Guingette de la Lecque

There are not a lot of restaurants of which I can say that I have been coming there since I was a little child  - the Chinese restaurant in the shopping mall close to the house that I grew up in is one place I can think of, but I haven't been there since my grandmother passed away in 2009. And then there is La Guingette de la Lecque, in front of the municipal camping in Bessèges that I first came to with my parents in 1988.

The camping is situated right next to a river, the Cèze, and during the summer season a dam is created in this river to create a small lake, so that the camping guests and others can swim there. This dam, together with a small drawbridge, connects the beach in front of the camping with a taverne: La Guingette de la Lecque. It opens at 14:00, except on Sundays, when it opens at 10:00 and serves lunch. All other days, it only serves dinner in the evening and pancakes during the day.

We're Dutch and not used to eating large lunches, so pancakes are just fine for us. We've been here for more than a week now, and developed a bit of a routine on days that we're not going out of the village. Early in the morning, we'll wake up and pay a visit to my father and his wife, whose house is right next to the house where we are staying. There, we relax a bit in the beatiful garden, and Rihanna Gaga will watch a few short films together with my dad - her current favourite is Puffin Rock, a Netflix series about a family of puffins and their friends. She was also very much into a stupid series about Mattel's Barbie at the beginning of our holidays, which told incredibly idiotic stories about the famous doll living a life that I guess comes very close to the life Ivanka Trump lived when she was young, but thankfully she seems to have forgotten about that by now. And I must say, Puffin Rock is a great series, full of funny characters and interesting information about animal life. Then, we'll go to the river to swim. Rihanna Gaga is a great swimmer. She's always been close to the sea wherever we lived - Scheveningen, Dubai or Tunisia - and has spent a lot of time on the beach, considering her age. She certainly has no fear of water, also because she regularly goes to the swimming pool with her daycare and her mum. Now, she's even insisting we no longer hold her hand while she's in the water, succeeding in keeping herself afloat with only her armbands. The last few days, she's proceeded to actually move by paddling with her hands and feet and she can go quite a distance if she puts her mind to it.

Then, when the Guingette opens, we move from the beach in front of the camping to the terrace of the taverne, from which you can also enter the lake. There, we eat pancakes, drink and read. Today, Rihanna Gaga is resting after a lot of swimming. My girlfriend has put a towel on the ground and she's lying down on it, telling us she is a bit tired. With another towel as a blanket, she seems to be very content just relaxing there. She gets up for a bit to sit on her mother's lap and eat her chocolate pancake (first time since Tunisia she has a chance to eat chocolate pancakes again and she's relishing the opportunity), but then she lays down on her towel again.

We're the first customers, but while we sit there, tourists and locals are slowly filling up the place. The Guingette is hugely popular, not only among camping guests and villagers: people from the whole Cévennes area come here, since it's right next to the best place in the river to go for a swim. In fact, if you spend a few days on its terrace, you'll probably meet everybody you know in the area there.

To prove that point, we see a German family we became acquainted with yesterday approaching over the dam, coming from the camping where they are staying. They have a one year old daughter and a son of Rihanna Gaga's age, which is nice because it is her first opportunity this holiday to play with another child - in fact, I quite deliberately approached them yesterday for just that reason. They're going for a walk first, much to Rihanna Gaga's disappointment. To keep her occupied, I propose we go for a walk too, but she declines and goes back to her towel. When I return from a short walk in the mountains - a path that I used to walk on is now closed of to the general public, so I have to return pretty quickly - I manage to convince her to come with me on a walk down the river beyond the dam. There, the water is only ankle deep, and there's much to see: lots of stones, frogs, bushes and sticks - Rihanna Gaga loves sticks and soon we each have our own walking stick. Now we're ready to go on an expedition, I tell Rihanna Gaga and she asks me what that is. "Going somewhere you've never gone before," I tell her and we explore the river for a while. When we return, the Germans have just arrived.