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