04 - 060902 070902 08 - 090902 100902 11 - 140902 150902 16 - 190902
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This account is here to help us to better
remember more of what, certainly at that time, was the
best holiday we'd ever had and to encourage anyone who can, to
try to do something similar. If at times it sounds like the narrative
of a patronising git, please excuse me. For folks new to campervanning, or to France, there are some, I hope, useful tips at the end of this
account.
Our "plan" was to wander down the Atlantic coast towards Bordeaux; sniff the pine trees of Les Landes; look at the Pyrenees; traverse along to the Med; do some sunbathing; cruise the posh resorts; take a look at Mont Ventoux; head up to Chamonix and pop into Switzerland.
BUT a lot of that changed.............. |
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010902:
Home - Portsmouth - Ouistreham, (Caen)
It was an easy run down to Portsmouth, well under 6 hours. We touched 82mph once and arrived more than 2hrs early and very excited, (I can't do the nonch traveller thing at all convincingly). After a 5hr crossing we landed in the dark, but I'd learnt off by heart the few kilometres to our campsite, Les Hautes Coutures, (and had to hand a much blown up map from Michelin's website). The campsite was free, (as part of the booking "deal"). The French (electricity), Connection was something I'd allowed to slip too low in my planning priorities and we were unable to hook-up to the mains (well, big deal, I hear you hardy camping-types say), but it is very annoying to have equipment on board and to be unable to use it. I thought I'd have to find a caravan shop, buy a French cable and chop it into ours, but the management must be used to disorganised Brits and they had adaptors for sale in their office. (Nowadays we have a UK domestic adaptor too, so we can park in friends' driveways and run the cable through the letterbox!).
020902:
Caen; Falaise; Alencon; Le Mans; Angers; Cholet; St Lambert du Lattay
We like pottering through town centres, because you don't see the real world from a by-pass road, do you. Caen, not surprisingly, is much wrapped up in WWII memorials. Once through Caen, neither of us having been to France for several years, we were soon reminded that it is a very big country, but we travelled across our small scale map very quickly and soon were trundling past the very fine castle where Will the Conk was born at Falaise.
Having visited one of Edouard LECLERC's very useful supermarkets, we stopped for a late breakfast at an Aire de Service, (see 12 & 130902 for more on these).
Trundle, trundle, trundle, skirting Le Mans, trundle, (some small part of this account has disappeared into the ether).........
The campsite at St Lambert du Lattay was a municipal one, unremarkable but in a pleasant setting, nothing at all wrong with it, it just happened to be conveniently where I started to feel that I'd done enough driving for that day.
030902:
St Lambert; Cholet; Chantonnay; Chaille les Marais; La Rochelle; Ile de Ré.
So as to build up that getting to the seaside feeling we took old coastal D roads for the last stretch in towards La Rochelle, missed a centre ville turning and by that brilliant mistake found ourselves going over the expensive, (was it really £10?), and most impressively high and curving bridge onto the Ile de Ré, a very smart island where we drove up the north side and found an excellent municipal site in the old, walled and smartest town of St Martin de Re.
As was the case here, a majority of French sites allocate to you, or leave you to choose a surprisingly large plot hedged in on 3 sides.
This was the first time we'd put up our new joint birthday present awning.
Poorly translated instructions said to try it out before you use it in earnest. We hadn't done, of course, but we managed. A "tunnel" joins the awning very snuggly to the van and it does make an enormous difference to have all that extra space.
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We walked into the town and down to the harbour with its expensive sailing boats and lots of cafes and bars, and went into our first Brocantes / Antiquités shop. Brocantes means junk. and it seems that that is what it mostly is.
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