Day 34 - Zone cinquante et un 👽

Area 51 👽 .... After the caves, our site for the night was a  'proper' campsite with showers and a shop. A large site, catering for both vans and tents, it has a 'hippy backpacker' feel to it. The toilets and showers are 'semi' open air and there is a large, covered, communal picnic area with a dozen or more large tables, a couple of microwaves, fridges and vending machines. A kids play area, table football and ping ping table complete the scene. The shop is well stocked with essentials, beer and wine; the staff are friendly and have a reasonable understanding of English. We booked in for 2 nights.

You pick your own pitch, so last night after the caves we just picked one, set up, cooked, film and went to bed. Morning came early. It shouldn't have done with it being a sunday but it did 🤨.  If you have ever wondered where a cycle peloton🚴🚴‍♀️🚴‍♂️ actually forms and starts, I can tell you. At our campsite at 7.30am 😠. The covered seating area and carpark all around reception was packed with them. Guzzling croissants, coffee and orange juice, its obviously a regular thing that the campsite has 'coined in on' .

       Today was a staying on site day as we  both had things we wanted to do. Returning from reception with the bread it suddenly dawned on me just what the layout of the pitches were all about. Little wooden signs point and give you a pitch number, but here, there are 2 per pitch 🤔.  The reason being that the pitches were HUGE, all of them.             Easily enough room for 3 vans per pitch, we realised we had picked 51; better leave space at the side for the space ship then 🛸,

Jill was continuing with Le Sock. With the chairs out and the canopy extended  almost as far as it would go, she was sorted for the day. Me, I was off walking, geocaching and pretending to be an explorer 🧭.

    I could sense the sniggers from the French men sat in their shorts cum underpants shading under the van canopies at the mad Englishman going walking in the mid day sun with LONG 😯 pants on but this was 'tick' and 'mozzy' country so long pants it was.

    The first geocache was about a mile away from the site just at the top of a rise by the lavender farm.

Hidden at the bottom of the dry stone wall alongside the road it had recently (according to the website log) been destroyed by the tractor and grass cutter but somebody had rescued the bits, transferred to a new pot and hidden a bit higher in the wall. Took about 20min to find as gps accuracy was only good to about plus or minus 8 feet.

Next one was a few miles away, up the road, turn left down the farm road and keep on going. After passing virtually thru the working farm, the 'road' snaked its way between the lavender fields and passed the ruche d'abeilles ( bee hives) with typical French signage... Attention Bees ! 

No doubt the farm shop sold lavender honey as well as oil of lavender and everything else remotely connected with......lavender 🪻.

The 'road' now started to get a wee bit smaller......

...... and smaller.

The trees got thicker and the road pretty much disappeared. As I ambled along, listening to only my own footsteps and the buzzing of the occasional large cricket thing alongside the 'path' I started to think of those great wilderness explorers like Ray Mears and T.W.Hignet when suddenly (just like in the films) a twig snapped 😳.

      Turning to my right, about only 20 feet away was a brown face and 2 large eyes looking at me from behind a tree ! Before I could even get the phone out of my pocket to take a picture, the young deer was off thru the trees. It stopped about 100 feet away , turned, looked and again was gone 😩.

"Maybe further down the 'trail' I might spot him again". Wild deer, how nice. Wild ...🤔. What else could we have? 

      There are approximately 2 million wild boar in France and here was me all alone; my axe wielding Shield Maiden was back at area 51 so she couldnt protect me. In fact my axe was back at camp also. All I had was a Swiss army knife; as practical and loyal my knife was, maybe it was time to look for a 'pointy stick'.

Eventually the 'trail' arrived at a rusty 'thing' which had been a gate at some point in its life so maybe I was still on the ancient farmers road.

Eventually, with the sun high in the sky, salvation appeared and I was guided out of the wildernesses by the 'Holy Fire Hydrant' and out onto the hot tarmac and civilisation.

All that was left to do now was follow the road to the goat farm and cheese factory and find the next geocache.

Unfortunately, the grass cutters has beat me to it and this one, a micro in a film canister, was nowhere to be found. Slightly disheartened I trudged down the hill towards the campsite, said hello to the cheese making goats then continued with only beer on my mind.

Arriving back at site I saw the aliens had in fact landed and dropped of their laundry for Jill to do. There was nothing else for me to do other than go for a shower then called at the camp shop for essentials.