a camping we will go, hi ho the derry-o, a camping we will go!
Renting a camping car in France is quickly becoming our go to summer vacation plan, France is a beautiful country and it actually reminds me a lot of the Alberta countryside as there were fields of ripe canola, potatoes, corn, wheat, grain, oats and even tall towering sunflowers. The farmers were in full harvest mode when we arrived in July. After spending a busy two weeks on an Ankel Adventure exploring London and Paris, it was nice to slow down and camp.
We arranged to meet our host/renter at the train station and Bertrand pulled up in the unit. We saw it parked outside the station and Richard couldn’t quite believe it was for us. It was brand new! The mattresses were still covered in plastic as no one had ever used it before! No pressure, eh! Our host made Richard hop in the drivers seat and took him on a bit of a “test drive” back to the warehouse to complete the handover and the paperwork.
Our “busy” mid-day train.
Odometer was below 100 km when we took her.
Our next task was to find groceries and lunch as it was after 1 pm already. Well, our unit was so big and so wide that we had to turn around at least twice and we ended up driving around for almost two hours driving to find a proper Carrefour grocery store and a McDonald’s for lunch. Richard followed his instincts and got us there eventually. I will honestly admit that I am a terrible navigator and I suck at reading maps; the paper kind or google. I truly thought I would have to drive the big, stick-shift diesel beast so that Richard could direct us, but we got our online navigator, fondly named Julia, up and running very shortly and that made driving around France much easier. We still took a wrong turn or two, but our marriage survived!
Richard had made reservations at a lovely campground near to Paris (actually only twenty minutes from Disneyland, but more on that later!) and we stayed there for five nights. I have said it before, but it bears saying again…French people do camping right. Excellent facilities for washing up your dishes, so the boys trundled off every night with all the dirty stuff and returned after they had washed and dried everything up. Separate laundry sinks, washing machine and dryer, clean bathrooms and you could even pre-order your fresh pastries and bread the night before, to be delivered the next morning for breakfast! Fantastic! 
Cheese cake, a reward for completing a grocery trip.
It is one of the many reasons why we decided to return to France to camp.
