Camping du Lac Le Village, and the art of the post-modern shower.

The Bordeaux city camp site is well placed for both visiting the city and as a stopover on the way to Spain, so was quite busy. It is in the process of being upgraded, and the rather swanky new office and reception building was commissioned during our stay. We checked into a portacabin, but checked out through the new chalet style building. The site had a big new lakeside restaurant, and the pitches have been re-located around a series of ponds with ducks and other water birds. It's very nice.

Well, nice apart from the new sanitaraire, which are really quite bizarre. Even by French standards of social engineering the facilities are odd. Imagine two moderately sized Scandinavian style pitched-roof wood pavilions standing face to face, with a covered tiled foyer connecting the two. The toilets, on one side are unisex, which is quite normal these days, though I do wonder if the un-screened urinals by the door really do delight women users!

 It's the design of the shower block opposite which is really quirky.  Unisex shower cubicles and lavbos line the walls, including nice touches like a family shower and washbasin closet big enough to spruce-up grubby toddlers - I remember these were a bit of a boon in the days when we camped with small kids. The odd design decision was to site a square block of washing-up sinks right in the middle of all the showers. 

Now I suppose there is no reason why pots and pans should not get washed in the same place as humans... and this would be fine if everyone was well mannered, but they are not. Perhaps I am just becoming old, intolerant and illiberal, judge for yourself after I have recounted my 'washing the BBQ anecdote'.....

I arrived with a big pile of dishes and the grill pan off the Cadac, this takes a fair amount of elbow grease with the pan scrub to get it clean. I was just filling the sink with hot water when a couple in their thirties breezed in and disappeared into the family shower. I don't mind that really, I guess, but if you are going to have a tender moment in a public space, a little modesty would be nice.

 Now I am not saying that the pair were being gross or 'making out', just that the running commentary concerning the delights of mutual back scrubbing, less than two metres from my equally enthusiastic, but silent pan scrubbing seemed utterly bizarre. My discomfiture was increased by the fact that the couple's 'wash-in' was conducted in ardent whispers, reminiscent of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin's infamous one hit wonder.

Perhaps the block's architect was an enthusiast for French post-modern philosophy, and having read Michel Foucaults various attempts to de-construct and confront the hidden patterns of socially conservative bourgeois behaviour, felt that the design of a camping municipal  shower block offered him a similar opportunity. If that was so, then, with the assistance of Monsieur and Ms. Loofah, he confronted my bourgeois assumptions admirably. Next morning I washed-up the breakfast dishes in the van.