20th August - South of France

Wednesday 20th August 2008

We’re still going, still plodding along! (Despite the lack of recent blog updates).

The trip seems to have taken a much more relaxed pace, which suits us both. We’re taking it much slower now than when we first started, spending more time at each stop and generally taking it easy - this is perhaps because of our sheer excitement and enthusiasm to “get to the next place” when we first started. At the beginning we were moving on literally every day, we’d very rarely stay somewhere for more than 24 hours, but that’s all changed now. For example we spent 4 days in a small town called Torrenueva in South East Spain (highly recommended for Motorhomer’s due to ample ‘on beach’ free parking and superb clear water), a whole week in Mojacar, 3 days in Benidorm, 3 in Barcelona, and 2 days in Banyoles & Narbonne respectively, so the pace really has slowed. It’s given us more time to relax and explore the places we’re visiting.

Barcelona was three days superbly spent. We managed to find a parking space (somehow) in the city centre, about 5 minutes drive from Las Ramblas (the main street) and within touching distance of the beautiful ‘Nou Camp’ football stadium. The parking was free and we weren’t asked to move on. This spot was especially handy for us as we were able to get tickets for the Barcelona v Wisla Krakow match which was a thoroughly enjoyable one. The game finished 4-0 to Barcelona and the atmosphere was superb throughout, the only worrying moment was after the game when a “safety” steward (and I use to term ’safety’ very loosely) tried to pick a fight with me for not leaving the ground quick enough! He was much bigger than I was, so I left it.

The city of Barcelona itself is vibrant and cosmopolitan with a good mix of historical sights thrown in. The famous “Sagrada Familia” was a disappointment though. It’s basically a huge cathedral, which would be stunning I’m sure, if it didn’t have 50% of the whole worlds supply of scaffolding attached to the side of it. They claim they can’t afford to finish it but they still had thousands of tourists (not us I might add) pouring inside each paying 5 Euros to “help us afford to finish this beautiful piece of architecture”… a lovely little scam they’ve got going on there!

After Barcelona we stayed in a large campsite called ‘Camping El Llac’ in the village of Banyoles, not far from the French border. The reason it’s called “El Llac” is due to its lakeside location, which on a hot sunny day is perfect to go boating on, we couldn’t resist and paid the man 10 Euros to row across a huge lake and get stuck several times in the bushes and reeds, much to the amusement of each passer by. ‘Twas good fun though. The Campsite had a large pool, small supermarket, restaurant, good shower and toilet facilities, plenty of places to refill Eric with drinking water and it had a hose, so no fiasco with 1.5l bottles again, thankfully. With electric hook up it set us back 22 Euros per night. Quite steep really but it’s the going rate of all campsites we’ve stayed at.

At around 11pm during our stay at this campsite it strangely started to rain - we hadn’t come across rain for over a month so this was quite a novelty, but after a few minutes we realised it wasn’t just a few drops but more a tropical storm! The rain was coming down like nothing I’ve ever seen in England before… the noise it was making hitting the roof of the Motor home was almost deafening! We wanted to enjoy it so went outside (fully clothed) for a walk, and within minutes the whole campsite was half flooded in around 3/4 inches of water; thunder and lightning exploding above us. We were enjoying it greatly… until we realised we’d left the bloody sun roof open. Splendid.

(Dancing in the rain, left).

We spent a few pleasant days in the French city of Avignon which still has almost a complete set of surrounding ancient walls before heading to Marseille (Frances second largest city). We found a spot to park on the “Quai du Port” which is one of the main streets in the beautiful “Vieux Port”, lined with bustling bars and restaurants. We were parked just around the corner though, out of site from the majority of tourists so we thought we wouldn’t have a problem being moved on. We arrived late at night so after a quick stroll we headed off to bed. In the morning we were surrounded by the same cars and hadn’t been asked to go, so we thought it would be fine to leave Eric there for the day whilst we did all the tourist stuff and explored Marseille, what with it’s beautifully decorated Notre Damn cathedral with quite stunning views over the whole city.
We spent a nice day in the sun and were even given a free ice lolly in a newsagents! The reason being of course is because it cost 80 cents but I tried to pay with a 20 Euro note, so she just let it pass… oops. We’d spent a long day exploring and soon after finishing our lollies it got late so we decided to head back to the motor home, with a pleasant opinion of Marseille and their newsagents left in the memory.

Upon getting closer to Eric we noticed something was not quite right. “What the hell is wrong with the window?” Mike asked. I looked up and saw half of it was on the floor with a hinge hanging in mid air. Our hearts sank, and as we got closer it was clear that we’d been broken into.

Eric was in a complete state. All the cupboards were open and almost everything was on the floor. We were completely gutted. It felt like someone had stabbed us in the back. We quickly looked around to see what had been taken, the first obvious one was the flat screen TV. They completely ripped it from it’s bracket which in itself is bolted down. Apart from that and 47 Euros, it was all the thieves managed to steal. We considered ourselves quite lucky as we could have come off a lot worse if 1) the thieves had thought to look in other places and 2) we didn’t have a safe.

The window (made of plastic) is snapped in half, but thankfully has not been completely broken and we managed to reattach it to the framework and is now pretty sturdy again. We’ll have to get it properly fixed eventually though. It was a complete shock and a pain to lose a very expensive TV, but we’ve treated it as a wake up call. We were stupid to leave valuables lying around, but thankfully they didn’t find them all, so from now on EVERYTHING is going in the safe at all times when we leave Eric.

The police weren’t interested frankly. We told them what happened, in pidgin English, they took a few details and then quite bluntly told us to leave the station - charming. They didn’t even look for themselves and we don’t expect anything to happen. We’ll call the insurance company in a few days when we get our heads out of our books we’re currently reading!

All in all it was a horrible experience but we’ll learn from it and it’ll make us stronger. The trip is going great in general though, and we’ve just spent a nice few days in St. Tropez, another playground for the rich and famous.

Maybe one day we’ll be able to travel in our of the super yachts we saw rather than a motor home… or maybe I should stop dreaming!

(Not a bad parking spot in Mojacar, Spain)