Category: road trip

Le End

On By MashleyIn france, Graffiti, road trip, summer, T4 Camper, travel, VW CampervanLeave a comment

As we left Chambord a lot later than intended we drove through the night, French motorways aren’t like ours, no cats eyes, no lights.

This would be fine if you had a decent set of headlights, we don’t, DRL’s look nice but even with night breaker bulbs installed they’re still not that great, that being said they were good enough to get us to our destination, Plage merlimont.

The aire is well sign posted though you are sent through a new housing estate and we did wonder if our sat nav had crapped out  as an aire couldn’t possibly be in among all this new housing, it wasn’t, you go through the estate to get to the beach and just before the beach is the aire, it’s nothing special, just a car park for motorhomes with free fresh water and somewhere to empty your waste water if you have any, I cracked a beer, Lauren made some food, we both put the thermal curtains up, ate our food and crashed.

It was a bit colder this closer to England and we’re both fairly certain that’s why we slept so well, best nights sleep on the last day of the holiday because it was cold, how very English..

Sun greeted us the next day despite the forecast being rain, I took a picture of the aire for no particular reason other than to demonstrate how unfantastic it was.

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As always, first thing in the morning I needed to use the loo so I took a wander toward the beach where I assumed the toilet mentioned in the aire would be located, as I got closer I noticed there were a lot of people looking out to sea, I couldn’t really see anything so figured i’d use the loo and then go see what everybody was looking at, turns out there was a colony of seals on the beach basking in the morning sun.

I’ve never seen so many seals, they didn’t look like they were going anywhere in a hurry so I walked back to the van, made some tea for myself and Lolly, grabbed my camera and we both went back to look at the seals, Lolly has a theory that seals hang out on the beach so THEY can watch the humans that come to look at them, I see no reason for this not to be possible!

I don’t really do much zoom photography and as such I don’t have a very good zoom lens, the photo below is the best I could do with my 28mm-135mm.

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Lolly had our binoculars we got free from the national trust, we sat for about an hour just watching them lay about in the sun, we spotted a few more swimming in and then quite quickly the tide followed them, we had a great spot to watch them from but had to vacate fairly swiftly to avoid the incoming tide, it was starting to cloud over and just before we headed to the shore I took a nice shot of the seals from a distance.

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Before the weather turned we took a walk along the rest of the beach, after about an hour we returned to the van, packed up and went to Aldi, Lolly’s mum has a party in the not too distant future so we bought a load of cheap booze, 24 beers for 5 euros, we bought 7 crates and 8 bottles of fizzy wine for a toast! We also bought lunch, bread, cheese and ham, very continental, there was another beach not too far so we parked up and went for a final beach side picnic.

The sun came out again which was lovely, we ate our lunch and basked in the warmth knowing our return to Blighty was only a couple of hours away, turns out it wasn’t. We thought our crossing was at about 18.00 but we’d figured when we’d booked the crossing that we’d want as much time in France on our last day as possible so our crossing wasn’t till 20.50, I was a little upset to be honest as I’d kind of got my head in a space where we were off and I didn’t want to hang about for another couple of hours, that was until we went back to the beach and saw these!

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What you can see here are the remains of a german StP bunker that featured a tank turret, ammunition bunker and open emplacements for 5cm KWK pak guns though I couldn’t tell you which bit relates to what, I got all that information from here.

We spent a good bit of time walking among the remains of the bunker and photographing the various structures and their artwork.

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If you look closely on the second picture you will see a sign that states in French the beach beyond is a naturist beach, more naked people but nothing quite on the scale of the naked site. The beach is massive, we walked for at least half an hour before turning back and we hadn’t even got halfway along it, on our return trip we came across a jelly fish.

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I threw it back into the sea but I think it had perished, I know jelly fish don’t really do much but this one did nothing when returned to the sea.

When we got back to where the bunker was I set the camera up and got our last picture of the holiday.

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From there we went back to the van and drove to Calais which was about an hour away, we were delayed (not immigrant related) so i grabbed a burger king and Lolly bought gin with the last of our euros, the remainder of the trip involved a train, the M20, the M25, remembering to drive on the left and then bed, work the following morning, joy.

Le Chateau

On By MashleyIn france, road trip, summer, T4 Camper, travel, VW CampervanLeave a comment

Ever seen those funny bottles of spirits that look like the holy hand grenade of Antioch? Chambord it’s called, never tried it myself but the reason I mention is because we are off to Chateau Chambord, the inspiration for said raspberry liqueur.

