Slightly damp holiday

Friends have said that the weather in Brittany is much like Cornwall; a bit of sun, plenty of rain. I guess a small part of me wanted to believe it was actually like Ibiza, especially as we were staying in a caravan.

The day we arrived the sky was bright and the sun was warm. Promising, I thought. Thankfully I’d packed plenty of shorts and T-shirts for the boys and flimsy summer dresses for me. As the sun warmed us from the inside we planned trips to the beach, walks along the promenade eating ice cream, and plenty of lounging around the pool reading trashy literature.

The next morning we woke to find torrents of rain lashing down onto the flimsy caravan roof. All we could see outside the window were dreary rain clouds. The muddy puddle right outside the door of the caravan could have easily accommodated a herd of wallowing hippos.

Hours later, the black clouds still hovered above but it was time we left the caravan. The paper thin walls of our cereal-box sized temporary home were closing in on us, and there were only so many times we could play trains, do colouring, watch Peppa Pig or pretend the top bunk was a space rocket.

Despite the rain we had smiles on our faces and happiness in our hearts as we decided upon a trip toQuimper, and a play barn that was apparently located there. I packed a lunch, filled a flask of tea and we set off in the car. Almost two hours later the smiles had gone, tempers were really frayed and there was murder in our hearts. We stopped off to ask directions. We’d been going round in circles and in fact were only 2 minutes away. We arrived at the promise land only to find that a) it looked decidedly grubby, and b) it was closed! A small squeal was all that betrayed the enormity of anger that bubbled up inside me. The rain continued to pelt down so we headed back to the campsite.

Three days later we woke to sun, it was shining brilliantly. Within 5 minutes we’d packed up the car and were headed for the lovely deserted beach in Mousterlin. A few clouds threatened us but we held our own. The sun shone and my leggings were off, my pastel legs turned golden just for a moment, two minutes later the leggings were on again when the only cloud in the sky hovered above me. My husband and boys were down by the water’s edge building sand castles with moats, turrets, a small drawbridge and delicate shells adorning the outer walls. My youngest son made short work of trampling it. My husband’s miffed expression didn’t last long before he set to work building bigger and better. Later, we had lunch and looked for beach treasure. The boys made a racing car in the sand then Max, our two-year-old decided that he was bored and determinedly headed back the way we’d come, one shoe clutched tightly in his little hand.

Sand activities exhausted we sauntered back to the car with the satisfaction of knowing that, despite the odd cloud we had won. For that day only we’d had the weather on our side and a jolly good day at the beach was had by all.