28th July - Southern Spain

Monday 28th July 2008

For the past few weeks we have been living off pretty much the same routine, which consists of nothing more than waking up, going to the beach, sun bathing and going to sleep. We don’t normally get to the beach until around midday, the most likely reason being is because that’s not until when we’re awake enough to realise what’s happening outside of the motor home, then we do realise that it’s another beautiful day so had better make the most of it. It’s a system which is working well for us, but unfortunately not many interesting stories or anecdotes arise from such an existence!

We slowly made our way from Praia da Luz along the Algarve Coast, making leisurely stopovers at Albufeira, Tavira and Monte Gordo before crossing the border into Spain.

We were somewhat, not ‘disappointed’, but ‘surprised’ by the Algarve in general. We had this image of an idyllic, luxurious haven but we were much more impressed with Portugal’s West coast than it’s South. The Algarve’s beaches seemed small, (in comparison to the beaches of Nazare and Milades visited previously) over crowded and in some cases actually a little dirty. We visited ‘Praia do Castelo’ to the West of Albufeira and stayed for a few days as again we found a perfect parking spot a few minutes walk from the beach where we stayed for free without any hassle at all. The beach itself was as you’d expect beautiful on the eye with golden sand and apparent clear blue water, but as we got up close to the sea we discovered that it wasn’t that clear at all. We were obviously being very picky though… I mean, in comparison to the English Channel the water in Portugal was practically taken straight from a bottle of Evian, but by this point we had very high expectations after the superb waters we swam in on the West Coast.

We experienced more unpleasant water in Monte Gordo where the water was overwhelmed by green slime which had washed up on the beach and remains of which we still found on our swimming trunks a few hours afterwards. This wasn’t much of a problem though in all reality - the weather was always fantastic and we haven’t been moved on once for parking somewhere we shouldn’t - in fact at Monte Gordo we were parked up alongside 7 other Motor Homes, it was almost like being in a French Aire. I think the ease of parking will actually be the stand out memory of Portugal for us, at not one point have we felt threatened or unsafe and it’s all been free, what more can we ask?

We headed into Spain via the toll free A49 motorway, which made a lovely change after spending the past month surviving only on A Roads - we made some real progress in a relatively short space of time… we’d almost forgotten how that felt! (We were also pleased by the 12 cents drop per litre in the price of petrol just by moving out of Portugal and into Spain might I add).

Another couple of free nights were had in Punta Umbria near the town of Huelva and yet more sunbathing took place, before taking a long drive from there through Seville and down the A376/5/4/7 to the wealthy town of Marbella on the Costa Del Sol. Marbella was just as beautiful as I had remembered it from a holiday I took here two years ago, only if anything it seemed more rich and prosperous than before. A Café I had visited on the promenade called ‘the Bombaros’ was now a sleek and stylish Restaurant, no longer serving a three course meal for 11 Euros. An English paper now cost 4 Euros rather than 2, and a bottle of Peach Schnapps had also doubled in price - a shame for a traveller like me but a sign of the times I guess.

Marbella isn't just a promenade and a mile of Golden Beach though, it also has a stunning old town with narrow side streets and cute cafes and traditional tapas bars. The atmosphere it creates in the evening when the restaurants are full and the buskers are playing is delightful, and this part hadn't changed at all from my last visit. I fell in love with Marbella when I was here last, and I now remembered why - I could live here if I won the lottery...I wouldn't move away from England for many places, but this is certainly one I'd be happy to drop everything and move away for - it's a beautiful town.

We spent Saturday night in nearby Puerto Banus - a playground for the rich and famous, quite literally. Whilst wandering the streets we often passed Lamborghini’s, Ferrari’s and Aston Martins, meeanwhile the port is lined with million pound super yachts. They really are out of this world… all of them were bigger than not only my house, but any house I’d ever seen in my life. They were all lit up as the evening strollers walked by, and you could see all the way inside to where the rich people were sitting, drinking champagne and counting their money (an endless task it would seem). It was a warm evening and although we were clearly two poor travellers in a rich mans back garden it was still an enjoyable night where we somehow managed to only spend 10 Euros each in a bar called ‘Flicks’ (mostly filled with Brits). Every other bar we enquired in were charging at least 10 Euros just for entry, so we felt we’d done pretty well.