It’s a 4.5 hour journey from camp naked, we set off about 11 aiming to be at the Aire we had selected for an evenings stay by around 4pm. 

Nothing much happened on the journey asides from the traffic being rubbish so we stopped for a romantic picnic by the Carrefour sign next to the motorway, as soon as we stopped the traffic cleared. 

  
When we arrived at the Aire it wasn’t quite as described, next to a main road with no toilet facilities, this would not do so we had a look round and handily 500 meters up the road was a great little campsite called camping de chatillon, 19 euros with electric for the night, sweet. Something I’ve encountered a couple of times here is reverse polarity on hook ups, same deal here tho luckily the campsite owner had an adaptor we could borrow for the night, if you are planning a trip to France I would recommend having one on board. 

Our pitch was a small modest affair. 

    
We went for a wander around the local vinyard and corn fields, returned to the van and lolly made some kick ass pasta. I had a rubbish nights sleep, one because of the massive storm that kept me up and two, I was racking my brains to figure out a solution to my ongoing battle with the fridge. 

We woke up, grabbed a shower and made our way to the local boulangerie for breakfast, we then parked up the van and cycled to Chambord, an easy 30 minute ride on dedicated cycle tracks, they love cycling over here! 

  
The chateau is a truly beautiful building and one that strangely looks better from the back than the front. 

  
We grabbed an audio guide and spent the next couple of hours wandering about the place learning who built which bit, who’s bedroom was here and what the king got up to when he didn’t fancy shagging the queen, so the rumour goes. 

There is an I credible staircase which is the canter piece of the chateau, it’s a staircase within a stair case which means one person can go up while the other goes down and you will never meet, this is the view from the bottom. 

  
Chambord iswell worth a visit as is the souvenir shop, they have tasters for every box of biscuits they sell, we tried them all. 

We jumped on our bikes and headed back to the van a lot later than we’d anticipated, we hit the road for our last stop on our trip, Plage merlimont. 

I finally figured out what to do with the fridge, this bits for camper owners. All the forums will say wire your weaco fridge directly to your leisure battery. I have a PMS 3 in my van and the problem with this is when you are hooked up the pms3 is trying to send the leisure battery a charge whilst at the same time the fridge is draining it more than the PMS supplied charge, the result is when you leave the battery got little to no charge and your fridge fails shortly after. What I have done is wire the fridge to an aux 12v output that’s built into the PMS3, I get no voltage drop so the fridge works. When it’s hooked up to 240v the fridge receives its 12v supply from the PMS unit, not the battery, this then allows the battery to receive a top up charge, simples! 

Le naked

On By MashleyIn france, road trip, T4 Camper, travel, VW Campervan, vwt41 Comment

I’m not entirely sure how I missed the bit about our next stop being a naturist site, lolly assures me that I read the description and that I said it was cool. 

I was first alerted to the nakedness when we came to check in, all of the staff were in clothes, then some naked people walked in, genuinely I had no idea we were heading to a naturist site. 

I don’t have a problem with naturism, if people want to walk about in the buff then that’s up to them, me being naked however, that I have issue with. 

I’ve never really been comfortable with being naked, for one, I have psoriasis and this season it’s come up on my head and my arse, I don’t like looking at it and I don’t think anyone else would either. Secondly I’ve never felt particularly good about my physique, I’m not massively fat but I’m not lean either, I’m not muscular but not unmuscular either if that makes sense, average is about the best way I could describe myself. 

I turn the light off when I go to bed before I take my clothes off so I don’t catch a glance of my naked self in the mirror, issues. 

Lolly assures me that nobody is particularly looking and deep down I know she’s right, the demons in my head have other idea’s however and are set to ruin what could have been a couple of fun days trying a new experience. 

After getting over the initial shock about the whole naturist thing we made our way to the pitch we’d been assigned, it was in the blazing sun with no shelter and next door to the newly arrived circus, this would be the first and possibly last time I saw a camel wandering through the open air toilets. There were also some beautiful but quite sad looking tigers. 

  
We agreed this would not do, especially as the pitch we were given was being vacated by a Welsh couple for exactly the same reasons. A short trip to reception, an explanation of our situation and requirements resulted in us being given a list of available spots and to just help ourselves. 

