minutes later went behind a cloud and didn’t reappear! And then the wind got up and it got quite cold so after about an hour we decided it wasn’t going to improve and adjourned back to the site.
Karol did a load of washing as it was good drying weather (!) and as there was still no news of the bloody pump I called Roper’s Caravans in Catterick and asked them for the tracking number – they promised to call back. The forecast was for rain overnight and then for all of Friday so we packed away what we could, played a game of Bananagrams (a good word game, which I won!) and I then set about cooking a curry (I had done all the prep! K) in our all in one pizza pan outside. It was then that it started to rain, so I finished off cooking in a lovely outfit of apron and kagoul.
Ropers called with the tracking number and when we logged on we could see that the pump had arrived in Madrid on Wednesday at 5 p.m. so surely would be with us on the Friday?
Friday was very wet, but good news – the pump was, according to the tracking ‘out for delivery’. At 10 o’clock I called at reception, and was told that they’d already rung the post office who confirmed the pump was there, and if I wanted I could collect it before 11 or they would deliver it around noon. I opted to collect, and 45 minutes later we had it in our hands!
It was then all hands to the pump (good pun!) to get everything else packed away. We were the only ones left on our row by this time as everyone else had already gone, and sods law – the rain absolutely poured down as we were packing up the last few things and putting the bikes in the caravan. By the time we were hitched up most of our stuff (and us!) was sodden. Still, we were away from Orio after 10 days just before 12 noon, and into France within an hour.
As we crossed into France via the edge of the Pyrenees we hit a rainstorm the like of which I have never experienced. You could not distinguish between the grey sky, the grey rain and the grey road. we were on a 3 lane motorway and I was travelling at a snails pace as I simply couldn’t see where I was going, and the wipers couldn’t clear the water fast enough to help. Obviously everyone else was in the same boat, but we were relieved when it started to ease off after about 10-15 minutes and normal service was resumed. After that it was pretty straight forward, although French Toll roads are pretty expensive compared to their Spanish equivalents. We got held up a bit in busy Friday afternoon traffic around Bordeaux but otherwise made good time and arrived at our destination Camping Le Paradis in St-Leon-sur-Vezere (about 20 miles from Sarlat in the Dordogne) just before 6 o’clock. We were greeted by the Dutch owner Ellen “Ah, the family Ellis!” – our reputation precedes us! Once again the weather which had been quite dry for long periods in the afternoon let us down, so we ended up setting up the caravan in the pouring rain too. Still, we now have water in the caravan and we’re connected to the mains as well, so no fetching and carrying of water either which is a real bonus.
However, we did now have a problem with the fridge which, when we switched it on started beeping for 20 seconds every couple of minutes. We tried everything – switching from electricity to gas (no joy) switching it off, and then on again (still no joy) and read all the instructions in the book, but to no avail. None of the troubleshooting symptoms were the same as ours. Are we always going to be plagued by equipment acting up I wonder?
I took to Google – ‘Dometic fridge won’t stop beeping’ and found a thread with someone else who’d had the problem, which apparently related to condensation in the catch cover making the fridge think the door was open. I took the cover off, and dried it – and that did the trick because it stopped! How bizarre is that?
Too tired to cook, we ate in the site’s excellent restaurant where we both had the set menu – asparagus soup, perch from the river Vezere with butter sauce and rice, and walnut cake, all delicious – and washed it down with an excellent bottle of red from Bergerac labelled especially for the site!
The evening was rounded off by a demob happy group of sixth formers who had left school that day, and were celebrating by enthusiastically entering into the karaoke session the camp site put on for them – enthusiasm was much more in evidence than talent unfortunately. Still, they managed to clear the restaurant in about 10 minutes! The forecast for Saturday isn’t much better, but we’re happy to have made a move into France at last.
