1st August - Rouen

Got up at 9 and went to reception. I tried to get away with saying we’d only just arrived so we only had to pay for one night. I sent the girls away to quickly pack up our stuff while I paid. Turns out they hadn’t charged me for the deposit of the campsite either! The receptionist gave us a map of the site and our new pitch. We carried our already set up tent halfway across the site. As we were putting our bags inside, thinking we’d got away with it, the receptionist said we’d have to pay for the night before as someone had seen us in the pitch the previous night. I felt pretty guilty lying as she was really friendly and we paid the other night.

After that we went to the on-site grocery store. It didn’t have much on offer so we walked into Jumieges. We found a tourist office so we asked inside about youth hostels in Rouen for our last night. Our trains very early on Monday morning, so we need to be at the train station by about 6.45am. The earliest bus from the campsite is at 9, instead of paying €60 for another taxi, we’d prefer to stay in a hostel closer to the train station.

Unfortunately the woman told us there are no hostels in Rouen and all of the hotels are expensive so, so she gave us the number of the campsite closest to the train station.
On the way back to the campsite we bought some patisseries from the bakers – mine was coffee flavoured, yum! We tried to ring the campsite but there was no answer. We then went to go swimming on the on-site pool but it was closed until 2.

We went back to the tent and it started raining really heavily. The girls fell asleep so i wrote for a bit. When they finally bloody woke up we went to phone the campsite again. It turned out it was 3 buses away from the town centre which would be impossible to get before our trains due.

We then sat by the pool and tried (and failed) to figure out a plan. We “swam” (stood in the not-so-heated-poll freezing our tits off) before showering. It started to rain again so we sat in the tent and waited for it to stop...it didn’t. We bought some pizza and chips from the on site store and depressingly sat in the tent all night.

Alex gave me a massage (yay!) and we talked for hours. Then me and Lu imagined a load of really nice places we could go that doesn’t have rain-anywhere but Rouen. Then we slept.