Labenne, Sunday 23rd October. Journey’s end! This is as far as we go; it’s on the Atlantic, just north of Bayonne, so only a few minutes from Spain. THEY are not sure whether we’re in the Pays Basque or not quite, but they will certainly pop down there with Sally one day soon, if only to fill her up with fuel which, hopefully, is cheaper in Spain!
So, back to the second day in Arcachon, No noise from that big caravan next door, and a very fine, but not warm day. Carol did some washing, while he worked on postcard 8 (which has been a real challenge) until the internet connection disappeared at exactly 12 noon! Nothing could be done about that, (because at exactly the same time, reception closed!) so they had a scrambled egg lunch before going through the town to get the 2pm excursion by boat out on the ‘Bassin’.
Yes, that boat. The circuit concentrated first on the ‘Ile Aux Oiseaux’ and then on the villages on the far side of the ‘bassin’ where oyster farming shares the landscape with some very fine villas and yachts.
On the way back to Arcachon, they could see THE DUNE and the skipper made reference to it in his commentary, which was thorough but very fast and even their much-praised French couldn’t take it all in.
After the 2-hour trip they hurried back to the campsite to see what had happened to the wi-fi (pronounced wee-fee, remember!) for which HE had paid e12. Oh yes, a chap was there at that time, doing something and he probably knocked out your connection and invalidated your user name and password. But they did give us qnother 20 hours, more than we could possibly use, without further charge. Having securred that. They went shopping and came back for a supper of quail – another remembered recipe from last year.
Later that evening disaster struck the ongoing production of these postcards – working on postcard 8, HE knocked a half glass of rosé over the computer’s keyboard. What a waste! The computer ‘died’ instantly, and, panicking, he phoned Rachel (his IT advisor, oh, yes, daughter as well). She advised use of a hairdryer. Problem there – it blows fuses! He left it inverted overnight in front of a heating vent.
Well, it was a bit better in the morning, but q section of the keyboard wouldn’t work, certain keys were ‘dead (like @ and delete) qnd others were producing strange results like ‘5’ producing ‘g5g’!
It was a travelling day. Nothing to do but pack up and get on the road ….
So here we are. On an almost deserted campsite, 20 minutes walk from the beach,
and although the pool here is closed, they have permission to use the one at the next site, which is covered and heated (the pool, not the site!).
On arrival, they attached the awning (‘Harriette’) and while SHE carried on pegging out and organising HE was allowed to go shopping ON HIS OWN! Guess what? He bought a wirelessly operated keyboard for the computer! Now here’s a thing: it’s a French keyboard, right? But everything comes up as on an English one! Strike ‘a’ and you get ‘q’ etc. Numbers, in upper case on a French typewriter and keyboard, are in lower case, and the accented letters don’t appear at all! Can anyone explain this?
Qnyway (never mind!) THEY’ve booked in for a week, so I’ll be having a good long rest before what’s going to be a long pull home!
Maybe I’ll let little Sally write a few more cards, she’ll be doing the running around after all – and going to Spain!
Stephen's space 
I suspect that the laptop ‘understands’ the signal from the keyboard as from an English keyboard. After all, the only difference is how the keys are positioned, I suspect that the base under the keys is the same internationally, and the letter that is displayed in response to any given keystroke is decided by the software, not the hardware. Just a guess. I know from using computers in Israel that all you had to do to stop it typing in Hebrew was change the software settings.Qnyway made me lol, tub won i tsum hsad.(woh did eht werbeH teg dehctiws no?!)