Category: beach

Le Beach

On By MashleyIn beach, Europe, france, holiday, travelLeave a comment

After a few days at Lac Du Parloup it was time to pack up and head south. Before we came out here I fitted a bike rack so we could bring out bikes and a trailer for Arielle, the idea being that when we got down near the beach we could use the bikes to venture out if we wanted to. Clearly I am not used to how long this additional item makes the van and I managed to snag my rear wheel on a tree.

I’m not going to lie, I did swear and was really annoyed at myself. It transpires that 26” MTB wheels are extremely difficult to come by so that was my bike and the trailer out of action for the rest of the trip.

The drive to where we were staying next, Dunes Et Soleil Marseillan plage took a couple of hours, the kids were well behaved even when we stopped at Lidl, the temperature was noticeably warmer.

Check in was easy and we’d initially booked for a few nights, within no time at all we were setup.

The beach here is lovely, entry to the sea is a very gentle slope and you can wander out a long way and still be only up to your waist which is great for the kids, finally they got an ice cream from the man who walks along the beach with an ice cream trolley, Stella remembered this from the last time we came to France and she was dead set on getting one!

We ended up extending our stay here for another 4 nights at a cost of 70 Euros which is great value. There is an onsite bar that does amazing burgers and Pizzas plus the main drag is well within walking distance as is the local fairground I suppose is the best way to describe it.

There were plenty of rides for the kids and at around 22.00 they’d spent all their tokens and we headed home to be greeted by our first storm.

I wasn’t as prepared as I could have been, the water wasn’t an issue but the wind whipped up pretty quickly, luckily Lolly saw what was going on and came out and held on to the awning while I put some straps in to stop it blowing away, that did the trick and next day everything’s was as it should be, still attached to the van!

We had a great time here and probably would have ended up staying till we went home, we had lovely neighbours from Germany, Belgium and the UK and I even found a working three way fridge someone had chucked which came in well handy for keeping my beer cold!

What we didn’t have was a pool. I don’t mind hanging at the beach but the pool is a nice thing to mix it up for the kids so after seven nights we packed up again and headed to Vias Plage.

Camp naked….

On By MashleyIn beach, Europe, france, road trip, solar, T4 Camper, travelLeave a comment

On our last day in Mont Dore Lolly, Lindi, Ian and Stella did some sightseeing and I spent some time trying to figure out the solar issues…

I’ve concluded that one of the panels is having problems working in direct sunlight, I know solar panels outputs are effected when they heat up but they shouldn’t stop working altogether, most likely something is heating up and becoming disconnected.

You can see from the picture below I’m getting a voltage that should now charge the battery when the panels are not in direct sunlight.

The manufacturers of the panel, Phoenix universe did call me back and sent me some things to try that may be able to fix the panel, if that didn’t work they also offered me a new panel at trade price which is a very kind thing to do…

Just before we left Mont Dore I saw this car parked up on the street.

I can’t remember the last time I saw an old Capri 🙂

As the title of this post suggests, we were off to a naturist site. I’m not a fan of the whole naturist thing and don’t partake, I genuinely don’t ever feel the need to wander about with my twig and berries swinging in the wind, each to their own I guess.

The drive down to Cap D’agde is about 4 hours and we didn’t leave Mont Dore till about 5 so without any stops, we should have arrived at 21.00. Four hours continuously behind the wheel is a bit much for everyone so we did make a couple of stops and arrived around 22.00.

I hate arriving anywhere at night as I find it messes with your bearings and makes things generally more difficult to find, such as the booking in office. At this point I would like to mention how lovely the staff here have been. Despite arriving at ten in the evening they made sure we had somewhere to stay for as long as we needed, security we’re helpful in directing us to where we needed to be and being cool with leaving the van in a drop off only point till we were sorted. The check-in staff on the gate explained everything we needed to know and when we registered at reception the following day the same helpfulness again.

As you may have read on my blog we stopped at a naturist place in 2015, you can read about it here, I still maintain I wasn’t made fully aware that it was a naturist site! This time around I was fully aware as it was a kind of deal, I get to go to the mountains with my bike and Lolly gets to wander about in the buff getting a awesome tan.

