After all the excitement, it’s good to be back on familiar turf. It’s always been a friendly site, something to do with the relaxed surroundings, and the facilities that seem to encourage fraternising. In particular, the young ones team up and create their own friendship groups, and take the parents along with them; while us oldies just get on with it. I said this to Lola, the manager; she said they get a lot of English and Dutch, who are sociable; so much so they’ve had comment from the French that they find it difficult to find people to talk to. She tells them, well why don’t you talk to the foreigners then?

This year, and maybe this is about me getting more confident in trying to make new friends, the list is long. Apart from the Haydock family, who’d organised to meet Matt and Jen et al, I’ve spoken with Cliff and Rosie from Stamford, in another VW; John and his wife with Faith, their friendly Romanian rescue dog, who’ve got a problem with their 13 pin towing electrics; Chris and Jennie with Sukie the three legged spaniel; Inge and Abel from Holland, whose son Floris is very keen to tell everyone (in Dutch) he’s about to start school soon, and who has tagged onto the Bryant/Haydock marauding child group (irrespective of language divide); and my 73yo neighbour Joop, from NL, who also lost his wife quite recently, and decided to go touring, with his two friendly JRTs, in a VW camper. In fact, it’s a little like a camper van rally here. I got talking to a couple from Chester, with another Fortuna Red California called Jerry, after the recently deceased father who left the money to buy it.

As the week progresses, we have added more adults and their children to the group: Ben and Michelle from Chorlton, with Sienna and Beth – they knew the tapas bar where Rachel and I ate; then we have integrated Anne-Laure and Thomas, with Clémence and Marceau (who doesn’t say much). We have integrated the French, albeit Bretons from Roscoff! Kiara (Donegal) and Mike (Aus) are on the periphery, but friendly neighbours. It is beautiful to see a procession of kids from at least four families and five nations enjoying themselves, hunting sun lizards and playing tag and hide-and-seek. It’s a nice mix of younger families and snowbirds here.

We also have a family tradition of a lunch of fine dining at the Côté Dordogne, which I wrote about last year. Olivier and Amel’s cooking just gets better; we found out in conversation with Clement (the other manager) that he has been contracted to run the restaurant at the Riviera Holiday Centre over the river, which has been bought by Huttopia to expand the Beaulieu site. This is very exciting; though Matt and I are apprehensive of change, it sounds like a great move for the Côté.

I had a couple of pleasantly emotional moments. Looking back at the pic of Lily, realised she had one eye more open than the other; and reminded me of her grandma’s ’lazy eye’. We always said she’d inherited it from the Lancashire witches; not a bad thing. Then as we were paying, Jen looked through the visitor’s book, and found a complimentary comment in Rosie’s hand from a few years back. That caught me off guard. But now these things serve to remind me that life, and love, go on; and are embedded in the traces we leave behind. Campervan adventures can be spiritual journeys as much as physical ones. I think I’ve realised, I’m probably coming back here again.