We have been travelling for a week now; it has been an uneventful journey but already it seems as if we have been on the road far longer than seven days. The plan was to travel south through France to Spain until we find some warmer weather and somewhere good to stay for a few days.
We left Folkestone early on Saturday morning and the ever efficient Eurotunnel delivered us to France within the hour and we were soon following the coast west to Le Crotoy, a small fishing village that hosts up to 100 camper vans in a sandy car park five minutes walk from the town centre.
A well recommended restaurant in Le Crotoy were fully booked on this Saturday so we took a punt on a seafront establishment surrounded by dozens stalls selling a wonderful selection of locally caught fish and shellfish. We ate oysters that tasted so fresh it made you weep with joy but our second course brought us to earth with a bump. Tony ordered a whole Dover sole. We had admired the huge glistening fish offered for sale just outside the restaurant but the sole Tony was served was tiny and had been over-cooked in a deep fat fried manner. It seemed to us that the minnows of the catch were sold to the restaurant to serve to ignorant tourists whilst the best specimens were sold to discerning French housewives. We realised that we should have bought a fish and cooked it back at the camper van but the weather was much too cold for a barbecue and we felt we needed the warmth of the restaurant and the healing qualities of a bottle of chilled rosé; we were not disappointed in that respect.
