Far from bored near Bordeaux

When you left us we were crawling along the autoroute around Bordeaux, wondering whether we’d run out of ways of apologising for being late to our gite hosts (in French). We were also running out of ways of explaining to the kids (in English) that when things happen that our outside of our control, the one thing we can actually control is our attitude to those things.

But eventually, nearly 3 hours later than our original ETA, we pulled up at the gite in La Teste-de-Buch. As Kiri and I were shown different things about the gite based on gender stereotypical roles (e.g. she was shown the kitchen, I was shown how to work the blinds – definitely not how we roll in life!) we were subtly glancing at the time – aware that the local Lidl / Intermarche shut in 30 minutes, we were 10 minutes away and we had no food in the house. Somehow we made it (despite a road closure) and once we’d cooked and eaten our pizza, it was bedtime… we thought. Our eldest had other ideas. Despite it being after 10pm, we found them just getting monopoly out!

Another glass of wine followed (Bordeaux nonetheless) before the rest of the family arrived at 11:30. The second half of our French adventure had begun and life could slow down.

The following morning, after we’d rescued a toad from the pool (as you do) there was some researching of the local cheese shops and a plan for food shopping. With the kids happily playing in the pool and my male in-laws happily scheming about food, I took the opportunity to stop and read for a long morning. As if that wasn’t rewarding enough, there was much cheese at lunch time; very good cheese… which we then burned off with some time playing in the pool after lunch.

In the afternoon we chose to explore our surroundings, wandering into La Teste-de-Buch where the final day of a 4 day festival was just getting underway. We didn’t stay long though, as there was a barbecue planned with stunning homemade chimichurri sauce and honey and mustard dressing to be consumed. There was also something very exciting going on with chicken and stock on the hob for several hours, filling the air with tantalising aromas and anticipation for the following day’s meals. After a quick game of table tennis, I got out the leaf blower (one of the jobs I’d been briefed on when we arrived), then we got the kids to bed… a little earlier than the previous day! Skyjo and wine brought the end of a relaxing day to an end.

Our eldest was accompanied by Kiri’s Dad to the local boulangerie to get bread, pain au chocolat and croissants for breakfast, after which Kiri headed to the supermarket along with most of her family whilst the rest of us stayed at the gite for a few games of Dobble. There was just time for a swim before a very balanced lunch of 3 bowls of French onion soup (using the chicken stock from yesterday), croutons, a stubby beer, and a canele de bordeaux for pudding. It would have been rude not to!

We didn’t want to complain about the intense heat as we had a wander in a local parc in the afternoon (as there was news of Storm Floris hitting the UK), but we were pleased by the shade the trees offered. We read about the cork oak tree on a sign, using the wizardry of Google Lens Translate to make up for the shortfall in our grasp of the local language, before returning to the cool of the pool.

We ate separately from the kids so they could both have something familiar to them (pasta and sausage), but also so that they could have a bedtime closer to their normal home bedtime after many late nights. Once in bed, the chicken from yesterday emerged from its bath of wine in the oven and was served alongside some incredible salsa verde, some deep theological conversations and further wine. The latter continued into the evening, accompanying another few games of Skyjo.

The following day we chose to venture slightly further afield – it was possibly a little cooler, so we headed off to Dune de Pilat – a 100 metre high dune that is allegedly the highest in Europe… and which is slowly moving inland, consuming a woodland. For a just a bit of sand (well, many hundreds of tonnes), it was incredibly popular – the area was heaving with visitors and the wooden shingle-clad chalets were selling gifts, icecreams etc celebrating the sand. It was quite the climb to get to the top (2 steps forward, 1 step back) and we pondered on how many medical emergencies there might have been on the incline, but it was worth it for the view and the welcome light drizzle at the top. We had a Dune selfie (even if it was August) before heading back to the gite for a tuna nicoise salad for lunch. Only one egg each though – because one egg is un oeuf (enough, geddit…?)

The kids had an appetite for more sand (not that there was sand in our lunch), so Kiri and I took them to a local beach where we built sandcastles and a long trench to the sea. Despite a language barrier, the kids made friends with a French child, coming back every two minutes to ask “Daddy, how do you say … in French?”. Tiredness was showing as we left the beach though. The rest of the clan had been out on a cheese hunt and were en route to the supermarket as we returned, so we made the kids a simple tea (and sent a request to the supermarket crew to compromise their morals and buy some “cheddar” cheese). Our tea was comprised of a fine selection of cheeses – comte, goat, ewe and camembert along with charcuterie and wine. No dijon mustard though… we’d already finished the jar bought a few days earlier!