As I mentioned earlier, we arrived at night and as such the naked crowd had got dressed, sort of…

Turns out this is a bit more than a naturist site, as we were trying to find the night office to check in I noticed a lot of people wearing what looked like S & M gear, lots of ladies wearing string dresses with nothing on underneath and a very obvious transvestite which I have nothing against but just wasn’t really expecting.

We were all knackered so I threw together a camp for us to sleep and stash our stuff while Lolly entertained Stella, when she came back she said amongst other things she came across a couple cracking on and a few people standing around them saying, mmm, yes, very good….

We had the worst nights sleep, it must have been about 30 degrees in the van, Stella kept waking up and when we left the door open to let some air through we were both sure someone stopped to see if there was any action going on, we both agreed we wouldn’t stay here for very long.

The next day we decided to give the place a chance, all we’d seen was some odd stuff going on in the evening and a rushed camp which wasn’t the best start. I setup our spot with the aim of staying for a few days because as I’m sure I have mentioned, it’s a ball ache to get everything sorted.

I also got a chance to set up the hammock and setup the washing line as we are in dire need of doing some washing!

The campsite is massive, all of the avenues are alphabetically ordered so it’s fairly easy to find your way around, all of the avenues look like this.

Some of the properties here are amazing, none of them are permanent which is mad considering how grand some of them are.

Our neighbours in the camp are from the UK and gave us the full rundown, basically this place is whatever you want it to be, for example, when you go to the beach, go right for the family side which is still fully naked or go left to the side where people have sex and other stuff on the beach while a crowd looks on, similar thing at night, if you hang around the site not much happens and nothing is in your face, however if you want some action then it’s not difficult to find so I’m told.

We decided to head to the beach but by the time we got everything together poor Stella was exhausted and fell asleep in Laurens arms..

We all had a little snooze and then went to the beach.

The beach is about a five minute ride through camp from where we are. Back home, one of my oldest friends periodically gifts a us cool things her girls have grown out of, this has been really useful for this trip and Stella absolutely loves it, thanks Steph 🙂

Being a naturist beach it’s not the done thing to start taking loads of pictures so I’ll have to describe it, obviously we went to the family side but en route came across a couple of beach bars that look awesome and are part of the resort.

The beach is sandy and the sea isn’t far away, there is a lot of people traffic by the sea, mostly naked but definitely some wandering along from other beaches to have a look at the naked people of which there are plenty to see!

I’ve noticed there seems to be a lot of penis and testicle jewellery amongst the naturist crowd which is mostly displayed on the beach. Some of it’s piercings but others are rings made of metal or leather with your twig and berries bunched up through it, some men hang chains from their necks down to their waists and then connect it up to their goods, very strange.

Periodically a bell rings which signals the ice cream man in the area, Lolly bought Stella a cone which she consumed with a good helping of a sand.

Stella wasn’t too keen on the sea and enjoyed sending daddy to and fro to fill up the smallest bucket in the world with water, she did eventually get in and was really happy when she realised she could walk in the sea by herself while holding Daddy’s hand.

After the beach we headed home and made some food, time for a family selfie!

We’d booked for two nights but might stay for a couple more, there is no requirement to actually be naked and once you get used to people walking about in the buff it’s just like any other camp site.

The one thing that does let this place down are the toilets. Each toilet block that I have found has a tiny toilet for kids, a regular toilet with no seat and squat toilets, there is no toilet roll in any of them, just a hose to wash your bits. I suspect this is because when you are naked there is no place to stash your toilet roll so it’s quite obvious you’re off for a dump (poo for non British readers) and also it means the site doesn’t have to stock them with loo roll. The showers on the other hand are excellent, they are also open and have mirrors opposite them so at some point you just can’t escape being naked.

As you can see below, Stella has no issues with being in the buff, she’s just like her mum!

At this time of year it’s hot, this is the temperature inside the van at about midday

That alone would encourage you to take all your clothes off!

All good things must come to an end…

On By MashleyIn beach, Fuerteventura, motorhome, road trip, travel, Wild Camping2 Comments

The end of this trip is on the horizon, there wasn’t much point leaving Costa Calma as there wasn’t anywhere nearby that we wanted to go to so we elected for a beach day, we had enough water and room in the waste tank for the remainder of the trip so it made sense to stay put and relax.

The beach here is massive and when the wind isn’t blowing really quite nice, we had an umbrella up for shade and it didn’t blow away which it might well have done in other locations.