Next stop Granada, which is a few kilometres inland. We can’t be having that - straight back to the beach afterwards methinks.

13th July - Portugal's West Coast

Sunday 13th July

Sitting here now we find ourselves in the beautiful Praia de Luz in the Algarve region of Portugal. It’s the 20th of July and I have no idea where the last week has gone. The last I knew we were in Madrid and now we find ourselves in the beautiful Algarve! We spent a few leisurely days and nights moving west across mid-Spain after leaving Madrid and crossed over the Portuguese border on the 13th.

The last week has been a complete blur, we have been basically just moving on each day from beach to beach on Portugal’s stunning West Coast and our time here has been fantastically cheap so far. Motorhomer’s won’t find any official stopover’s or Aires as you do so frequently in France, but we have had absolutely no problem parking for free at every beach we have visited, including Nazare, Santa Cruz, Portinho da Arrabida, Melides and Sagres. Each location has had a large, free and mostly empty car park directly on their respective beaches. How else could you wake up each morning with a view of different beach, and spend each evening watching the sun set over a different sea?

Lisbon was well worth a day trip, and even there we were able to park Eric for one day and night for just 1.20 Euros in the nearby town of Queluz, the next town on from Amadora which was actually a nightmare for parking. It was a manned car park next to the station, which 24 hour security - if we were in England we’d have needed to take out a small bank loan to stay there for more than a day. Lisbon itself isn‘t large, for a capital city. It has a metro but to be honest it doesn’t need one, and we were never likely to use it at 8 Euros for 10 stops, especially seeming as our train from Queluz only cost 1.30 Euros.

The city centre is full of drunks and beggars which spoilt our experience a little. The beggars were very persistent and very irritating after the first two or three - I know that sounds harsh, but they never leave you alone. They come up to people sitting in Café’s and Bars and families enjoying a meal, they follow you down a street - it was a bit sad really.

It wasn’t all bad though. The views overlooking the city and the ocean from the ‘Castle of Jorge’ (I think I‘m right with that name…you can tell I've researched this well can't you?!) are stunning, and although you have to pay 5 Euros to get into the castle you can just walk 2 minutes down the road next to the Church to experience the same panoramic sights for free - and there’s a bar, so it’s win win.

So far we have used Portugal as a resting zone. This last week has been our most relaxed by far after spending a lot of time on the road in the previous two weeks down from the Northern tip of France all the way down to Madrid, we feel we’ve earned a bit of a rest even though we probably haven‘t. The good news is we haven’t even begun our attack on the Algarve beaches yet, we’re only at the beginning, and of course after that we have the Spanish Costa’s and the south of France to err… ‘brave’.

Sun, sea, sand, cerveza…Ooh it’s going to be a tough next few weeks, I can sense it.

Parked in a campsite in Spain, just to prove to my Mum that we have actuallydone some washing!

Monsanto, Portugal, up a large hill.

Parked in Bathalla, Portugal - large gothic Cathedral in the distance.

Our view of the sunset over the Atlantic, from the Motor Home.

9th July - Madrid

Wednesday 9th July

After leaving Pamplona we headed South West towards the city of Burgos, 100 kilometres north of Madrid. We spent a day in a campsite in Monasterio de Rodilla, east of Burgos, after finding out the hard way that the campsite we were heading to in the centre of Burgos (20km away from the other campsite) no longer existed. ‘Picon Del Conde’ in Monasterio de Rodilla was very pleasant though (staff speaking little, but enough English) for 14 Euros a night with electric hook up.

The next day we drove the 100km down the A1 to Madrid, where we parked again next to a train station, this time; El Escorial was our base, an historic, pretty old town around 15km from the centre of the Spanish Capital. It’s Monastery (Pictured left) is worth a visit too, and according to our guide book it’s not only one of the “Best Sights in Europe” and describes it as an “Immense Renaissance complex of Palatial and monastic buildings and mausoleum of the Spanish Monarchs".

