Touring France in a motorhome Day Forty-four

 To help you navigate our blog more easily - this link - https://wherenexthun.blogspot.com/2025/06/how-to-navigate-our-blog.html will take you to a summary page detailing all our blog posts. Clicking on a link will open that post in a new browser window. To return to the home current page just close the browser page and return to the post you were reading beforehand. 

October 10^th – Day forty-four

This morning's excitement? I fill up the water tank with five watering cans of water. It forces me to walk a total of 100m, carrying a ten-kilo weight for 50 of those metres. It’s the most fun I’ve had in days!

We stroll down to our favourite cafe to watch the boats and people. Yes, we did that yesterday. And the day before that. And, yes, the day before the day before that too!

Today seems to be ‘pastries’ day. Everyone is carrying little boxes of them, all wrapped in ribbon and carried very carefully. It's also ‘flowers’ day; small hand bouquets all fragrant and colourful. It is also ‘people walking arm in arm’ day. Why? We have absolutely no idea but everyone seems to be doing it!

Today’s coffee time entertainment is boat watching. Around fifty small motorboats are moored bow first to a curved stone jetty that juts out into the Etang. It is immediately in front of our favourite spacious café front seating area.  It’s the ‘bow to’ mooring that fascinates me. It’s always done in the UK but most Mediterranean marinas have boats moored stern to jetty or pontoon. As a small boat sailor, I notice these things!

Tightly packed in, all bow to wall, boat captains bring their boat into the sheltered area of water behind the curved jetty at great speed, barely pausing before ‘slotting’ their boat into a small gap between other boats.  Reverse gear on the outboard is selected at the very last possible moment to kill for’ard motion. Truly impressive. I’ve yet to see any skipper actually allow his bow to hit the wall; yet all cut engines with barely two metres to go. Truly impressive! And, remember, at the same time, they manage to retrieve a buoy mounted stern line on the way in. It's precise, highly skilled and completed in a semi-permanent, tricky easterly breeze. Not for the faint hearted or inexperienced are such small boat manoeuvres.  I’m genuinely in awe of these captains who all make it look so easy!

After our second latte each, Mag and I reach a cordial agreement that café culture is done really well in France. Relaxed chatter, lots of laughter, no one hiding behind newspapers or smartphones. Civilised. Oh, and fashionable too. People like to display their fashion awareness and boutique clothing. Isn’t people watching in France such great fun?

And then we walk around the promenade and peninsula again – its ground hog day!