After Joe's long-awaited knee replacement operation was cancelled on the day he was due to have it, he looked so despondent. He is normally a ‘glass half full’ person, but this floored him. “What would cheer him up?” I wondered. Of course – going away in the caravan would do the trick.
We already had a Eurotunnel booking, which had been rescheduled many times because of the pandemic, so we changed this again, for the following week.
Four days later, we were in France, on a site not far from Calais. We popped into the nearby Auchan hypermarket for supplies and fuel, and next day, headed south-west, to overnight at Camping Parc de Loisirs Le Val Fleuri, at Cloyes-sur-le-Loir, between Chartres and Orléans.
Cycling paradise
The following morning, we set off for Ile d'Oleron, an island off the coast just south of La Rochelle, our destination for about two weeks. We have stayed there before and had become friends with a couple of the campsite managers.