Parking was free at the station, which we obviously love, and we weren’t the only ones parked there over night (no other motor homes though, unfortunately). We caught the 9.15am train into ‘Madrid Atocha’ station which took just over an hour. Spanish trains are nowhere near as comfortable as the ones we encountered in France, and at every station stop you are greeted by a series of overly loud sirens - presumably to wake up the locals who had too much Sangria the night before. The fare was much cheaper than in France though…swings and roundabouts.
Madrid was fantastic, I much preferred it over Paris. It seemed like my kind of city. There’s an interesting mix of old style with contemporary architecture, more honest retail (in comparison to the many jewellery and shoe stores in Paris which you could only visit after a large lottery win) and there were some really fascinating buildings on offer. For example, the Palace of Communications is more than stunning, and was one of the first sights we were greeted with after disembarking at ‘Sol’ Metro Station.

We paid a visit to the Restaurant Sobrino de Botin in Calle Cuchilleros, just off the famous Plaza Mayor square. It dates back to 1725 and was one of the locations where Ernest Hemmingway wrote some of his short stories - one of which Mike was reading at the time. The waiters kindly let us in for a look and to take some photos - which was good because we weren’t on the kind of budget to spend 9 Euros on a glass of wine.

The whole day spent in Madrid was an enjoyable one. Looking back, I must have been extremely fond of the city because I haven’t let the fact that it took us 4 and a half hours to get back to El Escorial mar my view of the place (wrong train after wrong train after another wrong bloody train).

To make a difficult last few hours worse, when we got back to the motor home our grey water was leaking. Although I suppose that was more a problem for those who had to experience the stench of it after we had departed. Sorry!

The Palace of Communications.

Real Madrid's 'Santiago Bernabeu' Stadium, worth a visit even if you're not into football.

Saturday 5th July - Pamplona, San Fermin Festival

Saturday 5th July

Biarritz would prove to be our last destination in France (for the time being) as we crossed the border into Spain on Saturday morning along the N10 towards Irun and San Sebastian. We had no trouble making the crossing and it was surprising to see that even when we were as much as 100 metres into the land of Paella, that there were absolutely no cars with French marked number plates. Everything immediately looked very Spanish; the chubby builders, dodgy hairstyles, and of course the ‘100 metre sprint style’ language. It was a shame to be leaving France in a way - it had treated us well. It is clearly very set out for Motorhomer’s, what with their Aires and so forth, and the people just seemed very open to us at all times.

We had known even before out trip that the San Fermin festival began on the 6th of July in Pamplona and we were heading in that general direction ever since leaving Paris. I was looking forward to experiencing the festival atmosphere (which lasts for 10 days where apparently everyone just has a huge holiday and does nothing else but get drunk and dance in the streets - which sounded appealing to me), however I was not looking forward to the cruelty and the actual tradition of San Fermin.

I watched some Bull fighting on TV about 2 years ago and was sickened by what I saw, and I knew that this festival was all based on the running and then fighting of the bulls. I had to bite my tongue and get on with it. “It’s tradition!’ I kept being told…

Anyway, we arrived in Pamplona early morning and found another perfect spot right in the town centre, where we started a bit of a trend and around 7 other Motor homes ended up. We have had very little trouble finding places to park so far, even if they aren’t official Motor home stop over points. We took a walk into the old town (Casco Antiguo) and even though the festival didn’t start until the next day the atmosphere was already building. There were thousands of people walking around all wearing exactly the same thing (white trousers, white shirts and a red neckerchief), people were drinking large bottles of San Miguel in the streets and people were in high spirits. Dotted all over town are photos of the festivals of years gone by, photos of bulls chasing crazy blokes down a small alley way and some people being thrown up in the air - I had no sympathy for them what so ever.

Although I was walking around saddened by the thought of the cruelty, I was getting sucked in by the enthusiasm of the Pamplona people and I was starting to look forward to the next few days of dancing and drinking. After a few drinks, my anxiety had all but disappeared and we danced to a drumming band for hours in the rainy streets, with thunder and lighting going off above our heads, silenced by the music and shouting. It was a sight to behold, it really was, and at one stage I was thinking “I’m not sure if I’ve ever been happier than I was at this very moment”. It was a perfect night, strangers were dancing with each other, the locals embraced us as foreigners and often wished us a “Feliz San Fermin!” and even the homeless were jolly. Roll on Sunday - where it all properly kicked off!