The list and accompanying map were a pain to use and for Lolly it got too much, it wouldn’t be long before one of us blew a fuse, lolly went to the beach, I sorted our pitch. 

Sorting our pitch involved stopping at the spar for a couple of beers, skulling one and then opening the other for the drive round the site trying to find a suitable spot from the available ones.

After a couple of no goes I came across a suitable spot and drove the van toward it, that’s when I beached the van in sand, no going anywhere. 

Within seconds I was surrounded by naked men, an English chap called Gerry introduced himself and apologised for not coming out sooner to warn me of the sand trap, apparently I wasn’t the first to get stuck. Meanwhile, a couple of the naked men left and returned with shovels and what followed was possibly one of the more bizzare things I’ve seen in my life, naked men digging out a campervan, a true once in a lifetime experience. 

Eventually we got the van out with some digging and an old towel of all things, I got the van where it needed to be and setup camp mashley. 

 
Despite finding the whole naked digging rescue thing a bit surreal I was genuinely moved at everyone’s willingness to help a stupid Englishman stuck in the sand. I headed off to the beach to find lolly, it didn’t take long to find her and the journey to the beach involved naked overload, naked people everywhere, walking, cycling, flying down water slides and the beach, naked surfing, never seen that before! We hung by the beach and caught some waves on our bodyboards, the surf there is excellent, I put on a wetsuit, still not up for being naked just yet. 

When we got back to the van our only shower option was pretty open, no doors, just a shower while people pass by on their way to their next naked activity, I bit the bullet and got on with it, wasn’t so bad. Lolly I might add has no issue with being naked and from the moment she got to the beach ditched her clothes and didn’t wear much for the remainder of our trip. 

  
The following day the weather was a bit rubbish, I hung by the van updating the blog and devising a Frankenstein charging system so our fridge would work. I also threw a shit fit about being naked on some slides but that’s a whole other story. Lauren went for a wander and we visited Aldi to pick up some supplies for a BBQ at the beach. 

The beach at Montalivet is awesome and perfect for a BBQ.  Seeing as nobody was really around and I’d pissed off lolly with my shit fit at the water slides I figured the best thing I could do was get naked on the beach with my wife and go for a naked swim, here we are below after the swim, butt naked!

  
We cooked a shed load of food, lamb, chicken and unfortunately some rubbish burgers, steak hache for any of you heading to France, make sure you season them! 

The beach is a great spot for a sunset and this nights sunset was nothing short of epic, a stunning sunset with a massive looming storm, sometimes I forget with the right composition how good a photo an iPhone can take. 

  
We took a stroll back to the van, crashed, got up and prepped for the journey to Chambord. 

Gerry and his wife Catherine came to wish us a safe journey, they were such nice people, we bumped into them loads around the site and they always said hello, Gerry was infectiously happy at all times. 

The whole naked thing seems to remove so many barriers we humans put up, everyone I encountered on the site was butt naked, friendly and happy, I suspect at one with the whole underneath we are all the same idea. 

The site is an amazing place, it’s like a small village, in fact I know smaller villages. The facilities are excellent, the surroundings beautiful and a happy community atmosphere. 

I still feel a bit weird naked but genuinely, I hope I get over it because I’d go back to CHM in Montalivet and I’d probably get naked. 

Le nice spot

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

About an hour and a half after leaving Brive we arrived in Sanquinet, our home for the next couple of nights was an aire by the lake, there were a number of free bays / pitches but we decided on one that we probably weren’t allowed to park on.

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We parked up here because the view was really nice.

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As Lolly had rightly predicted, we weren’t allowed to park where we were, the lady who comes round to collect your 9 euros for the night made it quite clear in French it was not possible to stay there and we would have to move, annoyingly i’d put up all the blinds to keep the sun out and pretty much covered the front seats with all our stuff, I chucked it all in the back of the van and reluctantly headed back to where we should have parked.

What you can see in front of us is actually a lake, not the sea although it’s a sandy beach beside it, we spent the remainder of the day hanging in the sun, I read Lolly the final chapter of the Martian and we ventured out to find food. A few wrong turns later and we found the intermarche, beer, salad and few other bits and bobs were purchased, on the way back we grabbed a roast chicken from a rotissere store and munched our way through the sunset.

