The big two boys are off playing boules, Alex is just in bed at 8:55pm (an earlyish night) so I am finally catching up with the activities of the past few days although the wifi is not working on this site at the moment so I will have to wait to upload to the blog itself. Today we have been canoing on the Drome river. We had picked up the leaflet at the reception and decided it might be fun. Thankfully Alex was old enough being able to do it from the age of 6. We had to drive about 45 mins to get to the site and after a missed turn at the beginning of the journey and an impromptu motorway toll we set the satnav to avoid the tolls and sped through beautiful French towns and villages. We arrived at Saillon which was a beautiful town but there was no sign of the canoing. After asking directions we found one canoe place who then gave us directions to their competitors!! We arrived on site and after deciding how far we wanted to go were togged up with life jackets, helmets for the kids and individual oars that were just the right size for each of us. We had a waterproof barrel to put our lunch, camera an an other valuables in. We had chosen the 9km route so we were driven by mini bus upstream with the canoes in tow. We arrived at our departure point and were secretly relieved when the chauffeur didn't stay to see us off as the river was quite fast flowing and we didn't want to capsize before we had even got going (he had told us it was 50/50 as to weather we would capsize or not!!). Before we set off all nice and dry!
We put the adults at the back of the canoes, Jez and Ben at the fronts and Alex went in the middle on one. Not long after setting off Ben and I got caught on the side of the boat and before we knew it were heading downstream backwards!! We just managed to right oursleves when we got completely stuck on a massive submerged rock. After lots of pushing off with oars and rocking of the boat we managed to get off the rock and we were off again. We soon had a great system going for steering the boat and Ben was a great watchout for submerged rocks. Once we had got ourselves sorted in between rapids I braved getting the camera out for a quick few shots. We then pulled in and managed to find a bit of shade to have our lunch. The photo is of the boys pointing at their soggy botties!! 
We saw a Heron several times en route who would fly off when we got too close, only to land further down stream for us to disturb him again. We also saw an unidentified bird with a bright yellow chest. It was amazing how quickly we were moving as soon after lunch we saw a 6km sign which meant we had done 3km already (I thought we might have done 1 at this point!) 
The scenery was beautiful as we passed under several bridges, past ruins and campers. We did have one close shave where I thought Ben and I were going to capsize as the boat tipped at a 45 degree angle and started filling with water rapidly. Thankfully we managed to right it and the water drained out. Phew! I for one was a little sad when the finishing point came into view and the general concensus was that we had a brill time. We realised on returning that we should have brought a change of clothes as we were all soaked so we ended up going home in our undies!!! We had planned to stop at various fruit and veg producers on the way home but decided that we were too scarey a sight. We popped back to the caravan for some dry clothes and then set off to find the supermarket that had been closed yesterday. We took the scenic route and saw lots of different fields with various produce in them including cherry trees with the fruit being picked. We stocked up on some of our favourates croissants, barre patissiere, baguette as well as stocking up on the essentials to have enough food for 4 days. When we got back Dave and the boys went to cool off in the pool whils Katie got the dinner on.
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