"Hakuna Matata"
We left London early in the evening and headed for Portsmouth, where we were going to get the overnight ferry to Le Havre. We reached Portsmouth before 8:30, and made our way towards the ferry terminal. When we got there we were informed that our ferry had been delayed. It eventually left at 1 in the morning, but we didn't mind because we were finally on the way to France. We arrived in Le Havre shortly before 7 a.m. the following morning and drove south-west towards Nantes, where we were going to spend the night with friends. We made it to Nantes late in the afternoon, and after an enjoyable evening, we got an early night. We set off early the next morning.
We said goodbye to our friends in Nantes and headed down the west coast. It was meant to be a quiet holiday in the pine forests south of Bordeaux, with the bonus of long golden beaches nearby. If we had known what was in store for us down south, we would have accepted our friends' invitation to spend the week with them.
When we arrived at the cottage the blue skies of the north had changed to cloud and drizzle. It rained all night, and continued the next day, so the day after we decided to visit a town further down the coast. But when we pulled into the seafront car park the car broke down. The man from the Green Flag breakdown service, with trailer, responded to our phone call after two hours. We didn't need the trailer, but did need a new battery which, fortunately, he had. We then had to follow him to his garage, an hour away, to pay by credit card.
The following day the skies cleared and we visited the beach, returning after an enjoyable two hours to find the car had been broken into, the video camera stolen and the windscreen smashed. It was going to take two days and cost at least £300 to get it fixed. As our ferry was in three days, we decided to hire a car. That was when we discovered the credit card had been left at the garage where we bought the battery.
In the morning, in the rain, we cycled 12 miles to the next village to collect the hire car. We then drove two hours to the first garage to collect the credit card, then back to the cottage to take the washing in out of the rain. A car pulled up, its passengers suspiciously eyeing our cottage. It turned out to be the next occupants, who had arrived a day earlier than expected. We didn't feel we could send them to a hotel, so we rearranged the cottage to accommodate an extra couple and two (separate) elderly parents.
Finally, having taken the hire car back and collected our own, we left, driving for seven hours in scorching heat to our friends in the north where the weather had been glorious for the whole week. During all that time our daughter would only let us play two CDs, one of which was The Lion King. From it we learned the very valuable philosophy of "Hakuna Matata", i.e., "no worries" or "when bad things happen, there's nothing you can do about it".