OK, so I realise I have been off the radar for too long now. Sorry about that. Time for an update!

The 7th of July I went camping with the family for three weeks. Our final destination was Begur in northern Spain (near Barcelona), but we first made a stop in southeast Belgium to spend the night.

We have been camping for years now, but this year we bought a trailer for the car to put in the tent and larger items like chairs and stuff (and my new scuba gear, yay!). We now also have enough space to take two of these "pop-up tents" to spend the night en-route. Before we always had to go to a B&B or hotel, but that's very expensive in high-season. So we settled down in Arlon near Luxembourg, took a shower and went to bed...

Then all hell broke loose:

My eldest son was in the tent with me. He was a bit scared, but I turned it into a "game" (counting the seconds between flash and thunder) which made him feel more at ease. The youngest was in the other tent with my *girlfriend and luckily he slept through the whole thing. He gets very scared of loud noises, especially fireworks or thunder, so I am glad for that.

At least I can confirm these tents are good quality with no leaking whatsoever!

The next morning we continued our journey south, to the French town of Bollène. There was quite a lot of traffic on the road, so this took longer than expected. The family-run campground however was really nice and made us forget the set-backs of that day.

We had decided beforehand we would stay two nights at this campground, so we wouldn't have to drive on a saturday (which can be very busy in France in high-season). We took some time to relax, hang out at the pool, do some grocery shopping, and just rest a bit.

Offcourse, the friends at home don't mind joining the fun:

Sunday we drove the last 386 km to Camping Begur in Spain. We stopped at the "Aire du Village Catalan" to have a rest and toilet break. It's a very nice resting area, the last one before the Spanish border, so normally we make our last stop there. Then, finally, we arrived at our destination:

We went to our assigned pitch and decided how to orient the tent. Then my gf took the kids to the pool for a swim and icecream, while I put up the tent and unloaded the car. This way of doing things seems to work best for us. Somehow kids seem to know when you don't have time to give them attention and will start doing all kinds of shit to get it anyway.
The tent we have is a large tunnel tent, made by Bax in The Netherlands. I believe it to be the best tent I've seen to date; It's completely waterproof, can be erected by a single person, doesn't need guy-ropes or tension wires, is sturdy as a house (almost), and is available in sizes that accommodate 4 to 6 people comfortably. I'd buy it again if need be, hands down.

Now, time to relax!

For me, holiday is all about relaxing. We visisted some small medieval towns (the kids love the "castles"), went to some nice bays, enjoyed the weather, and made good use of the campground swimmingpools. As we both like scuba diving, me and my gf also went on a few diving trips. Even with the limited diving experience I have, I'm always amazed by the diversity in sites. Even diving in The Netherlands, with visibility sometimes less than 1m, has it's beauty. I'll try to make some more posts on that later.

As it happend to be, friends of us were staying at the same campground. I had asked them to babysit the kids for a few hours so me and my gf could go diving together, which they happily agreed to. We drove to L'Escala, to a diving center with the best team on the Costa Brava: Mateua Dive.

We prepared our gear, took the boat to the diving spot and went in the water. After about 45min when we were close to the boat again, I let her know I had something to "say":

She said YES!

Upon return, we were meeted by the kids and friends, who made a great party to celebrate!

Thanks for reading! Have a great day and Steem on!