Another day brought another beach – this time a lake beach. At the start of the day I questioned whether shorts would be appropriate, but by the time we packed the car, the sun was out and by the time we got to the beach at the Cazaux lake, it was warm enough to warrant an icecream for Kiri and the kids, and an alcohol-free mojito or iced tea for the rest of us. We did a bit of paddling in the shallow lake edge whilst fighter jets practised overhead, before moving to find a non-sandy place for a picnic. This turned out to be slightly more of a mission than expected, but we did end up driving through areas with evidence of wildfires – a stark reminder of the climate crisis. Eventually we found somewhere to consume the best picnic ever – quiche, pizza, celeriac coleslaw, tabbouleh, cheese, meat. It’s a surprise we were still hungry come tea time, but maybe the afternoon dip in the pool helped. We somehow managed to navigate ordering a pizza all in French via an app, with the only surprise being the duck we had on our ham and mushroom pizza (despite the description not containing “canard”). The evening was rounded off with board games once again.

Thursday marked the final day for our extended family with us in the gite, so we ventured to the open air market in town together. The kids were most interested in the nick nacks like bracelets and fans, but the inside food market was more tempting for me! The rest of the day was filled with pool time and board games – it was great to see how the kids’ confidence in the water grew massively with each day and by the end we were having races from one end to the other, balancing a weighted ring on our heads, or jousting with pool noodles.

To celebrate our final night all together, we went out to a local restaurant for dinner (Pestacle – a mispronunciation of “spectacle” by the child of the original owner of the restaurant). We enjoyed drinks and live music to start, then tapas style food to share – amazing braised beef, nachos, chorizo, etc chosen using the visual babelfish sorcery of Google Lens translating the menu in realtime. Technology aside, it was incredibly tasty, but am I allowed to say that I enjoyed my brother-in-laws cooking just as much?

The following morning we heard the wider family depart for the airport early in the morning (and our eldest shutting the gate behind them) before we emerged and wandered to the boulangerie as a family of four where the children ordered our croissants and pain au chocolat in French. With the washing machine loaded and running, we drove to a nearby butterfly house, where both of our kids’ prayers were answered – one really didn’t want any butterflies to land on them, the other wanted one to land on them. The latter had one land not just on their hand, but also on their face – I’m guessing because there were remnants of pain au chocolat still there! We could have stayed there for ages more – it was such a privilege to be amongst such fragile and beautiful insects.

It was getting a little late, so we headed back to the gite for a leftovers lunch – we weren’t sure we’d get through the cheese and it wouldn’t travel, so we made a dent in it. Intermarche called us so we could load up with gifts and a few bits for tea, and we used the opportunity to go to the patisserie – our eldest had been dreaming of this moment for all of our time in France. What would they choose – mille feuille, chouquettes, tarte tatin, macarons…? Nope – a chocolate chip cookie! Horse. Water. Drink. Hey ho! We filled up our car with fuel, dropped off one or two (!) empty bottles for recycling and headed back for a final swim with the kids.

Our pasta tea was designed to use up as many of the leftovers as possible, but even then we sadly had to sacrifice some of the cheese and saucisse that wouldn’t survive a hot car. We then cleaned up the place, cleaned the pool filters, used the leaf blower for the final time (why have a Japanese Pagoda tree in your garden if you’ve got artificial grass and a pool?!) and vacuumed before getting the kids to bed and packing most of the stuff into the car, during which we found our camping gas canisters that had been in there all week which were now very hot. Eek, that could have ended badly.

But it didn’t end badly and the following morning we were up and out of the gite by 0645, with a 600km drive ahead of us to a goat farm near St. Malo where we were due to stay overnight in a teepee before an early morning ferry the next day. It was a beautiful morning with forests emerging from the mist as the sun rose. As we crossed the river around Bordeaux, our youngest optimistically asked “is that the River Severn”?… before we broke the news that our journey had only just started. We swapped driving a couple of times on the A10 (just me and Kiri obviously – the kids are still too young!) and took the opportunity to get a coffee and a cookie for the kids to share to soften the journey, before we arrived at our midpoint destination just after midday.

