Where the Beautiful People Live
“We're going camping” Anna, my wife, announced one evening. She had been rootling in a cupboard and found our old family tent. So we were off to the Île de Ré for a night under the stars. The cat looked very confused as we lined up three meals for her in our absence. She seemed to think we had introduced a buffet system for her dining pleasure. Before we got in the car on Saturday morning she was well into Sunday morning's pouch. When we rocked up to the campsite on the outskirts of Saint-Martin-de-Ré we were surprised to see how camping amenities had progressed since we last camped twenty years ago. Every pitch was ten metres square (hedged on three sides for privacy), had its own electricity point, light and water source. Ooh! There were washrooms, a shop and a café. This was nothing like the cow field in Cromer where we used to go; staggering, in darkness, to the one loo (serving 200 people) on the other side of the field... trying not to trip on a neighbour's guy rope...