Well the easy bit was getting up in the mooring and to find the sun shining down, and an almost clear blue sky. Then things went radically wrong.
It is Jennifer's Birthday today and so we are planning a dinner at the site restaurant tonight which enables us both to enjoy some wine and not worry about drinking and driving should we go elsewhere for dinner. Anyway the day started as we were walking back from the morning shower and started talking to a tall guy who is parked up the end of the field with a twin axle van, Land Rover and a wife and son and also their pet dog. We started talking about the weather and he said that they had a bad couple of days as since they have been gone from home in Milford they have learnt from the Police that there house had been broken in to and all the wife's best jewellery taken and naturally they were not to happy about this particularly when the youngest son who is still at home, said he could not actually remember fully closing and locking the door. Apparently they usually keep the caravan on drive and so when they left for holidays in the caravan their is a great big invitation to burglars.
I asked about burglar alarms and he said no as they live in a small village and as the granny who has a separate flat in the house is normally there they did not bother with Burglar alarms. The problem was is then when leaving for holiday they put granny in a temporary home. I said I guess he can claim against the insurance but s he was concerned about his son leaving the door open he was not sure and as he was an Insurance Executive he should have perhaps known better. The ploan for the rest of the day was to watch the Hungarian Formula One Grand Prix in the bar, then go for a swim and the get ready for dinner but somehow things did not quite work out that way. We went down to the bar and started watching the race and in the meantime the sun had disappeared and heavy rain clouds appeared followed by the most amazing electrical storm. Stuart immediately disconnected the sat box and the TV and shortly afterwards there was a direct hit on the house/restaurant/bar which blew out all the power to everything including all the electric points around the site. There was also a strange whining sound which turned out to be a coffee maker which had blown up by the electric charge. We waited until the heavy rain had stopped and in the meantime an older couple had arrived and were watching the rain poor down and the house dogs were cowering under tables and chairs as lightning and thunder went of all around the wife of the new arrival's accidently trod on the tail of one of the dogs and as an apology bent down to pat him and the dog immediately went to bite here which is most unusual for these dogs and then this caused the lady to run to the toilets and crying loudly. On boy!!
Jennifer followed her in to comfort and the lady told a story about parking on an 'Aire' (service area on motorway) and their caravan being broken in to whilst they slept that previous evening and it was most scary and very upsetting for them both. Parking in an 'Aire' is a NO NO in France as for years criminals hunt down caravan'ers who park in the quiet parking places knowing there are no police around and so they paid the price. As they said they thought it would only happen to somebody else. Luckily they are OK but were still very scared.
A moment later a staff member arrived to say that one of the large Cedar Trees had also been hit taking a large chunk of wood of the side and its lucky it did not fall. Finally the rains cleared and the skies started clearing and so Stuart turned the TV back on and we watched the last 14 laps or so. We left the bar with John and Sue our next door neighbours and when walking back one of the staff shouted to us that he did the best but there is some damage to the awnings on both John and our caravans. Great. We got back and one side of our awning had collapsed with two broken carbon fibre poles and on the other side was bucking under the huge weight of water. Just what we needed but as usual everybody rallies around and within an hour we were pretty much ship shape again but had some very wet chairs and we used odd poles to mend the structure and it now seems Ok although we hope it doesn't poor down like that again.
We then noticed that our electric wasn't working and neither were our neighbours and then we all discovered that the 'RCD' on all the caravans had tripped due to the heavy electric surges and within a few more minutes we were all back and up and running again. It still continued to rain for about another hour but started to ease around six pm but at seven pm we went for dinner and the skies were getting brighter and so we were able to sit and eat outside. Jennifer enjoyed the duck and noel had a steak and then later we moved in to the bar and joined several people including John and Sue who came to have a birthday drink with Jennifer.
Finally we got back to the caravan at about 11.30 pm after a very interesting day. The storm and amount of water and the thunder and lightning were extremely impressive but we do hope that it will go away overnight as we need to re do the awning tomorrow to ensure that it is safe and does not become a reservoir for the Lot Valley population.
You may not be able to read this report for a few days as the electric storm also killed the Wifi and all telephone wires to the site. Good stuff ay?