Sunday 6th July

We had been told by a few locals to arrive in the centre of Pamplona no later than 10 o clock, if we wanted to be in the Plaza Consistorial at midday where the festival was officially opened. We arrived at 9.30am and it was already very busy and the people were already tipsy. One thing I had noticed that this was not just a festival for the very young and lively, people of all ages were enjoying the festivities which was nice to see. We took a walk around the Plaza Del Castillo and then the route of the running itself and I found myself being more and more drawn into the spirit of San Fermin. There was always this feeling of doubt in the back of my mind though.
We headed back to the Plaza Consistorial at 10.15 and by this time it was heaving. We had to squeeze through everyone to get roughly to the centre in front of the Town Hall which was beautifully decorated with Spanish Flags and other patterned banners. By 11am you could hardly move. There was shouting, bouncing, pushing - it was manic - and this was certainly not for the faint hearted. I’d noticed that by this time only young people had remained, I guessed it was going to get worse.

It did. By 11.30am it was complete chaos. I’m not sure how many, but there were certainly hundreds upon thousands of festival goers squeezed into one small square, and this left to mass pushing which resembled a riot. It was impossible to fall over however, because as soon as you’d start to lose your balance you would just be resting on someone else and them the same and so on and so on. You couldn’t even lift your arms up, it was that tight. By 12 o clock, the festival was started by the mayor of Pamplona and everyone lifted up their red scarves like you see in the pictures and there was lots of shouting and singing. It was also very political as the whole of the Basque region is fighting for independence, so at times it turned a little nasty, but it didn’t mare the general feeling of delight among the Spanish, Americans, British and huge amounts of Australians who attended.

We met two Spanish guys who had studied in Southampton a few years ago and so we got talking to them for a few hours, it was very civilised indeed. The rest of the day was a blur of more dancing, more drinking and more talking nonsense to locals and vice versa. We didn’t go back to the motor home for sleep until 5.30am. Ouch.

Monday 7th July

Two hours kip and we were up to go into Casco Antiguo for the actual running of the bulls. Mike was well into it all, he was going to run it himself. I certainly was not, for two reasons 1) Because I treasured my life too much to put it at risk for one small event and 2) Because I was still very much against the idea anyway.

Mike was too late to run, by 7.45am the route was shut off completely by the authorities ready for the 8am running. The atmosphere was just amazing, even I was excited. I’m such a hypocrite, but I couldn’t help but feel drawn into it all. Mike went running off elsewhere to try and jump onto the course and I stayed behind, and climbed half way up a building on one of the side streets to try and catch a glimpse of the events - like hundreds of others did too. All I saw was heads going past for about 5 minutes, and suddenly it was all over. Everyone around me was asking “Is that it?”… what an anti climax! A few heads bobbing up and down, and few rounds of applause and that was indeed it! I saw more action watching the replays in the television of a local bar. Even though I saw very little of the action itself, my adrenaline was pumping faster than ever just because of the buzz of the people, and I hadn’t even ran the damn thing!
On the TV though I saw a few bulls falling over, and not being able to get back up along the cobbled streets. I saw some people teasing them and such like. At this point my heart really sunk. I felt sick watching those poor animals going through absolute hell and needless frustration. They have absolutely no idea what they are doing there or why they are here. One minute ago they were happy somewhere quiet and just living their normal bull-like life, and then the next they are thrust in front of thousands of people screaming and shouting and flashing red scarves in their faces. At that point it really hit me of how sad all this was, and it was time to leave Pamplona.

I left with very mixed feelings. On one hand I’d had the best few days of my life partying and taking in the sights, but on the other hand I’d seen in person the thing I stand so firmly against.
The overall feeling of Pamplona though was one of brilliance… I loved the city and the people and will probably return one day.

4th July - Biarritz

Friday 4th July 2008

We spent the whole of Wednesday at the Aire in Mimizan. We had to pay another 11 Euros for the privilege but we needed a day of rest after yesterdays debacle. We were parked up next to the biggest Motor Home you could wish to see from Scotland. It was ludicrous, bigger than my house back home. The owners seemed pretty settled, maybe this was their home now. 11 Euros a night with free electric, showers, toilets, and a beach side location isn’t an expensive way to live I imagine.

