24/09/09

Day 16 – September 24
The day dawned bright and sunny again, and as this weather is only forecast to last until the weekend and our sunburn has subsided, we packed our towels and sun cream and headed for the beach, to be beach bums for the day. Unfortunately this involved re-kindling my love-hate affair with my bicycle, which you may or may not know is my most hated form of transport. I could never ride a bike well as a child, and nothing has happened to alter that unhappy state of affairs in the intervening forty-odd years. Needless to say, Peter finds this absolutely hilarious and his sadistic streak comes to the fore as he pedals off into the distance, leaving me trailing in his wake pedalling like fury and complaining about what the saddle is doing to my posterior! To add insult to injury, he made me do it again this evening because he fancied a beer in a bar!
The season is still going in La Tranche and the shops and bars are still open, unlike many of the places we have visited en route to here. It was lovely to wander round the town remembering places from twenty years ago – this is where I first learned how big a tuna fish is from seeing one on a cutting slab in the poissonerie, next to a huge saw!
The aire is very busy tonight. Our immediate neighbour is a man on his own who has a cage of canaries for company which have been outside today, enjoying the sun! But the clientele is mainly French motorhomes whose occupants appear to be much older than we are which makes us realise, not for the first time, just how lucky we are to be able to do this at this time in our lives, while we are fit and able – and can still ride a bike!