In Port des Barques, the sun continues to shed blistering rays. In our pitch, staying in the shade, Husband returns to the task of repairing the punctures on my bike by inflating the brand new inner tubes we bought while staying at Saint Michel Chef Chef. A fellow French camper offers help [yet again!]. But the repair is not to be, due to the tubes being of the wrong sort [of course!]. In other words, they don’t fit.

In spite of the heat, we walk together up to the little village to research somewhere for an evening meal and to buy bread and [hopefully] pastries. We draw a blank on both counts, All likely-looking cafes inform us that they don’t do evening meals, except on Fridays and Saturdays. It seems that Port des Barques is simply a weekenders type of place. That’s that then. In addition to this, all the bakery signs lead to closures and the grocery shop has no bread and no pastries.

We venture further into the village and away from the sea, where we do find a co-op! We can get a baguette- but no croissants. Further still, we do actually stumble on a boulangerie! Eureka!

Returning back down the road, we make one last attempt to find an evening meal by looking in on a roadside hotel, where we are firmly told ‘Non!’

Later we pack up the van and set off to Rochefort, which is nearby, to visit the Orange telecoms store because the mobile wifi SIM has run out of data, also to visit Decathlon for yet more inner tubes and to bump up the van’s leisure batteries.

Rochefort is beautiful but we’ve done the sightseeing on a previous visit- when I’d erroneously thought it would be a magnet for cheese lovers until I realised that the iconic, blue cheese hails from Roquefort… Today is too hot to trek around the city so we locate the Orange shop, where the assistant takes some persuading to ‘recharge’ the SIM for us, reluctant to accept my poor French as a reason for my failings as a customer- but eventually he complies.

Decathlon is straightforward. This time we’ve brought the wheel and the inner tube is inserted for us [for a price].

Back on site, we wait until the relative cool of early evening to get a stroll up and along the seafront. Beyond the rocky section there’s a slipway and further round, a beach, busy at 7pm, and a cafe under the trees is doing a swift trade. Continuing on, there’s a couple of ancient canon on the clifftop overlooking the fishing huts but not much else. From here we can see the Isle d’Oleron, where we’ve stayed before. All of the islands off the west coast of France are lovely and all quite different in character.

It’s our last night at Port des Barques. In the morning I wake and notice that the laundry door is closed so I dash over and open it to allow the parent swallows to get in and feed the chicks. I glance up and see their tiny heads bobbing up and down- phew! They are still alive…

For fiction by me, Jane Deans, search for novels: The Conways at Earthsend [an eco-thriller] and The Year of Familiar Strangers [mystery drama]. Visit my website: janedeans.com