Stickin out like a little toe [ - Boo]

Tonight we find ourselves back at the beach at 'Messanges' where the Sangria Shandies were first tasted by me and Kate with the Nick, etc. crew ~3 weeks ago. We have spent a week in Biarritz and then trickled on upto here the last few days; we stopped in Hossegor but that place is a swarming mass of Tourism and new money with too many BMW X5's and their Mercedes counterparts buzzing around the streets and up-their-arses barmaids who forgot how to smile when they were 12 (or maybe they had evil parents who never taught them how to in the first place!)

We surfed the South beach of Hossegor yesterday which was basically a case of picking whichever 4 foot ultra-dumpy wave you wanted to brave and then jumping over the back of it before scrabbling for your board, half-expecting it to be either in half from the crashing wave or have an american kid from a surf camp embedded in it's nose. This all owing to the onshore wind which is still dominating our surfing life, dammit!

For the last couple weeks we've been camping up in the 'Aire de Camping Cars' places which are like campsites without timing rules or the need to book and if you turn up at the right time (around 9pm ish) and leave early enough (before 10:30am) you can avoid having to pay and that's the real free-camping life right there!

Now that it's mid-summer the lineups are getting ever-more crowded and the camper vans ever more varied. At the beginning of May we were mostly surrounded by mid-sized modern camper vans which are kind of like mobile local Spar shops with their white facades and all the frozen meals being stored within. Nowadays we roll into camping areas and we're towered-over by big, looming juggernaut-tastic campers of old and modern age. On one side there'll be a modern camper which can be more accurately compared to big Tesco Extra stores with all their shiny surfaces and big fluorescent lights beaming across the campsite, the dwellers of which tend to spend their waking day in a pair of speedo's and spend way too much time emptying their chemical toilets.

On the other side of the van there's a team of usually 2-3 big, old, dirty-but-awesome Mercedes 650 campers or big, old Coaches filled with never less than 5 serious-looking travellers and their hoards of dogs; the guys' hair is always shaved back and sides and then big long dreadlocks sprouting outta the tops of their heads and Kate's named them 'Sprout-heads' which is surely to get me beaten up if we don't keep our mouths shut!

Amongst all these big vans our little yellow Hiace sticks out like a small toe and most nights I have it in the back of my mind that one of these big juggernauts isn't going to see us over their big bonnet and drive right over us and make camp on top of us! After all the prep we made before coming away now it's like 'who are we kidding?' with all these well-furnished mobile homes about us. I'd rather be in the Buddy van any-day though!

So I'm sitting here typing this Blog in the Messanges car park and we're hoping the wind will drop tomorrow so we can have a more mellow surf for a change. We've embarked on some cake baking; having purchased a bread tin we've adapted a Delia Smith Carrot Cake recipe to a Raisin, Cinnamon and Ginger cake recipe (Carrots go off quicker in a warm van than we thought possible!) and right now it's just about rising in the tin and smells heavenly... hopefully it will taste that way! After this I'm going to have a crack at making some Bread and if that works then I'm not sure if life can get any better!