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.
There were some very plush motorhomes surrounding our pitch with every mod con, so we looked like a right couple amateurs trying to remember how to erect our moth-eaten tent. Half our pegs were missing for some reason and the ones we had we only managed to whack 3mm into rock hard ground, so hoped the wind wouldn't get up. Our tent had been designed by an Eskimo so you had to crawl on your hands and knees to get in, it was roasting hot, and had more moths in it than Silence of the Lambs. Glamping, this was not.
After a successful erection we wandered into the idyllic harbour town of Saint-Martin with its inviting restaurants and beautiful shops selling cuddly donkeys, salt and all things nautical (I've never seen so many clothes with horizontal lines on). We did some top drawer people watching, as we swigged our Grimbergens at the seafront, noticing how many good looking people there are in this part of the world, with their beautiful haircuts, coloured trousers and full sets of teeth - not like the agricultural types you get in the Deux-Sèvres. Everyone had a dog too, it was like Crufts... I've never seen so many Labradors in one place.
Several Grimbergens later and having consumed a bucket load of moules and frites in a Rochefort sauce, we staggered back to our campsite sated.
The pitch next to ours which had been empty when we arrived now had the smallest tent I have ever seen (I think it was one of those pop up ones you can keep in your pocket), surely no one could be sleeping in there. In the morning two of the tallest people I've seen in my life appeared from it. I couldn't believe it, it was like one of those comedies where a never ending stream of people get out of a car.
To help with the whole sleeping-in-a-tent thing we enjoyed a bottle of Les Ormes, Cabernet Sauvignon 13.5% and a bag of Bugles (bacon flavour). On our way to the washroom to brush our teeth, Anna tripped over a piece of wood that had been screwed to the ground to signify the parking area. This is not surprising as my wife is the clumsiest person on the planet (only the day before, while out walking, she fell down a hole). She rushes through the day at break neck speed leaving a trail of broken crockery and glass in her wake, it is part of her charm. So down she went like a sack of tatties (due to the alcohol coursing round her body she was as relaxed as could be when hitting concrete and thankfully the only injuries sustained were scrapped hands and bleeding knees).
In the morning tired, bruised and bleeding we hurled everything in the back of the car and after a petit-déjeuner in the picturesque town of La Couarde-sur-Mer and a stroll along the beautiful beach, we were homeward bound.
Whenever we re-enter the Deux-Sèvres, we emit a small cheer and a whoop as we pass the boundary sign. We had had a fantastic 24 hours on Ré, but it felt good to be leaving the beautiful people behind...we were back, home, with our own kind.
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