We left Mimizan on Thursday morning heading to Biarritz. The D652 was fairly straightforward, but it still took us around 3 hours to find the Aire listed in the guide book. It was located on the D911 heading out of Biarritz towards Bidart, and it said on the sign upon entrance that we’d be charged 10 Euros per 24hours, but there were no ticket machines and nobody ever came to charge us, so we got away with two free nights, and so did around 40 other Motor homes. This Aire was extremely busy with families, and there were no spaces left at all at one point - I suppose we are just coming into the high season hence the high volume of other campers.
The weather on the Friday in Biarritz was beautiful and we spent the whole day in the town centre or on one of the many beaches. The first beach we went to, just opposite the Aire, was called ‘Plage Milady’ - it was only a small beach but it had the most vicious waves you could imagine. There were around 5 life guards sat on the beach just observing the swimmers as it was quite dangerous really. You could only get about 15 foot out into the water before literally being swept back to shore by huge powerful gushes of water. No matter how hard you swam or how desperately you tried to stay on your feet, the sheer power of the waves knocked you down. It was cracking fun!

The town centre is very clean and Biarritz is clearly a wealthy place, with a lot of posh restaurants and jewellery shops. We went to have a drink in one of the bars (it was my round). Mike had a small (25cl) local lager and I had a bottle of Coke. 8 Euros it cost me. 8 bloody Euros. Mikes beer cost 4.20, and she didn’t even fill up the glass! I was shocked and to be honest, quite angry. I paid it and enjoyed the drinks in the sun…but we kept the glasses; we felt like we’d paid for them anyway.

1st July - Nightmare Day, Mimizan

Tuesday 1st July 2008

Today has not been one of our best, but has certainly been one of our most memorable - for the wrong reasons.

The day started well, waking up in Mortagne-sur-Gironde in the sun overlooking the harbour with acres of fields of crops directly behind us. It was a beautiful setting, the “Rolls Royce of Aires” according to our British friend Tony. We went for a wander through the village up the hills where we found a viewing point overlooking the whole village, where we took a few photos (added at the bottom). We thought we were going to take it easy today and take a nice drive down to a place called Arcachon, west of Bordeaux where we saw there was an Aire - we expected a nice relaxing day.

Just before setting off though, we noticed we’d left a tap on in the bathroom, which now resembled more of a professional swimming pool rather than your standard washroom. The floor was completely soaked through, and we must have wasted about 15 litres of perfectly good water. Obviously we had to fill up again, which wasn’t that much of a pain but it was just a shame to waste so much. That was the first little annoyance of today.

The second, getting lost for about 45 minutes after taking a wrong turning. The third, finding that the Netto Supermarket which we had taken a de-tour for was closed at 2 o clock in the afternoon. I didn’t know the French had adopted the idea of the siesta?

The fourth problem which arose, was that we spent nearly 2 hours looking for this Aire in Arcachon. We couldn’t find it for the life of us, but at the same time we were also constantly getting lost at various crazy French roundabouts or road layouts, thus wasting more and more time. French signage is very odd. It seems fantastic at first and you can more often than not find a sign you want to see, but then they just disappear; no matter how much you look or how slowly and carefully you drive in an attempt to notice any glimpse of the words “Camping Car” or “Aire”. They just vanish after one or two brief showings and there’s nothing you can do about it!
By this time it was getting on for 17.00, we really were not doing well for time at all. It has just been one of those days so far - time was just flying by and we hadn’t even done anything yet.
We decided to abandon the idea of staying in Arcachon, which in a way was a shame because it did genuinely appear to be a very pretty tourist location with some long golden beaches, but we were sick of the sight of the same roads over and over again.

