26th Apr BOISSE PENCHOT - LA ROQUE GAGEAC

As we haven’t got a proper map or guide book we tend to plan our route using the aire book, so we don’t really know where we’re going to end up! We are in the Dordogne region at the moment and travelling on the more rural roads. So when we arrived at the aire today and were amazed by the village; it’s built into a cliff face – more cave houses! The aire book says “it’s worth a look”, but it’s actually considered “un des plus beaux villages de France” (even I could translate that!).

One of the most beautiful villages in France.

 

Look how high I had to climb (twice)

It was a VERY steep, long, climb up to the top, the paths were narrow and sometimes stepped; access by car wasn’t possible for many of the houses, I can’t imagine what it would be like to live there – shopping would be a nightmare. Oh yes, we had to do the climb twice as the Fort, which is usually open to the public, was being renovated and the pathway was closed between the two ends of the village (so we had to go down and back up!!!).

And thank goodness it was closed or Brett would have wanted to visit it and he would have made me climb this!

When we went to the tourist office we found out that this whole area is littered with caves, many with prehistoric cave paintings and engravings; tomorrow we’re going to try to visit ‘Grotte des Combarelles’ hopefully it won’t be too busy this time of the year (the lady in the tourist office said that, in the summer, people start queuing at 8.00 a.m. and are lucky to get tickets by 9.00 and if they’re really lucky it’s for the day they’ve queued!!).

The aire is next to the river Dordogne; usually there are boats and canoes on the river but there’ a notice saying that (translated) “due to the height of the river boats are forbidden”. The numbered gangways (which are where you would embark/disembark) are under a couple of foot of water and several feet from the shoreline. There are the tops of trees coming out of the river (you can’t even see the trunks) and masses of debris being swept along by the force of the water.

Brett said we should be ok as the river is a few feet below the car park; now we’ve learnt (from the tourist information leaflet) that across the road, on the wall of the post office, (which is a few feet higher than the car park) are, and I quote, “engraved in the wall, a spectacular record of flooding levels and their dates”.

25th Apr ALBI - BOISSE PENCHOT

We woke up and went into Albi to take photos in the Cathedral and buy some bread. Wow the Cathedral is very splendid on the inside (I’m not saying I liked it); every surface is painted walls, ceilings, columns – unfortunately you weren’t allowed to use flash light so all the photos came out a bit dark.

Hand painted wall decoration

We still haven’t managed to find a French road atlas so we plan our journeys on the European one which means it doesn’t look too far and then we end up travelling for hours. The weather is not very spring like – wet, cold and windy.

The aire at Boisse Penchot was lovely, alongside the river Lot. The rivers in France are VERY full at the moment (not like Spain), lots of them are flooding, the water here was very fast flowing and brown.

24th Apr CARCASSONNE – ALBI

We went back to the church to take some photos of the glass (as I didn’t have my camera with me yesterday) and there were four men, in there, singing accapella (no idea how to spell it, but I mean without instrumental accompaniment); they were really good, made me go all goose pimply.

We paid our ticket for the aire, it was only 5€ and left to go to the aire at Albi (70 miles away) that the lady yesterday (the one who was looking for aire 123) had recommended. The journey started off beautifully (would have been better if it wasn’t rainy and windy) the road ran alongside a canal through avenues of pollarded trees (I think they might have been Limes, not the citrus type); in the verges wild iris were growing (they were dwarf plants only 9” – 12” high but the flower was normal size) fabulous dark purples, and cowslips, pale lemony yellow.

Then we came to road-works with a set of temporary traffic light; the lights were blinking orange – Brett said “I don’t know what that means” after a few minutes of ‘blinking orange’ no traffic had come towards us so I said “I think it means you can go” as we passed the lights they changed to solid orange (there was no red or green), the road-works went on for about ¼ mile (with nowhere to go if anything came towards you) when we came to the end there was a queue of traffic waiting to move – their light was ‘blinking orange’!!!! We still don’t know what it meant!

Then we came to a barrier across the road with a “diversion” sign pointing to a very narrow road to our right; we followed the signs. The diversion went on for miles through this really gloomy valley, towering on either side of the road were tall rock faces and all the while it was pouring with rain and the wind was buffeting the van.

Finally we got back to the main route, from there it was plain sailing, we passed through fields full of free ranging ducks (probably for the fois gras, comfit or cassoulet), to the aire; but the aire was full!!! There were only supposed to be nine spaces for vans and there were already ten vans parked, plus others in the car parks next door; we squeezed in next to the end van, obstructing a footpath and tight to a wheelie bin, and had lunch whilst we waited for someone to move – fortunately the first van to move was the van we were next to – so we managed to bag the spot, before any of the other hovering vans were able to! As soon as we moved another van had taken our unofficial spot.

We stayed in the van, waiting for the rain to ease up, so that we could go and explore Albi; by 4.00 p.m. they sky was turning blue and the sun was shine. Albi has a magnificent Cathedral, it’s totally built from red brick apart from a, very ornate, Gothic stone entrance.

Albi Cathedral

The whole of Albi is built in red brick – but we didn’t find out its story as we haven’t had access to the internet for several days.

23rd Apr PORT LA NOUVELLES – CARCASSONNE

We were heading for a very pretty looking aire today at Thebes, adjacent to a canal with shops and lots of restaurants and bars – it was shut off!!! The aire was gone and the car parks said “no camping cars”; shame because it really did look nice. However on the way we did have one piece of good luck, we found a campervan accessory shop and bought a new cap for our water filler – Brett’s a ‘happy bunny’.