There was no shower facilities at this aire so I made one, many people got to see my bum..

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The problem with being next to a lake is mossies, they are everywhere, thankfully Lolly had packed mossie defences such as spray, smoke coils and a battery operated mossie defence thing, they all worked admirably, no bites.

Next day we ventured out on a canoe around the lake, we were gone for a couple of hours, saw some cows on an island and more tethered plastic birds than i’ve ever seen in any one place at any one time, we think it’s a bird watchers ploy to attract real birds as there were also what looked like bird watching hides..

Canoeing is knackering so after a couple of hours we retreated to the beach. We had a little walk about and found a suitable spot to eat our lunch and watch the world (paddle boards and catamarans) go by, we decided to come back for sunset.

More chicken and salad was on the agenda, i’d since moved the van to a better spot and on returning to it found an older but similarly coloured version of a camper van parked close by.

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We watched the sunset from the spot we found at lunch, it was peaceful and quite spectacular.

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I haven’t taken a selfie of us for a while so here’s one!

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Not long after this we returned to the van and crashed, early start in the morning, we’re on the way home, via montalivet, less than a week and i’ll be back at work, boo….

If you have a T4 camper and like us, a sink with a waste water pipe that goes straight out the bottom of the van and dumps your water wherever you are parked you might want to try this simple and affordable waste water catcher solution.

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Works like a charm, get a knife and cut a cross near the top of the neck of the bottle, that way you can pretty much fill it up without spilling any, seen a lot of europeans with T4’s doing this…

Le Black Madonna

On By MashleyIn france, road trip, T4 Camper, travel, VW CampervanLeave a comment

Rockamadour sits atop a gorge on the Dordogne and looks like it’s been carved out of the hillside, from afar it’s a really quite beautiful looking village.

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The sanctuary above is known as the sanctuary of the blessed mary (also the pilgrimage church of Notre Dame) and within it resides the wooden black madonna said to have been carved by Saint Amator (Amadour) himself. Some will tell you Rocamadour is named after Saint Amadour, others say it’s named after a goats milk cheese, I prefer the saint version.

Despite the lower part of the village being a massive tourist trap the sanctuary at the top is still very much a religious place, so much so that at the entrance to the sanctuary they have various bits of cloth you can use to cover yourself up with if you want to go and view the sanctuary, if you are wearing very short shorts, a vest or crop top then it’s required to cover up, religious folk still make a pilgrimage to the sanctuary.

As you an see from the village below, the sanctuary is quite a way up.

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Allegedly, if you say a prayer on each of the steps on the way up to the sanctuary you will see or behold a miracle, looking at some of the people climbing the stairs it was a miracle in itself they made it to the top without heart failure.

The sanctuary from an architecture point of view is really quite stunning, as i’ve mentioned before, i’m not religious in the  slightest but I do appreciate the architecture.

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I didn’t find the the wooden black madonna, to be honest, I didn’t really look, I did think the light coming through above the altar was quite special so I took a picture.

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The remainder of our time at Rocamadour involved walking up over the ramparts and admiring the view across the gorge, we also went on a funicular lift which Ian really enjoyed, he’s a lift engineer by trade and to him I guess this was a kind of lift porn, you can see Ian admiring the lift on the right below…

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We left Rocamadour and headed off in search of food, we stopped at an auberge that Ian and Lindi are good friends with the owners of, Auberge de forges, well worth a visit, great food, great location and fantastic company!

The following day we got up and headed off for a day of canoeing with Captain John, another of Lindi and Ian’s friends who’s made a life for themselves in France.

Captain John has spent a lot of time at sea, a proper old salty sea dog, i’d never met anyone who had a pet octopus that lived in a bucket on the side of boat or rescued a crow that became a best friend but, since meeting John thats all changed!

Here we all are on the Dordogne executing a safety manoeuvre whilst drinking beer, thats how good we got a canoeing, see if you can spot captain John!

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We covered a fair distance, it took us about 6 hours to get from start to finish with a minor stop for lunch en route. Lolly’s parents have often said they’d like to do the canoe trip but never got round to it, i’m really glad we all got to do it together, a really great day out..

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Once we got back to base camp we visited Captain John and Vals place, they essentially bought a barn and a hill 12 years ago, shortly after they paid their money the barn fell down and they have been working on building a house ever since, they currently live in a caravan on the lower part of their hill, the upside of the barn collapsing is John has all the stone, timber and roofing slate he’ll ever need to build their home, they are a lovely couple are John and Val, the kind of people you feel you’ve known forever but only just met, I hope we see them again sometime, Val makes awesome soup too!