We drove south again down the D652 as our guide told us there were one of two other stop over’s just shy of Arcachon. We noticed some quite stunning sand dunes to our right as we were cruising along. They were enormous, we felt we just had to pull over and explore. BIG mistake. We pulled over, not realising that what we were driving onto was thick, soft sand. And lot’s of it. Obviously, we got stuck what with the sheer weight of the motor home. We tried slowly going forward, then slowly going back but were getting nowhere. We were just digging ourselves deeper and deeper into the sand. I was getting so frustrated and I was already starting to think we were in deep trouble. We tried digging ourselves out with a spade and starting it again, this time in 2nd gear and after letting some air out of the tyres, but we seemed to just be sinking and sinking with every move. To try and explain how bad it was, the back right hand wheel was almost completely out of view, underneath the sand, and the back of the actual motor home was just resting on the ground. It appeared there was no way out at all.

A friendly German family appeared to try and lend a hand. They gave us some rubber mats to put under the wheel so we could try and drive onto them. No joy. Then a huge French lorry pulled over, only spoke a few words of English but they got out some rope and it was clear they were going to try and pull us out. By this time of course traffic had slowed down to almost walking pace as people were getting great joy from watching two moronic Brits struggling in the heat. The lorry idea didn’t work either though. When they tried to pull us forward the rope just snapped; Eric didn’t move an inch. At this point I was losing all faith… if a huge lorry couldn’t pull us out then what could?

Next up to try and lend a hand were an English couple from Exeter, they tried putting some logs underneath the wheels whilst we were busy digging away sand from under the back of the vehicle, as that was also a major factor in stopping us from going anywhere, not just the invisible back wheel. Again this didn’t work.

We must have had about 5 or 6 more different groups/couples who pulled over to try and help. We can’t remember them all, there were so many but nothing was working at all. Thanks to everyone who stopped, not that they’ll be reading this but you never know. I tried calling the AA but none of their lines were working. Could this day get ANY worse?

Demoralised, tired and sandy, we thought about resting for a while, until a truck pulled up behind us and looked slightly interested. The man inside was French and spoke just a little English, but he seemed very confident that he could help us which gave us encouragement. He got out some very thick army style rope, attached it to the front of this vehicle, and tied it to the back of ours, I jumped in, put Eric into reverse and after the count of 3 we both moved backwards together in one last attempt at freedom. Hallelujah! We had movement! After more than an hour of panic and failure we were set free by this friendly giant of a Frenchman (he really was huge). We couldn’t speak his language but we gave him a hug, thanked him, took a few photos and parked up the road slightly to get our breath back.

By this point we were so tired we just wanted to park anywhere and relax for the rest of the day. We found a fresh water lake just past a place called Biscarosse so we cleaned off all the sand in there, and we are now in the Aire of Mimizan. It is 00.25 and we arrived just under an hour ago, so we couldn’t see much of the area as we arrived but the Aire itself is huge, every other space having it’s own electric hook up and there are even showers and toilets in the far corner. The Camperstop guide says there are around 70 spaces, and to be fair to the French authorities, this particular Aire was very, very well signposted right from the main road (D626). One night costs 11 Euros which we were more than happy to pay just to be in a safe location where (hopefully) not much can go wrong. Touch wood.

The day has escaped us, time for bed… I’ve always hated sand. I think I will for ever.

The Aire in Mimizan. 2minutes walk from the beach.

Friday 27th June: Paris, Fouras, Mortagne-Sur-Gironde

Friday 27th June 2008

By morning Esbly had turned into one giant car park. We were surrounded by Renault Twingo’s and Opel Astra’s, and the actual car park next door was full to the brim. This is obviously where people park for the day and catch the train into Paris for work. This was a good sign as this is what we were planning to do for the day - minus the work of course.
All went swimmingly, and we arrived at Gare du l’Est at 10.30 so we had most of the day to see the sights and do all the tourist malarkey.

Paris was okay. Well, to be fair it is beautiful and the buildings are fascinating and the quaint shops and bustling atmosphere was enjoyable, but in my opinion it was just London with a beret - and London can get on your nerves after a while. It was much cleaner than London though, which made a nice change. According to ’Neither here nor there’ by Bill Bryson, people in Paris pay £52 a year to go towards city centre cleaning, whereas Londonians only shell out just £16. From what I saw this would make sense.

