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21. Sep, 2022

WEDNESDAY 21-09-22

We both had a restless night last night as we wanted to be sure we didn't oversleep as we needed to be away from Camping Hippodrome in good time. We have a battery alarm clock onboard, this is only its second outing. The first little clock I bought, a Sony, lasted us years but the small plastic lugs on the battery holder broke so that was that. Its replacement, bought online from Amazon UK, is a typical cheap and nasty piece of Chinese rubbish and the little knob which adjusts the alarm time came off in Switzerland, never to be seen again. I'm going to have to go in to town when we get home and buy a third clock, only next time, like the first, I'll be able to see the quality of the item before I buy it. In the meantime, should we need an 'early morning' call I'll have to look at using my phone to do it.

The Chef was first out of the starting blocks, followed by myself about ten minutes later. Today, with it being our last visit to the bathroom block across the road, and the morning rush hour, I treated local motorists to the spectacle of me crossing the road in my dressing gown holding my toilet bag and towel under my arm.

We got away just after 09:00. The reason for the hurry was that the campsite at our next destination at Cassis, not far from Marseille had told us, once we'd finally managed to get them to answer the phone, that they do not take reservations, and to be confident of getting a pitch we should arrive before 12:00. Until that point I had intended to cover the journey part on the toll road, which is quite expensive along this coastline, and the remainder on other roads, arriving after their Reception reopened after a lie down at 15:15. Due to the need to make good progress we did the whole journey on the toll road, suffering the humiliation of being overtaken by Ferrari's etc along the way.

We arrived here at Camping les Cigales (N43.224054° E5.541818°)  www.campingcassis.com at about 11:15. It is a Municipal Campsite really, which means in most cases it's functional, in a good location, but suffering from insufficient investment in the infrastructure. And so it was.

Never mind, The Chef came out of Reception with a successful booking for three nights at an eye-watering thirty-one euros a night. That's what happens when a business has no competition.

Our pitch isn't a bad one offering a good amount of shade having nosed the vehicle in to the pitch due to the French scrotes next to us having parked so that their habitation door and outside sitting area would have been looking across at us.

Oh dear... and then came the problem. To hook up to electricity we needed to use a two-pin adapter plugged in to our lead and their archaic two-pin socket. Nothing, zero, no electricity. I tried the pug points in the other direction requiring me to feed our cable across the back of two other pitches before reaching the box. Nothing, zero, no electricity.

I used my short testing cable to establish that there was in fact power to the sockets, and it was reverse polarity. Therefore the problem had to lie with our vehicle or cable. In the end having taken apart every socket and plug in the system I found one dodgy connection and after spent some time fixing it we were in business. I was so relieved.

Lunch consisted of Jacobs Cream Crackers, cheese and caramelised onion chutney. The reason being we hadn't been able to buy a baguette before arriving here. We've been dragging round this virginal pack of crackers since we left home. They've sat on top of the tin they're designed to sit in, except the pack is too long to fit in, well now, after today's lunch, the remainder is now stowed inside it.

This afternoon's task was to find the Tourists Information Office and get a map and a bus timetable (this campsite is up a seriously steep hill). We ended up at the marina whilst trying to find the Tourist Office, so by then we knew how to get to the harbour, and by the time we huffed and puffed our way back up the hill, knew how to get back. But we've now got a bus timetable, and tomorrow we may well walk down to the marina area, but we sure as hell will be catching a bus back.

As we were approaching the campsite we passed a boulangerie and I couldn't resist buying a couple of nice cakes as a reward for our efforts in getting back in one piece.

What I hadn't mentioned a few days ago was that when returning 'home' in Nice I came within less than two seconds of having my wallet stolen by a pick pocket whilst stepping on to the tram. I keep it in a back pocket which is zipped up, and I've been to so many places over the years and never had a problem with that, so thought I was ok. But no. Luckily I felt movement in that area of my rear and put my hand behind me to check and found my zip undone and my wallet halfway out of my pocket. There was a non-European female passenger right behind me at the time and I'm pretty sure it was her. Had I been certain, she would have incurred my wrath, but I couldn't be certain, so was just happy not to have lost the wallet. I have, since then modified what I do, and instead of taking my wallet out with me I carry thirty-five euros cash and my credit card in a small brown envelope zipped up in that rear pocket, which means I look as if I have nothing in that pocket now....... I digress as always, but paying for those two cakes was the first outing of my little brown envelope with some cash and a card in it.

Tomorrow will be the first of two outings down to the marina area. We were originally going to stay for four nights so that we could use the train to visit Marseille which isn't far away. This plan was modified following a discussion we had with the nice English couple we met up in the mountains. They told us not to expect too much from Marseille as it was a dump, rather like Blackpool - and they were from the North of England! We'd heard enough, and following a closer look at Marseille on Google Maps/Earth we concluded that it was one enormous shithole. That decision has saved us thirty-one euros.

Our looming challenge is that we have three days of rain forecast for this whole area covering Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. We'll be leaving here Saturday morning.

We shall overcome.