Onwards to Belgium

Well after the last couple of days of Disney and taking our little lady to see the Eiffel Tower, the next couple of days may find it hard to match that! Before leaving the Disney car park and heading towards Belgium it seems we had an issue to sort out. The heat of over 30 degrees for 3 days had taken its toll on our fridge and our freezer. As we weren’t hooked up to electricity we had to rely on the gas keeping it cool and it hadn’t quite managed it. Everything needed to go, including our stash of halloumi (10 packets) a very sad time indeed especially as halloumi is so hard to find in Europe and being vegetarians halloumi is a great all round source of proteins for us and can be used in so many recipes! Still with that taken care of we plotted a course for a national park right on the border with Belgium and hoped to find a campsite with a few amenities. It was a welcome relief to restock the fridge and find this campsite had electric, the small things hey! This campsite (Les Mont Des Bruyères) was a welcome change from the carpark at Disney, we had access to a swimming pool, decent showers, an outdoor gym, children’s playground and even a bar on site. Wow, what a change. But the next day we decided to go and explore the area which was a beautiful forest. Time to get the bikes out for their first outing since coming abroad. Now both myself and my wife are a little rusty on the bikes and riding with children one the back really adds to the challenge as the weights makes things a little harder to control. No worries there were plenty of nice wide, flat cycle tracks for us to use through the forest. After a bit of cycling we decided to take a different path and headed into the forest further, the path got a little narrower, and then narrower still, until we were walking with our bikes and battling through the undergrowth. We were nearing a proper road again according to the maps but the final hurdle was a little dip to get into the road. My wife went first and walked it to make sure they were ok. My stupid newfound confidence told me to go for it… so I did and soon regretted it as on the way up the other side of the dip, the front wheel of the bikes started to lift clean of the ground and myself along with our little girl (who stayed nicely strapped into the child seat) came crashing onto our side in a hedge! We were both ok thankfully but my newfound confidence on the bike had taken a bit of knock, probably rightly so. We made our way back to the campsite sticking to some easier trials. Upon making it back to the campsite we thought  it was time to bath our son, an easy task when at home but in France it seems most campsites do not provide any of the sinks with plugs! It’s fine, we had a plan, my wife had a packed a shower curtain so we used this to line the sink…. it didn’t work, it was a disaster as it floated around and didn’t stay in place, it seems it was too thin. No worries onto plan B, my wife had an idea of using stones to keep it down at the bottom of the sink, this also ended in disaster as the stones came with a whole load of dirt, not great for bath water. Well, I thought back to when I was at school and remembered kids using toilet roll to block the sinks, no problems I am sure we can do that. Well no, as it happens, those kids are obviously better at this whole thing than us as the toilet roll disintegrated and floated around in the water. We managed to give our little boy a quick splash whilst he was crying and quickly went back to the van. Show over for the other campers and some peace and quiet. It’s surprising how even the simplest of things can be a lot more challenging in a different setting! This did however lead me to google “universal plug” to see if there was such a thing. It turns out there is, I will be keeping my eyes open for one.

We had needed to do some general Motorhome things such as emptying the loo etc after being in the car park at Disney for a while. One of the things was to fill up the water, as usual an easy task, but only if you have the right connections, which in this instance, we did not. Never mind, my wife was happy to hold the connection onto the tap in place, ending up getting more than a bit wet by the time we filled up the 100l tank. She didn’t know it at the time but this was to be her first sacrifice to get the chores done before leaving the following morning. It had grown late, and dark before my wife took the washing up to the campsites washing sinks , which were outside. Not much fun when mosquitoes and flying ants are about.

So with the chores done, and the van ready, of to Belgium we go!