We saw everything we wanted to, the Tower, The Louvre, Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame and so on and so on, and it was a pleasant but tiring day. The metro is fantastic, it’s worth pointing out. When a train is meant to arrive, it arrives, literally on the dot. This is in bleak contrast to the London underground of course, where a train is like gold dust.

Me and Mike both fell asleep on the train back to Esbly, to the amusement of the lady sitting opposite, but somehow we didn’t miss our stop.

Got back to the motor home, put a couple of spuds in the oven and crashed out to bed. It’s surprising how tired you get just from walking around slowly and sometimes aimlessly - we must have covered many miles that day.

Saturday 28th June 2008

We spent the whole of Saturday as basically a road trip. It was going to take a while, but we wanted to go from just outside Paris all the way to the West Coast (La Rochelle) without going on a single toll road. It took around 7 hours but we did do it. I’m not sure of the route right now, but we managed it, and we arrived in La Rochelle for around 7pm where we followed the signs for the Aire in the large car park called ‘Esplanades’ des Parcs’. We found it without too much difficulty, which was handy because La Rochelle was a large, busy city. On arrival we were greeted by the sight of around 30 other Motor homes which is always pleasing on the eye after a long drive. I’m not sure what it is about seeing other fellow Motorhomer’s, but it certainly gives a nice warm feeling inside.

We had completely ran out of fresh water, so we chose this Aire as the ‘Camperstop Guide’ said we could fill up for free here, but we did not see any place to do this. (We later learnt that we had just completely missed it, but we did look quite hard.) We couldn’t stay, as we desperately needed water; we had plates and dishes piling up to be cleaned and we were getting thirsty! That’ll teach us for using 1.5 litre bottles to try and fill up our 100 litre tank!
We drove south down the N137 from La Rochelle to a place called Fouras, just north of Rochefort. There were two Aires in Fouras, and we opted for the one signed posted called ‘Place Jean Moulin’ (and it was very clearly signposted since entering Fouras). There was space for about 10 Motor homes and I think we got the last space so were quite lucky. It cost 6 Euros for 24 hours, but had no electric hook up.

Bit of a nightmare though, we still couldn’t get water as we needed to buy tokens to put in the machine, by this time is was getting late on a Saturday and the Tourist Office was closed - and knowing it was a Sunday tomorrow it wasn’t looking too rosy. We drove to a nearby Campsite called La Cadoret, and cheekily filled up some of our bottles with fresh water as we were getting desperate.

The town of Fouras (beach pictured) is beautiful and we would spend the whole of Sunday there also. There are about 4 different beaches to choose from, some sandy some pebbled, and as we had found everywhere we had travelled so far; the people were more than friendly.
We found out that the Fort looking object that could be seen out to sea, was in fact Fort Boyard, where of course ‘Fort Boyard’ hosted by Melinda Messenger (in her prime) was filmed! This was one of my favourite shows a few years ago, so it was a little strange looking out - and it somehow seemed quite eerie. It must be so quiet and lonely out there, I wondered if it had a caretaker living alone there? I don’t think I’ll ever find out the answer to that.

Monday 30th June 2008

Had quite a lazy day today.

It’s been very hot these past few days, and today was no exception. We took a short drive in the morning to a place called Mortagne-sur-Gironde which is a picturesque village full of white washed buildings, and a lovely harbour where lies a fantastic Aire with free water and electric hook up for just 6 Euros a night. We found a British couple and started talking to them for what seemed like a few hours, but they were very friendly and helpful, and leant us their hose so we could finally fill up with fresh water. We can drink again! They even gave us some large containers which they no longer needed so that will help us in the future - we are such amateurs compared to them, but their generosity will no doubt come in useful.

We need to start returning these favours that people are doing for us, but we can offer people nothing at the moment as we have nothing of use and have absolutely no experience of Motor homing! We did offer Tony and his wife some baked beans however, as we have plenty - I guess it’s the thought that counts!

Will probably do the same tomorrow (not a lot) as we make our way south to Biarritz. Not sure where we’ll end up yet, but hopefully we’ll still be right on the coast.

The Aire at Mortagne-Sur-Gironde

The Aire in Fouras

Mortagne-Sur-Gironde from above, motor homes on the left