We ended up travelling to Carcassonne where the aire cost 10€ (according to our book). We had some fun ‘Sat Nav’ moments, the best being Brett driving backwards for several 100 yards down a very narrow one way street (and of course we were going the wrong way), only one car had to back out of our way and he was quite cheerful about it. We drove around the one way system three times and still we couldn’t find the aire; we had stopped to have yet another look at the book, maps and Sat Nav when we noticed another English van parked near us, the lady was holding the aires book. I tapped on their window “are you looking for aire 123?” I asked, she said “yes” they’d been driving round in circles for hours and were giving up!!!! We gave it one more go, ignoring Sat Nav’s route but taking note of where she said the aire was located (Brett reckons she thinks we’re driving the Fiesta) and eventually we found it! And thank goodness we did as Carcassonne is an enchanting (if rather touristy) walled city; it looks like the setting for a Disney fairytale, it has 52 towers as the guide book says “with its witch’s hat turrets and walled city Carcassonne looks like some fairy-tale fortress from afar”. Within the city is a church with some rather nice glass 13^th – 16^th century.

Our walk, from the aire to town

Carcassonne's wall

Inside the walled city

We had planned to go back in the evening to have a meal; Cassoulet is this region’s speciality, one enterprising restaurant had a sample bowl out on the table, to show you what you were getting, an earthenware dish full of beans, Toulouse sausage, duck leg and pork – it looked very tasty. However at 8.00 it started raining heavily and hadn’t let up by 9.00 so we had to cobble together a pasta dish (boring) – pity we were looking forward to eating out and the castle is supposed to look lovely at night as it’s all lit up. We had hoped it would stop later, so that we could at least have a walk around, but it continued raining on and off all night.

22nd Apr BANYULS SUR MER – PORT LA NOUVELLES

Another slightly hairy journey, along the windy, high up road, to a free aire at Port La Nouvelles. All Sat Nav’s routes these days seem to be along roads with prostitutes lining them (or there are masses of prostitutes in Europe?); we saw a whole load more today.

Just before we entered the town we passed through salt marshes where we saw big flocks of Flamingos, unfortunately there was absolutely nowhere to stop to take photos.

The aire was huge, with spaces for 100 vans – there must have been at least 50 when we arrived, practically all French (naturally) and one English; but it was awfully quiet, hardly any sign of life.

After lunch we walked into the town; Port La Nouvelles is a grim little place, the road leading into the town is lined with massive gas storage tanks and the town itself has no ‘curb appeal’! As it was Sunday none of the shops were open; there was a dog accessory shop called ‘Doggy Style’ – I’m sure they thought it meant styling for dogs!!! And a few fishmongers, a pizza parlour and a couple of Tabac shops; there were no people around apart from some fishermen and a few people coming out of a Church. We did find an open bar, but as there were no people about to ‘people watch’ we weren’t tempted to stop. On the wall, outside one of the Tabac shops,  was a ‘Durex’ machine (I’ve never seen one outside of a public toilet or pub before) maybe it was for the ‘ladies of the road’ or their clients?

21st Apr MAS PINELL - BANYULS SUR MER - FRANCE!!

We were going to visit the Salvador Dali museum in Figueres this morning but we couldn’t be bothered – we have had enough of culture for the time being! (We’ll probably regret it in a couple of weeks).

View from van as we drove

This plant was growing on the verge about 80cms tall, leaves look like daffodil leaves

Any ideas?

It was only a short journey today, but the road was very windy and high up overlooking the sea; and then we were in FRANCE!!!! France also has prostitutes that offer their wares at the side of the highway.
We parked up in a Municipal Aire which is actually quite expensive for an aire (11.29€), but we haven’t got a French road map yet (we tried to buy one in Spain but couldn’t find one) so we didn’t have much choice. We needed a few provisions and so far everything seems much more expensive than Spain and Portugal – the cheapest wine is 2€ a bottle!!!!!

Banyuls sur Mer

Banyuls sur Mer is another pretty seaside town with lots of restaurants and cafes; we had a lovely stroll around the beach and harbour and sat ‘watching the world go by’; then, on our walk back to the campsite, we were caught in a heavy shower and got rather wet. As soon as it stopped raining the sun came out and it warmed up again.

It rained an awful lot this evening, even a bit of thunder. Opposite us (at the campsite) were a couple who are ‘proper’ campers; they’re travelling by bikes and camping in a two man tent, not big enough to stand up in, or cook or eat in; we felt very sorry for them when the rain came tonight, they must have been very uncomfortable.

20th Apr SANT FELIU DE GUIXOLS – L’ESTARTIT – MAS PINELL

As we were wildcamping tonight we had to stock up on food, we came across a Lidls – all my favourite food was cheap!!! We bought 2k of shell-on king prawns (9.99€), 2k of strawberries (1.99€) and 2L of wine (0.59€/L) and Brett bought some chocolate chip cookies and English tea!!

We were heading for a spot, on the beach, at L’Estartit but when we got there we couldn’t park as there was a height barrier of 2.2M (obviously to deter campervans from wildcamping); fortunately we got internet access and there was another wildcamp site a few miles further down the coast at Mas Pinell. The information said that there was road running behind the sand dunes, for about a mile, which was used by wildcampers; the road has now been blocked off with large rocks and there is a small area for parking on the beach. There were two other vans parked when we arrived and parked up for the night, however by 7.00 p.m. the other vans had left, so like the veteran campers we are we locked ourselves in for the night; 9.30ish we were joined by another van.

Yet another sea view!

Mas Pinell is a weird little place, there’s a HUGE campsite as you arrive in the village (but it doesn’t appear to be open yet) and practically all the houses/apartments seem to be unoccupied, we think they are probably second homes or holiday lets; the whole village has this feeling of desertion – like a bomb’s been dropped and everyone has fled. And everywhere there are cats, masses of them – if there’s no people who feeds them?