Les Pas Optons (known as LPO for short). Many years ago we’d spent a happy 10 days at Spring Harvest Holidays and this was our stopping point on this sunny day in August 2025, to meet up with some friends from church who were approaching the midpoint of their holiday there. Once we’d signed in, we wandered to their caravan before almost immediately getting changed into swimming stuff to go to the river for some paddle boarding. Now this is something none of us have ever tried before – balancing on a wide surfboard and standing up… pretty tricky, but it turned out it’s really fun and we all had a go. But what really made it for me was the pontoon from where we launched – empty plastic containers lashed together expertly to provide a secure base from which to launch, with a gap the perfect size for a paddle board to slip into. Almost as artisanly (yes that is now a word) constructed as the step that we had on our motorhome. (Did I wax lyrical about it enough Jonno?)

After a barbecue lunch followed by a nice cup of tea, it was time to hit the road again with 3 hours of driving still ahead of us. As we left, we pondered on whether we should return to LPO for the 10th anniversary… it’s really quite tempting! We stopped mid-way to St Malo to top up on fuel and grab some pastries for a pre-ferry breakfast (plus wine for the final evening) but stayed on track timings wise and arrived at the goat farm bang on 7pm.

Now the account of the second part of our holiday started with some expectation management for our kids, and with the goat farm, we’d had to do a fair amount of that! Several reviews had mentioned kittens at the goat farm… and we had explained to the kids that kittens don’t remain kittens forever, these were older reviews etc… so when we were greeted by a few mewing (and very cute) kittens, the kids were delighted! We also found a line of ants in our teepee and several on one of the beds… but hey, it’s a goat farm! We ate our sandwiches (which had very kindly been made by our friends at LPO) and the kittens went in for the night whilst a couple of older cats hung around. It was soon time for our own kittens to go in for the night, so we tucked the kids up in bed then put on warm layers as Kiri and I sat outside with our mugs of wine and chocolate (we’ve been used to hot evenings, so this came as a surprise).

We had been due another early start the next morning (check in for the ferry closed at 7am), but we didn’t expect to be woken at 4am by our youngest excitedly announcing “there’s a cat in my bed!”. This is a child who thinks cats are possibly one of the best things on earth, so we just assumed they were dreaming. But no, one of the older cats was curled up beside our child. Under the covers. We shooed the cat out of the teepee. Half an hour later, again an exclamation of joy “the cat’s in my bed again!”. This time we let it sleep on the end of our bed, purring away.

We snoozed until the alarm at 5:35, at which point we gathered our things in the dark, then made our way to the car illuminated by a full moon. A 40 minute drive, pastries consumed in the car, queues through security and we were on the ferry, where we grabbed seats with a table and some coffee. It came as a surprise to us that the ferry would be stopping off at Guernsey, but we were pleased that it did – the first half of the journey was choppy in the clipper and sadly that took its toll on our youngest just before Guernsey. It was therefore good to be on terra firma for a short while in the middle of the journey as we went through immigration control.

The second half was a lot less choppy – we grabbed a sausage in a bun at 1230 French time (vowing to eat healthily on our return to England!) and had a few wanders along the length of the boat to keep the kids entertained. On one of the occasions we were at the back, we saw dolphins leaping on either side of the wake – incredibly special to see. But still, there was enough boredom to warrant our eldest dedicating a lot of time to explain this via the creative medium of etch-a-sketch!

And then we were back in the UK and driving on the left once more. We’d listened to the Moana 2 CD so many times on our long adventure, but it came out one last time, followed by the Sound of Music, where we all had a wholesome singalong in the car to Do Re Mi! The big supermarkets were all shut when we got home, so our tea was comfort food from the reduced section at our local Co-op. By our estimation, our bloodstream at that stage was probably about 80% butter after all of the incredible food, so we agreed to healthy eating from then on, starting with a sunburst courgette from our garden (our waterers had looked after our garden much better than we look after it!).

So we did it! We finally had our first long road trip with the kids, only 5 years later than planned, and what a success it was. We also had “filled in” some of France that we missed on our travels in Bertha, spent some great time with our wider family and eaten incredibly well. So… where next?