We returned to chateau coups and settled in for the night, some booze and food coupled with a night shot of the van.

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Our final day with the Coups involved some proper sunbathing on Lollys part while I fannied about with the van getting things packed ready for our departure, below is a picture of Chateau Coups, it’s a lovely place in a lovely spot and Ian and Lindi have worked really hard to make it what it is.

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It’s normally quite quiet round these parts but all sorts went on when we were there, power cuts, thunder storms, a sighting of the milky way and a herd of cows being moved down the lane, Ian says it’s the busiest he’s seen!

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Before we left we decide on a little bike ride down to Hautfauge, along the way we came across a lovely church and a small war memorial, we also stopped at a little restaurant in the village that all the local workmen visit for the plat du jour, Lolly got harassed by a wasp and was running about the place much to the workmens amusement…

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Ian and Lindi wanted to show us Tour De Merle, a quite awesome ruin about 10km from their place.

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Annoyingly it was shut when we got there, when it’s open you can take a walk round, next time!

We had intended to be on the road by 17.00, it was now about 18.00 so we decided to go and get some food in Argentat, there is a nice little spot on the Dordogne that has a number of cafes, bistros and restaurants on the quay side.

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This was our view whilst munching a lovely meal on the quayside. We thanked Ian and Lindi for letting us take over their house for the last few days and headed off to Sanguinet, it was dark and the roads were badly lit so we swerved off to an aire in Brive for the night.

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At sunrise we grabbed a brew and made our way to the sea..

We’re now in the last week of our travels, we’ve covered 1418 miles in about 14 days and i’m currently trying to figure out how to give our fridge a 12 volt feed direct from the PMS unit as opposed to from the leisure battery it’s currently hard wired to, the problem i’m facing is the fridge draws more voltage than the PMS supplies as a charge to the battery when hooked up, the result is after a couple of days the fridge packs up as it’s drained the leisure battery and the ice melts and the charge the PMS gives can’t keep up with the fridges requirement, if I can find a way to send 12volts to the fridge via the PMS when hooked up to 240volts that would mean the battery would receive a top up charge from the PMS without being drained by the fridge,  i’ll work it our when I get home, for now I have the 7 stage charger I brought with me pumping the battery with more voltage than the PMS, it’s enough to charge the battery and sustain the fridge, not ideal but it works for now which means Lolly will have G&T’s!

Le Coups

On By MashleyIn france, road trip, summer, T4 Camper, travelLeave a comment

Lollys parents have a second home near Argentat and this would be our home for the next four nights. Ian and Lindi bought essentially a shell of a property and have worked really hard to turn it into somewhere they can come and stay, enjoy rural French life and be part of a small French community, it was lovely to see different residents of the commune including the mayor in his tractor stop by and say hello despite speaking very limited English and doing their very best to understands Lindi and Ian’s French which is way better than most, certainly better than mine! 

The day we arrived it belted down with rain all day so we did all out washing and I gave the van a bit of a clear up and charged up the leisure battery, we pretty much stayed at home all day bar a brief trip to the shops (chicken and veg for an awesome roast) and a small walk with the dog, the house sits adjacent to a beautiful wood covered in fern, when the light filters through the view is quite magical. 

  
The weather the following day looked equally as damp so we decided to go see some caves, en route there was a bit of a commotion ahead and then there were sheep, lots of sheep!! 

  
When we reached the caves it seemed most of France had the same idea, a 2 hour queue from where we were standing in the rain, sod that, we chipped off and headed for the historic town of Rocamadour. 

Le wikkid beach

On By MashleyIn france, road trip, T4 Camper, travel, VW Campervan1 Comment

The beach at Biscarosse turned out to be pretty awesome.

  
The weather was just as awesome, the sun shone all day so much so we had to deploy our well travelled brolly from Ibiza gifted to us from our friends Darran and Cinzia 

  
The surf here is really good too so we grabbed our boards and I felt compelled to put my wetsuit on for a couple of reasons, one, to prevent board rash, two, so my back didn’t get sunburnt and three, other people were wearing them. 

