1st July - Nightmare Day, Mimizan

Tuesday 1st July 2008

Today has not been one of our best, but has certainly been one of our most memorable - for the wrong reasons.

The day started well, waking up in Mortagne-sur-Gironde in the sun overlooking the harbour with acres of fields of crops directly behind us. It was a beautiful setting, the “Rolls Royce of Aires” according to our British friend Tony. We went for a wander through the village up the hills where we found a viewing point overlooking the whole village, where we took a few photos (added at the bottom). We thought we were going to take it easy today and take a nice drive down to a place called Arcachon, west of Bordeaux where we saw there was an Aire - we expected a nice relaxing day.

Just before setting off though, we noticed we’d left a tap on in the bathroom, which now resembled more of a professional swimming pool rather than your standard washroom. The floor was completely soaked through, and we must have wasted about 15 litres of perfectly good water. Obviously we had to fill up again, which wasn’t that much of a pain but it was just a shame to waste so much. That was the first little annoyance of today.

The second, getting lost for about 45 minutes after taking a wrong turning. The third, finding that the Netto Supermarket which we had taken a de-tour for was closed at 2 o clock in the afternoon. I didn’t know the French had adopted the idea of the siesta?

The fourth problem which arose, was that we spent nearly 2 hours looking for this Aire in Arcachon. We couldn’t find it for the life of us, but at the same time we were also constantly getting lost at various crazy French roundabouts or road layouts, thus wasting more and more time. French signage is very odd. It seems fantastic at first and you can more often than not find a sign you want to see, but then they just disappear; no matter how much you look or how slowly and carefully you drive in an attempt to notice any glimpse of the words “Camping Car” or “Aire”. They just vanish after one or two brief showings and there’s nothing you can do about it!
By this time it was getting on for 17.00, we really were not doing well for time at all. It has just been one of those days so far - time was just flying by and we hadn’t even done anything yet.
We decided to abandon the idea of staying in Arcachon, which in a way was a shame because it did genuinely appear to be a very pretty tourist location with some long golden beaches, but we were sick of the sight of the same roads over and over again.

We drove south again down the D652 as our guide told us there were one of two other stop over’s just shy of Arcachon. We noticed some quite stunning sand dunes to our right as we were cruising along. They were enormous, we felt we just had to pull over and explore. BIG mistake. We pulled over, not realising that what we were driving onto was thick, soft sand. And lot’s of it. Obviously, we got stuck what with the sheer weight of the motor home. We tried slowly going forward, then slowly going back but were getting nowhere. We were just digging ourselves deeper and deeper into the sand. I was getting so frustrated and I was already starting to think we were in deep trouble. We tried digging ourselves out with a spade and starting it again, this time in 2nd gear and after letting some air out of the tyres, but we seemed to just be sinking and sinking with every move. To try and explain how bad it was, the back right hand wheel was almost completely out of view, underneath the sand, and the back of the actual motor home was just resting on the ground. It appeared there was no way out at all.

A friendly German family appeared to try and lend a hand. They gave us some rubber mats to put under the wheel so we could try and drive onto them. No joy. Then a huge French lorry pulled over, only spoke a few words of English but they got out some rope and it was clear they were going to try and pull us out. By this time of course traffic had slowed down to almost walking pace as people were getting great joy from watching two moronic Brits struggling in the heat. The lorry idea didn’t work either though. When they tried to pull us forward the rope just snapped; Eric didn’t move an inch. At this point I was losing all faith… if a huge lorry couldn’t pull us out then what could?

Next up to try and lend a hand were an English couple from Exeter, they tried putting some logs underneath the wheels whilst we were busy digging away sand from under the back of the vehicle, as that was also a major factor in stopping us from going anywhere, not just the invisible back wheel. Again this didn’t work.

We must have had about 5 or 6 more different groups/couples who pulled over to try and help. We can’t remember them all, there were so many but nothing was working at all. Thanks to everyone who stopped, not that they’ll be reading this but you never know. I tried calling the AA but none of their lines were working. Could this day get ANY worse?

Demoralised, tired and sandy, we thought about resting for a while, until a truck pulled up behind us and looked slightly interested. The man inside was French and spoke just a little English, but he seemed very confident that he could help us which gave us encouragement. He got out some very thick army style rope, attached it to the front of this vehicle, and tied it to the back of ours, I jumped in, put Eric into reverse and after the count of 3 we both moved backwards together in one last attempt at freedom. Hallelujah! We had movement! After more than an hour of panic and failure we were set free by this friendly giant of a Frenchman (he really was huge). We couldn’t speak his language but we gave him a hug, thanked him, took a few photos and parked up the road slightly to get our breath back.

By this point we were so tired we just wanted to park anywhere and relax for the rest of the day. We found a fresh water lake just past a place called Biscarosse so we cleaned off all the sand in there, and we are now in the Aire of Mimizan. It is 00.25 and we arrived just under an hour ago, so we couldn’t see much of the area as we arrived but the Aire itself is huge, every other space having it’s own electric hook up and there are even showers and toilets in the far corner. The Camperstop guide says there are around 70 spaces, and to be fair to the French authorities, this particular Aire was very, very well signposted right from the main road (D626). One night costs 11 Euros which we were more than happy to pay just to be in a safe location where (hopefully) not much can go wrong. Touch wood.

The day has escaped us, time for bed… I’ve always hated sand. I think I will for ever.

The Aire in Mimizan. 2minutes walk from the beach.