Calais to Duras

After an uneventful shuttle trip, we arrived in Calais and set off on the long drive down to the South of France via Tom Tom. This took us via Paris, which gave us a great view of the Eiffel Tower and the Sacre Cour, all looking very picturesque until the Tom Tom fell off the windscreen and the memory card popped out at a pretty crucial moment for getting across several lanes of traffic by the Seine. Thankfully, Helen also had the map and managed to navigate like an expert whilst rapidly turning the Tom Tom back on.
As we drove down, we met some heavy rain and it we both thought the car looked like a great option for our first night rather than the tent.
We finally arrived in Duras, our camping destination early evening and totally exhausted - it was a very long drive. Thankfully, despite there having been some downpours over lunchtime, the ground was dry enough for us to set up camp and after a short while we were having dinner in the restaurant and went off to sleep listening to local jazz musicians playing there music within the campsite.
However, we were rudely awoken to blinding lightning and then a crack of thunder and and a patter of tiny droplets on the tent followed by a rapid downpour. This continued for several hours during the night and even when we woke in the morning there was still a constant dripping on the tent from the tree we had sheltered under (was this a good idea in a thunderstorm?).
The following day, we met up with Brian & Doris in the centre of Duras for coffee and then were kindly invited back to their 'estate' later in the evening for a 4 course meal. Many thanks to you both, good to meet up, thank you for your hospitality and for booking our accommodation, I am just cross we didn't have the camera that evening.
Our second night in the tent was thankfully completely uneventful, and more importantly dry!