End of Week 2 – Sunday July 11 – Bastia

Ahhhhh...... a sleep in. Gosh we're sleeping well on this holiday. The tent with its four mesh windows – 1 per each side on the top, is beautifully cool, so we're sleeping really well despite the heat during the day. We're going to Bastia today, which is just back over the hill, so we have had a nice slow start to the day. Included in that slow start is our specially ordered pain au raisin and pain au chocolate, and today for the very first time all holiday – a take-away coffee. It might not sound like much, but it is actually really nice just to sit outside your tent nibbling on your pain au raisin and sipping on your wee coffee, with it's milk on the side in a little plastic cup – very relaxing.

The road to Bastia reminds me a lot of the Rimutakas, but with better views. When you get to the top it is possible to stand on the lookout and look one way down to the ferry terminal and harbour in Bastia and the other way down to the bay that Saint-Florent sits in. We stopped a couple of times on the way up, as there are some pretty little villages and the views back over Saint-Florent are pretty spectacular. As we approached Bastia, the road condition worsened and for one of the islands bigger towns, it's exit points are pretty shambolic. We were pleased to find an underground car park today because it keeps the car cool and means that I don't have to carry my camera and PC gear all day. Yesterday in Corte we had to park the car in the sun all day and by the time we returned, I had to spend 20 minutes changing gear with a heavy cloth because the metal gear knob was absolutely boiling.

Bastia was hot, hot, hot and there was very little respite from the sun. We did a walk abound the port and the old town, which were very beautiful. As luck would have it, it was market day today, so we had a wander round there before finding a bar at the side of the square to have an Orangina and mineral water – hitting the hard stuff, eh?

We found a very nice restaurant down in the harbour area, that had got serious about the heat wave and installed humidifiers to keep their patrons cool. Having learnt from yesterday's experience, we made sure about what we were getting for lunch and had a seafood and chicken salad, which was really nice.

The day closed with a swim in the pool back at the campground, followed by the washing which I've already mentioned and finally dinner in a Saint-Florent restaurant watching the world cup final, which I was pleased that Spain won, even though I didn't find the game particularly enjoyable to watch – nothing like the German game.

The car is going perfectly except for one minor flaw. When it arrived from the factory, there was obviously something stuck to the back windscreen which the people who prep'd it for us ripped off. What they didn't do it remove the tape that had held whatever it was to the windscreen and we didn't notice that the tape was still there. Now, the only reason I am telling you this, is that the tape on the windscreen is in exactly the position where the back windscreen folds into the boot and sits on a rubber plug, so that no met objects can damage it. So the other day when we put the roof down, everything was fine. When we put the roof up, everything was fine, except that the tape had stuck to the rubber plug and as the roof came up it ripped the plug right out. Rather that have the plug stick to the window, it then fell off somewhere down the road, so now we don't have the rubber plug protecting the windscreen, all we have is bare exposed metal – the exact thing the plug was supposed to be protecting against. My solution to this, which is working very well, is to place a well folded sock over the meta piece, so that the windscreen can't hit it. Anne is now in the practice of removing the sock from the back windscreen whenever the roof goes up, at which point, I put it back over the exposed metal ready for the next cycle. As long as we continue this for the rest of the holiday we should not have problems.