I remember when I first bought this wetsuit and when I  put it on I looked like a right tit, you’ll be pleased to know this is still the case. 

  
It was great to catch some waves and lie about in the sun, after soaking up plenty of rays we headed back to the van to grab the Cobb for a sunset BBQ, I took a picture from the van to show you the view we have when chilling by the van. 

  
This aire is pretty popular, this is our bit, loads of motor homes! Despite how busy it looks it’s really quite peaceful. 

  
One thing I have noticed is there are T4’s everywhere, each campsite or Aire we visit there is always at least one T4, Eurovans they call them, there are a few kicking about here. 

  
We headed off over the dunes to set the Cobb up and have a sunset bbqs, it was about a ten minute walk from the van, the dunes were substantial, you can just about see Lolly in this picture. 

  
Ever since we have owned the Cobb, when explaining to people how versatile it is we always mention you can cook pizzas on it despite never having actually cooked one, we can now confidently say the the Cobb cooks a wikkid pizza! 

  
The sunset here was quite spectacular, totally worth lugging the BBQ up the dune and then walking back through the forest of darkness and doom. 

  
Once we got back to the van I read Lolly a few chapters from the Martian and then we crashed, the following morning we got up looking forward to spending a day exploring and hanging out in our favourite place so far, then Lolly’s mum called to ask us what time we’d be arriving in St Emillion as they were on their way, bugger, slight clerical error, off to St Emillion we go then! 

Le dune

On By MashleyIn france, road trip, travel, VW Campervan, vwt4Leave a comment

Camping municipal Verdalle has turned out to be ok, the pitch is massive, the toilet and shower facilities are excellent, they have some strange rules like no hanging out washing after 10am and don’t use the trees to make washing lines which we’ve duly ignored. 

  
The beach was another IMO average affair, sandy and the sea was out so quite muddy too, when we returned in the evening the tide had come in and the beach looked a lot better, would have been a great place for a sunset but we missed that as I was busy cooking chicken, I didn’t bother taking a picture of the beach. 

Earlier in the day we’d taken a walk and round the corner from our campsite and average beach was a lovely little harbour. 

 

As you can see the weather has greatly improved, our first afternoon / evening in Gujan-Mestras passed fairly uneventfully, sun, average beach, walk, chicken and bed. 

The following morning we got up, ate what we had left that would pass for breakfast and jumped on the bikes, our destination being The Grand Dune of Pyla, basically a massive sand dune by the sea that’s slowly swallowing a forest. 

We got a bit lost en route although we did find a nice forest to ride through. 

  

11 miles later we arrived at the dune and it was mental, people everywhere, not quite what we had expected and to be honest, almost enough to turn us on our heels, I convinced Lolly some food and a drink would be a good idea, she was more up for grabbing a panini and buggering off but I insisted we grab a table, this is where I had my first favourite French dish, a croque Monsieur!

  

It was lovely and lolly is now convinced she can make them for me at home, bonus!

After a quick food and drink break we set off to conquer the dune, this is not something to try if you are unfit, obese, have a heart condition or are generally unwell. It’s a steep ascent in sand which is harder work than it looks, much harder, there are steps you can go up but they are equally as steep but with better footing.  It took us about 10 minutes to get to the top of the dune and that was with a couple of stops, the view out across the bay is stunning. 

  

I took some better pictures with my other camera and when I’ve edited them I’ll post them up. 

It’s nowhere near as frantic at the top of dune, almost peaceful so we hung about for an hour catching some rays and then headed down the other side to the beach and the sea, we stayed there for a few hours and I read Lolly some of the book I am reading, it’s called the Martian, a great read and now Lolly is into it I’m going to have to read her the rest of the book while we are away!

To get back to the bikes we had to climb up the dune again which took about 20 min this time as our start point was lower than before, after a lot of effort we reached the summit, chipped down the other side and made our way to the bikes, we still had an 11 mile ride home to do!

We took a different route home basically following the coast on a cycle path, about halfway we stopped at a little town square that had a few bars and restaurants, we got a corner table right by the beach.

 
I had steak and lolly had paella, both dishes were lovely and we were treated to a beautiful sunset. 

 
We made our way home mostly on the cycle path, the light faded and Lolly had no lights on her bike, mine are rechargeable and about halfway home the front one ran out of juice, the ride home was tense but we made it without getting killed!

