8th June 2009

We were going to get a bus into Royan this morning, but it's been raining on and off so instead we packed up the van and drove off to find a Leclerc supermarket.  The girl on reception suggested one but we couldn't park there.  There were height barriers everywhere and Paul didn't want to park in the street as it didn't feel safe.  This is the first time we've come across these restrictions.  I don't understand why they do it, it means we can't shop, and they lose money.
We drove on past another couple of smaller places and then found another bigger Leclerc which also had a restaurant so we shared one of their great pizzas for lunch followed by chocolate cake with crème Anglais, delicious.  Paul has loaded all the French supermarkets, campsites and other places of interest onto our navigation and map programme on the laptop, Autoroute 2007 I think it's called, and it means that we can generally find a supermarket to do our shopping without too much difficulty. Once we have the address we can then put it into our SatNav and viola! However, it doesn't tell us if they're stupid enough to put height barriers up!
We did the food shopping and I also managed to find a few little gifts to take back to England with us. There was a perfume shop and I was going to get something for Davina but at €87 for a bottle of Angel, it's too expensive.  I'll have to look for something else for her. We are trying to keep to a budget of £1,500 per month including food, fuel and living expenses.  So far we're doing okay but we have to be careful not to be too extravagant.  We constantly remind ourselves that we're not on holiday, this is how we live. So, if it sounds as though were not doing very much sometimes, I guess it's because we wouldn't be doing things every day if we were at home either. We’ll have been travelling for two months come tomorrow, so we've actually done a lot of things, seen some wonderful places and scenery and met some really nice people.  All in all I think I like this lifestyle more than I expected to, despite occasional downs.
We got back to the site and the sun finally appeared so we sat outside and I made a card for my dad for Father's Day and Paul read.  We watched TV later and had sandwiches for dinner.