Sunday 18th- We didn’t travel far once we were up, in fact we stopped just up the road. Twice! The first time was because our little girl was throwing a tantrum about wanting to touch the corn in the fields so we pulled over in the car park just out of our turning so she could get out and touch the friggin things so she would shut up as she had literally just gone on and on about it since seeing them as we pulled out! The second time was literally just over the road from that car park because there was a place called Alligator Bay and we wanted to check it out. I love reptiles so of course we went in to have a look.
There were some amazing species, some I had seen before but were still impressive- I’m looking at you giant tortoise and others I had never even heard of. It was pretty cool and it had a playground too which the little ones spent some pent up energy on before we went and had a look at the alligators. The room was very hot so we were thankful when we left it especially after having to hold our little boy who happens to be very heavy.
We had a wander in the gift shop and bought our little lady a dream catcher which she was very ungrateful for as she moaned about wanting the smaller one once we got back in the motorhome. We had a discussion with her and also mentioned that she kept changing her mind about what she wanted in the first place- one minute it was some toy, then the big dream catcher, then the small and we were very confused about what she really wanted. The woman we bought it from was very rude too. So, in order to teach her a lesson and also because we weren’t sure she really wanted it AND because she was kicking off, I decided to go and take it back. Well, the woman was very rude yet again and wanted a VAT receipt when I shown her the card receipt which she had given me. She moaned and argued with me when I told her that she never gave me one and that there was a receipt on the side but I didn’t know it was for me as she never said anything at the time so I assumed it was left from the previous customer and that she must have binned it. She wasn’t happy but low and behold it was in her bin!! Our little girl was not happy when I got back and saw I had been true to my word and continued her tantrum before I explained to her why I had done what I had done and made a deal with her instead- that if she was a good girl for the rest of the day then we would get her another dream catcher somewhere else because you could get them in lots of places. What. a. morning!
We were back on the road and heading towards Nantes and stopped in a campsite that was simply called Nantes Camping. It was extremely expensive so we decided to just to spend the one night there. We didn’t do much there either apart from play crazy golf.
We drove into Nantes city centre the following day and parked up to explore it. We walked around this huge castle that actually had a moat filled with water- I’ve never seen a castle with a moat that actually had water in it for once as usually they’re all dried up. It was really pretty and had a few turtles in it too! Ha, how cool is that! We walked around the inside and out and noticed it had a slide around part of its outer walls which we decided to go and try out once we had settled ourselves on the grass around it’s perimeter and take it in turns to look after the little ones who were not allowed to go on.
My husband wondered off but soon came back as unfortunately it had closed for the time being due to the hot weather making the metal slide extremely hot. Up we got and wondered around instead before making our way back to the castle. Why? Because just over the road from it was a very large wet park where there was a constant flow of shallow water covering the surface with water jets that would come on at regular intervals that ascended or descended depending on which side of the park you were standing on. Our little lady who is not a fan of water, especially if it means getting it in her face absolutely hated it when the jets came on and came running back out with a look of horror on her face. However, our little boy who happens to be the opposite and is our very own water baby absolutely loved it and had the time of his life getting all his clothes absolutely soaked. Well, just his shorts as we took his top off as we didn’t have a spare and thought he could wear that and just a nappy on the way back and cover his legs if he felt too cold. He was crawling around having a whale of a time and we didn’t want to take him away from it really but it was getting late and we still had no idea where we were sleeping that night so we headed back to the motorhome so we could hit the road.
We found an Aire where you first had to buy a payment club card from the machine itself and load it with money before entering. We found it really confusing though as the barriers didn’t open when we tapped the card on the sensor, so we loaded it again thinking that maybe it hadn’t actually topped it up, but it still didn’t open. Luckily, a man who was parked outside the Aire told us that we had to drive up to the barrier first in order for it to open. If it wasn’t for him we probably would have still been there hours later scratching our heads wondering how on earth to get in! Stupid us now had a card that was loaded with another nights stay- not the be all and end all though as we may use another Aire like this again one day if we find one…but it was still annoying. Anyway we were all parked up and had found a place to stay for the night so all was good really despite our stupidity.
K.E.E.N Explorers 