No smoke without fire. Can be a commonly voiced suspicion of another. Cynical thoughts without a covering hat. Sometimes justified. More often not.
Fortunately our northerly upwards route does not go much higher than the hills. They resemble a damp autumn bonfire. Gusting soggy look-alike smoke. Billows down in all directions. We hold our breath.
Or wetter than this. Our intended stop at Camping Le Lac – Port given a miss. All pitches under several inches from the lake overflow. We could stay. Simply pitch up on the car-park. We inspect the toilet block. It’s dismal. Open at both ends. Top and bottom. One up from a latrine. Showers with pull chains. Grotty and dirty. No one on duty for breaking regs. Looks like no one’s been on duty since WW2. Probably when they were first constructed. Need bombing. Raising to the ground.
However, our day’s entertainment isn’t over. It jump starts. We get held up entering Camping du Sevron at St Etienne du Bois. Les pompiers are in action. Dousing down a Renault hatchback. It’s been up in the hills.
This small campsite is surrounded on three sides by a loop. A river loop. All pitches edge the river bank. The river runs high. It’s still raining. All but a couple of the soggy, muddy pitches are vacant. Nobody wants to get stuck. Like us, everyone parks up on the hardcore ways. A late arrival, arrives. A Belgian towing a large caravan. He has no option. No way-space left. He backs on. Backs on too far. By then it’s too late. He should have kept his car’s wheels off the pitch. He didn’t. His caravan’s back-end is perched over the river bank. Luckily for him there’s no gold bullion to slide about inside. But, unlike Michael Caine at the end of the Italian Job, he doesn’t seem to have ” . . . a great idea”. His car can’t budge his caravan forwards to safety. He unhooks. Goes in search of the site manager. He returns with a winch. Attached to a quad bike. It struggles. It now becomes a game of tug o’ war. The caravan is winning. It’s played this game before. It’s a one man team. It digs its heels in. The winch has the opposite desired effect. The quad is inched in towards the waiting disaster area. But the site manager has played this game before too. He changes tack. Stops. Locks. Pulls. Stops. Locks. Pulls. Starts a rocking motion. The caravan rocks. Doesn’t get rocked back on its heels. Rocks forwards and out of its deep ruts. Relief, smiles and mud all around.
Later, a wartime sounding siren blasts the evening back into life. Disturbs dinner. Site manager and torch scan the river edge. We fear it’s burst its banks and an evacuation is called for. Mr S and torch hop outside. Double checks. A false alarm for us. We’re safe. But the massive warehouse, on fire the other side of town, isn’t.
