The title of today’s blog is a tribute the late great John Waters and at the same time one of my activities today.

Yesterday we drover from Bonnieux, via a disappointing Intermarché Hypermarket to Camping de la Brise (43.454167, 4.435746) an ACSI site just outside Ste Marie de la Mer in the Camargue. At last we have reached the Mediterranean. The site is enormous and almost entirely empty. It is also €25 a night on ACSI which, now we’re here, seems a little steep, since all the facilities you would expect from a large campsite are shut. There’s not even any bread!!!

The site abuts a beach which inevitably said no dogs. Almost as inevitably Sarah and numerous other dogs owners ignored the restriction and Skye had a wonderful time in the afternoon chasing seagulls.

In the evening we took a stroll into Ste Marie de la Mer. Here nearly all the restaurants were open but empty. We looked at them all and then decided on a pizza restaurant which had scored 4.7 on Google reviews. Clearly most of the reviewers were not Italian and neither had they eaten pizza Italy, because although the topping were great the base looked and tasted as if it had been bought in a supermarket.

This morning, following Skye’s run on the beach it was time to do two weeks worth of washing. There campsite had installed a totally automatic system where you can pay be credit card or cash and thus relieving them of the chore of selling tokens. Due to it being something new to us we both went and after much scratching of heads managed to get the machine to accept a €10 note and the machine appeared to start.

When we returned forty minutes later the clothes were suspiciously dry. On inspection the reason became clear – they had not been washed. I hot footed it to reception, who smartly declared that the washing machines were independent from the site and I would have ring the telephone number on the machine. Now, its not often that I impress my wife these days, after 40 years of marriage, but my ability to sort the problem out over the phone, in something approximating French, put me up one tiny notch in her eyes.

The second effort with the robotic washing machine was successful and we are now set for another two weeks, before we experience the flights of camp washing.

Sarah’s morning walk with Skye had revealed that, this being the Camargue, there were numerous Flamingos not far from the site. So this afternoon I set off with birding lens, binoculars and a camping chair, (to make my photography more comfortable.)

To my dismay, although there were many flamingos, the only other bird in the shallow lagoons was a little egret of which we have plenty at home. I spent a pleasant hour or so watching and photographing flamingos. Strictly speaking they are Greater Flamingos to distinguish them from other flamingo species around the world.