Stella absolutely loves the beach and spent most of the day eating sand and tipping the water we got for her out of the bucket.

You can’t really see it in this picture but Stella s sitting in a giant fish tail made of sand.

She also took getting sand in your face to a whole new level, some kids hate sand, Stella absolutely loves it!

We stayed on the beach till about four and then made our way up to the van, we decided to stay another night and have a BBQ, the smallest BBQ in the world.

It was really nice to sit by the sea, eat some food, drink some booze and enjoy some family time.

I left the BBQ out for the night to go out so I could dispose of it the next day. About one in the morning Lolly was concerned that the washing we had put out on the line would bow away so she went outside to bring it in, on her return she said she saw a giant guinea pig eating off the BBQ, it was probably a rat, this is the one time I regretted not getting up to go and get the washing in….

The spot we stayed at for a couple of days is the car park that overlooks the Rene Egli surf school and equipment hire.

Next morning Stella got up about sevenish which meant we got to see a lovely sunrise

We’d agreed to spend the morning and early afternoon on the beach and then when Stella was ready for an afternoon snooze, out her in the car seat and head to the nearest toilet emptying point and then to our final destination, turns out my estimation of a couple of days worth of chemical toilet space was slightly out!

It was lovely to spend 2 days on the beach soaking up rays and watching Stella play in the sand, she’s a proper beach baby which I’m sure she gets from Lolly. In what seemed like the blink of an eye it was time to hit the road to Tarajalejo to empty the toilet and then to Gran Tarajal, our last stop for the trip.

It’s a bit of a strange place is Gran Tarajal, it has a black sand beach that isn’t particularly busy and the seafront looks pretty tired, along the front are a number of restaurants, all very average, we chose one that translates to “the green dog”, I had a super oily Pizza and Lolly had a much less oily pizza. It wasn’t very busy and the curry house next door wasn’t either, then the loveliest thing happened. At about 17.30 the restaurants (apart from the curry house) started to fill up, mainly with locals, the promenades were busy with kids and families strolling along. When we finished our meal we walked out the beach and passed a kids play area which was full of kids and a few parents here and there, it was amazing. The whole front was alive with laughter and chatter, it was like the whole town headed to the beachfront, it was a lovely thing to see and be amongst.

We took Stella for one last stroll on the beach to dip her toes in the sea…

There aren’t any great places to stop for the night, we spied a few motorhomes in a car park so gravitated to them, turns out it was the local supermarket car park, not scenic in the slightest!

We had an early start in the morning, we had to drop the van off at 8am so we’d agreed on packing after we put Stella to bed. I was dreading it but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Earlier in the night over we pizza we’d questioned what all the local kids do in a town like this, about 22.00 we found out, they all come to this car park in their cars, rev their engines and play really loud music. There were abut 20 or so cars that turned up and it really wasn’t our place to stick our heads out and ask if they wouldn’t mind keeping the noise down so we elected to move, we drove very slowly round to behind the car park onto a dirt track and stayed there for the night, we also continued the discussion as to whether we were going to clean the van or forfeit 100 euros of our deposit.

After a reasonably good nights sleep we woke up and Lolly had decided that yes, we were going to clean the van and so began a frenzied van cleaning, get everything else packed, sort Stella and get on the road effort, we still had to empty the tanks and clean the outside of the vehicle. En route was the DISA you can empty chemical waste at which also has car wash, we raced there as we were already late, I emptied the toilet (got splashed in the face, not pleasant) and washed the outside of the van, I also emptied the grey water while washing the van which I thought was a stroke of genius.

Lolly did an amazing job of cleaning the van with little help from me, we handed it back to the owners who gave us the full 300 euro deposit back in cash, sweet, well worth it.

Check in was nothing to write about as was the flight home, it all went very smoothly and Lolly did and excellent job of looking after Stella while I did the bare minimum as usual, when we landed it was chucking it down, welcome home…

So was it worth it?

It was a great way to see the island but not ver relaxing, the island isn’t geared up for motorhoming but hopefully will be in years to come. I’m not in a rush to go back but if I did I’d probably book an all inclusive so we could sit by the pool and get some sun without getting blown away, we could also have a shower without worrying how much water we’d used and use the toilet with impunity 🙂