Sérignan – Part One

The drive onwards to Sérignan Plage and our much discussed, long awaited meet-up with our good friends Dave and Jan was short and blissfully straightforward – largely as we pushed the boat out and bought ourselves a 21km stretch of Autoroute that cut out all the little towns and villages that would have been lovely to look at, but tortuously slow to navigate. And at €2.50 for the privilege, what’s not to like!

Based on our recent experiences of ACSI sites operating at full capacity, or with only last-ditch pitches available, we were a tad apprehensive as we turned south off the road that had skirted the Canal du Midi and we entered familiar territory from 2016, when we had stayed on a full-on pimp-my-pitch site that was on full ACSI discount – just for the year we found it! Our choice this year was unknown to us, but was the only site on this gorgeous stretch of beach with the same deal, and so we found ourselves at the reception of Beauséjour and, with a large Pass’Etapes aire opposite, we were feeling fairly relaxed that if not here, we’d have somewhere to stay at least. (The aire was one of the biggest we have seen so far, big enough to accommodate one of the biggest camper outfits we have seen on this trip too!)

The receptionist was most bemused by the look on Mr B’s face as he was told that we had a choice of four pitches. And his joy was increased as we walked around and saw that the vast majority of our fellow campers were French – what a treat! Mrs B suggested that we drove the camper onto the first of the four pitches that took our fancy and then walked to look at the rest. An excellent call this, as we have found from experience, that it’s much easier by foot to get straight to the vacant pitches to assess them, and when (as it was with us) other campers were also hunting down their ‘ideal’ emplacement, at least we would know that we could claim squatters rights on one! As it turned out, Mrs B had nailed the best one of the four straight off – and, after we had taken a good few turns around the site over the length of our stay, probably one of the best on the site for our needs!

With Dave and Jan on the site right next door, we had just enough time to pitch up, get straight, and we were round at theirs for an evening of fun and frivolity – once we had handed over some ID and been issued with mandatory wrist bands that is – something we remembered from our stay in 2016! With so many attractions and facilities on the site, security was super-efficient!

As with many of our friendships these days, we may not meet up for some time, but the years that may have passed are held fast by a thread that holds firm over the passage of time – and its an easy process of relaxing back into where we might have left off last time.

The next day saw all four of us heading off on our trusty folding steeds to the nearby town of Sérignan where we were planning to have lunch. It’s a pleasant 30 minute ride along the cycle path north (with some fabulous painted agricultural buildings) and then across the (new to us) bike and pedestrian only bridge, directly letting on to the tree covered central square, bounded on two sides by a good range of restaurants and cafés. And it was just as well there were so many eateries, as, although we had allowed for the fact that the French like to eat early, our arrival at midday was just in time, as we had completely overlooked that it was Fathers’ day!

Relaxing under the broad and protective canopy of the magnificent plane trees that give shade to the square, we easily whiled away the time over a lovely lunch of local delights, with just enough wine to be on the right side of a 30 minute cycle back to the vans!

With Dave and Jan coming round to ours for food that night, we had a laugh at the different levels of security on our site, where the process of signing us in, a uniformed guard to claim our ID back from, and those mandatory wrist bands, was replaced by a nod from a relaxed, and very hench guy lounging on one of the site’s electric golf carts, exuding a charm that you just knew would be replaced by the tough stuff if you were to cross him!

Picking up from where we had left off at lunchtime with our reminiscences and plans for future travel, another pleasant evening whizzed by before Dave and Jan had to walk back to their site so we could all observe the 23:00 noise curfew on each site…

With only one day left before it was time to say goodbye to our chums as they made their way back through France to Belgium and their ferry home, we took advantage of their final shop by car at a nearby hyper-market to get some provisions, without having to cycle for them, as we might subsequently need to if we didn’t want to move the van, and we organised a farewell BBQ at ours. This was the first site of the trip where we had been allowed to have an old school charcoal BBQ, so it seemed crazy not to, with the evening ending without any incendiary incidents and peppered with promises we hope we can all keep, to meet up again with hopefully less time elapsing!

With our friends heading north and us having only just arrived at the coast, we kicked back and decided we’d just take the days as they came and see how long we wanted to stay down south and enjoy the sun, sea and the miles of marvellous beach …

S&J