(ALMOST) ALL OVER FRANCE IN JULY 2007
20 days of holiday travel.
Across Burgundy to see Vercingetorix at Alise Ste Reine
South to Lyon and Vennissieux
Further south for sunshine and the Roman Pont du Gard in Provence
To Roman Nîmes and west along the D999 to Le Vigan in the Cévennes
To the Cirque de Navacelles and Le Caylar
North to Doussard and Annecy
East into the Alps - Seez and Tignes to watch a stage of the Tour de France.
Southwest to the Lot & Dordogne
Out to the Atlantic and the Île de Ré
North to Brittany - Carnac and Quiberon
and back via Le Bec Hellouin in Normandy.
Day 1. 4th July - From home to Dover - 353 miles
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We pulled into "historic Warwick" and saw that here a man might be honoured for bashing men's brains in.
was a
chap with a very bad haircut.
We'd chosen the 10 miles longer toll-free route from home and travelled anticlockwise around London. As if a big wave had come up behind us we whooshed on down to Dover with that it's-getting-increasingly-hard-to-slow-down feeling which for several weeks I'd been eagerly anticipating. |
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From an Italian restaurant smelling of
generations of cigarette smoke we bought a pizza and ate it at our overnight
stopping place, the Dover Patrol monument
A good spot. A German motorhome was already there. |
More vans arrived later. (I'd have been very keen on the Mercedes had it not been festooned with deep rusty blisters).
| At who-knows-what-time during the night my anxious navigator woke me to say that the wind had got up and it was rocking the van. With the roof still raised I drove us a little way down the track and into the shelter of a big old briar patch. |
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By 5am we were rolling down to the port to catch the 6am crossing to
Dunkerque. |
Dawn is a good time to start an adventure.
Better still if at sunrise there's some sun to be seen.
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I'd done slightly more planning than usual and we were on our way to Tonnerre, not for any good reason other than that the town had a campsite from which next morning we could travel to see Vercingetorix. Our scribbled notes read, "Heavy rain, Bar sur Seine, (dereliction, population, war), asparagus fields" and "Too many Jean Marie Le Pen posters everywhere" (in caps). What a very unattractive man he is in every way. We had at first mistaken the unsightly asparagus for some cereal crop overdue for harvesting. Now I read that in London's Garrick club there was once allegedly a notice which read, "During the asparagus season members are requested not to relieve themselves into the umbrella stand". Presumably such behaviour was considered acceptable outside the asparagus season. |
The humorously named municipal site, Camping La Cascade at Tonnerre is just fine.
 We strolled a little way along the river and saw pond
skaters in profusion and walnuts which, though far from
ripe, had decided to fall to the ground. I suppose I was very tired because I was
much amused by my own singing of, "I'll call you Jaguar, if I may be so bold".
Why, I don't know.
Leaving Jo in the van I walked into the town
along the very navigable
The town seemed to me
to be tired and tatty,
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