Monday: A day between Sunday and Tuesday!
30th July 2018
According to Wikipedia ‘Monday is a day between Sunday and Tuesday’ - now, how helpful is that?!
Possibly slightly more interestingly it goes on to add that ‘More people commit suicide in England and Wales on Mondays than other days of the week’.
Which I only mention now because I was feeling momentarily suicidal myself this morning!
A quiet night in a deserted beach carpark and, accordingly, a deserted beach at daybreak - just coming up to low water so vast. Amy and took off in good fettle and I decided I really could do with a bit of a douche in the sea. So, I stripped off, carefully placing my clothes on a rock to keep them off the wet sand. had a skinny dip with Amy and then returned to where I thought I'd left my clothes. Except they weren't there! OK, don't panic, I thought, they can't be far away - so I started to mooch about trying to find them. After about five minutes of fruitless searching I was beginning to get a touch of the vapours. We are talking an absolutely vast beach, strewn with identical looking rocks and my brown shoes MTP camo pants and black vest had blended into their surrounds perfectly!
What was going through my mind at that point was the fact that I was bollock naked in a public place (ever had that dream?) my passport, car keys and wallet were all in my pants and the tide was turning. If I had to go back to the car sans pants and starkers I would have to break into it to get access and even when that's all done I would have no means of starting the bloody thing!
Big breaths, suppressing the thought that this can't be really happening and start to methodically work a large area in a systematic grid pattern. Eventually I found my clothes, nowhere near where I thought I had left them and never have I been so pleased to come across a pile of well worn clothes!
I had a similar experience once before, back in the days when I travelled with two wolfdogs. We had overnighted in the middle of a vast forest in northern Spain somewhere and trundled off bright and early for a nice long walk. We went left at this fork in the path, right at another one and so and so forth. The return trip didn't quite go to plan as all the forks looked the same and I couldn't be sure if I should take a left or a right. After a helluva lot of wrong decisions and rising panic we finally got back to the Jeep, a two hour walk having taken four hours. Similarly to discovering my old clothes today, never had I been so pleased to see a rusting old Jeep as I was at that moment.
What bugs me though is that on both occasions I'm pretty sure my canine companion(s) knew exactly where my Jeep/clothes were but simply decided the mad monkey-man was simply taking them on an extended walkies.
Rest of the day has been pretty easy-peasy after that alarming start. We have bimbled along the coast towards St Valery en Caux through pretty rural countryside and utterly charming villages. We found a Leclerc supermarket en route which was very expensive and only sold meat in packs for very large families, but I eventually managed to cobble together today's rations. We passed near to yet another EDF nuclear power station near Veuluettes sur Mer and once again the surrounding countryside was both charming and deserted. As our previous encounter with an EDF nuclear power station, we parked up nearby in a deserted lane and enjoyed a very tranquil lunch and siesta.
Eventually, we pushed off further along the coast in the direction of Fecamp and encountered several very charming, unmolested small seaside resorts but as captivating as they were none were really suitable for Amy and I to overnight in.
Our exploration of the backroads hereabouts chanced us to happen upon a very quiet rest area on the edge of a village and despite it's proximity to human habitation it should do admirably for tonight. We took a walk to the coast via a footpath when we first arrived and although couldn't actually get onto the shore we could admire it from the sloping clifftop and spent several long moments watching scores of Hawks hunting today's tucker.
Google Maps
Here are tonight's GPS coordinates:
Latitude : 49.79021 (49° 47′ 24.77″ N)
Longitude : 0.45079 (0° 27′ 2.84″ E)
accuracy of signal : 4 m
Just a final observation about the area we have travelled today and that is despite it being July going on August it has been very quiet indeed. Not a natural area for families to holiday in, presumably, as there are no extensive beach areas or large campsites. It's more a rugged scenery type of locale and 90% of other tourists I have encountered today have been young, childless, Dutch couples. As there is, clearly, less pressure on the area vis a vis tourism the small back roads are, refreshingly, not all closed or barred as they frequently seem to be in the busier tourist hot spots.