Below is the report from Strava, I kept stopping Strava so I could see where we were on the way home so it’s not quite as accurate as it could be, I’m fairly certain we did more than 17 miles. 

  
This morning we got up, left the campsite and headed to an aire in a pine forest called Biscarrose Plage, there is a crappy toilet and that’s it, no other facilities, proper camping in the woods!

  
There is a beach about 2 mins from here we’re off to check out shortly, have fun at your desk or wherever you’re reading this from, we’ll be on the beach!

For anyone interested, so far we’ve covered 752 miles in 7 days, the van is running sweet and all the little upgrades and mods we’ve made for this trip have been totally worth it!

Le Ocean

On By MashleyIn france, road trip, T4 Camper, travel, VW CampervanLeave a comment

We got up early Monday morning, packed up and left Ile de Re, our destination, Soulac sur mer. We should have already been there but we stayed an extra day at Il De Re, the drive down was fairly straight forward, we headed to Royan and caught the ferry across. I took a quick pic of the van in the queue, Lolly looks excited!!

  
The ferry crossing takes about 20 minutes and there isn’t much to do so I took a picture of the van on the ferry, seriously, there is that little to do! 

  
Back on the main land the drive to Camping L’Ocean is about 20 minutes, Lolly found it in the cool camping website, it’s a lovely place, right by the beach and pitches set up amongst the trees, I really liked it there, we promptly set up camp and then headed to the beach. 

  
I guess I’ve been spoilt on the beach front after spending so many years going to Ibiza, the beach at Soulac isn’t much to look at, sand, sea defence and sea. 

  
There are no bars or music playing, just a beach with surf, the surf is quite tame and I taught Lolly to body board, her face when she caught her first wave was brilliant!

We both fell asleep on the beach, luckily no major burnage as we are pretty good on the sun creme front, P20 is your friend, look it up!

Food was on the agenda so we chipped back to the van and got the BBQ on. 

 Dinner was another random meat BBQ pack I chose, it was alright but I’ve now been told I can longer choose the meat to cook, we had some drinks, read our books and crashed.

Morning came and the sun was out, we had a quick wash, packed up and headed for Arcachon. On the way we stopped off at the super market, I saw two awesome things, this bus:

 
And for Darran and Fresh Face, crack in a jar!

 We’ve arrived at Arcachon, the sun is blistering hot and the  campsite whilst being the most expensive is my least favourite, maybe it’s just our pitch.  I’ll let you know how we get on here in my next post. 

Le nice lunch

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

Sunday morning was the last day of the French summer holidays and the roads are apparently mental. Mental isn’t on this trips agenda and having not made any reservations for the next couple of days we decided to stay put, let the French queue and be on our way the following day. 

We also had new neighbours in a modest motor home. 

  
The mornings start was a fairly lazy affair, so lazy in fact it started a mile up the road with lunch in Ars on Re square. 

There are a few restaurants in the square and they all look very nice, we picked the one that had a table for two, it also had moules avec frites on the menu. Lolly had Foie Gras to start and the amount that arrived was more than she could handle, I had duck slices with some kind of terrine and foie gras too. 

For our mains Lolly had the aforementioned moules avec frites and I had a lovely pasta with tatragon, whole prawns and scallops, much happier Lolly! 

 

Lolly ordered the whole meal in French which she says is a holiday achievement!

Lunch cost us all the euros we had on us so we cycled back to camp and decided to let our food go down before venturing out again. 
Our next port of call was St Martin De Re, we got there by following one of the many cycle routes across the island, they love cycling here so much so that in th towns each house has a steel ring concreted into the wall for you to chain your bike too. 

The ride takes you past all sorts of places including the salt plains and oyster beds, both stink but it’s still a nice enough ride.

  
St Martin De Re is a fortified harbour town and when we arrived it was heaving, a bit like Padstow is during the summer. We had a wander around the harbour and concluded it wasn’t quite as romantic and picturesque as we’d imagined.

I did spot a boat in the harbour that reminded me of my dad’s old boat the Affinte II. 

  
 The ice cream shop looked really popular so we decided to find out what all the fuss was about. 

  
They were good ice creams, I had chocolate and specaloo flavour and Lolly had chocolate and brownie. We had a look round the lanes which were typically French, old houses with wooden shutters and cobbled streets, it was starting to get cold so we unlocked the bikes and made for home. 

We covered a fair few miles.