What a busy night. Those boats kept coming and going all through the night. Calais is a very busy port. When they finally woke up in the morning they had breakfast and went and paid the €7 for the privilege of parking up on the seafront for the night. Then it was off to Cite Europe to do some last minute shopping in France. This is the third time Mary has been here and there is a noticeable downturn due to the recession. Some shops have closed and it lacks the vibrancy it has had in the past. 0r perhaps a new and better commercial centre has opened up somewhere else in Calais and become flavour of the month. The Tesco supermarket is no more but Carrefour still has a wide range of goods in its huge hypermarket. Space was a bit lacking in my storage compartments so they had to settle for two dozen bottles of wine this time. It is always a daunting choice not knowing what you are really buying. Most will be taken to friends so they can pass the verdict on the lucky dip.
After lunch in my onboard cafe, Mary thought she would look at the clearance outlet over the road. It was a ghost town. Once again, a good idea at the time putting an outlet village near the port, but it had not taken off. There were more empty shops than occupied ones and most of the stuff which was labels, was still pretty pricey. So they made their way to Dunkirk to spend the night there in preparation for catching the ferry back to Dover.
Mary had found the address of a camp site on the internet but however hard they tried they could not locate it. Alan tried again from the list and found one, but then suddenly they spied signs to another camp so took them. Much to their surprise they found they were at the camp they had started out at in 2001. As soon as they reached the gate they recognised it. This was the campsite that started it all. On arriving in France in 2001 they intended staying at Youth Hostels. They had innocently driven off the boat at Calais and headed up the coast to Dunkirk only to find they couldn’t find any accommodation in a Youth Hostel, so they resorted to the emergency tent they had packed almost as an afterthought. It was such a wonderful experience they chose to camp whenever possible on that trip and have done so again on the last three trips. They knew they were near the sea so thought it would be great to go for a walk. Last time they were here you could walk straight onto the beach from the camp. Not anymore. A big fence has gone up right around the campsite and you are given a pin code to let yourself in and out a special gate.
It was a lovely evening and lots of people were walking along the promenade. They walked a long way down towards where the houses were. There was a great variety of architecture, most having been built since the war. It is a lovely long flat beach perfect for wind surfing buggies and the boys were having great fun up and down the beach. So after a good long walk up and back again they returned to use up a few leftovers for dinner and then settled down for the night.
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