A bery bery fine country indeed

For a part of the trip that we had not at first given much of a thought to; this was supposed to be where we sat out the winter after we’d had all our fun already; we were completely taken aback at this little pocket of Spain we found ourselves in.  Sitting out the rains of early November and generally getting used to the extra stretching space out of the van (we’ve gone from hovering over a portable toilet with our knees round our ears, to each having our own bathrooms – what luxury!), we used the time to get settled in, and put in our order for some firewood from a local guy in the village – called Pepe of course.  Anyway, the next morning we waited with a couple of sacks in hand, expecting Pepe to trot up the road with a wheelbarrow at any minute.  Instead the distant putter of a tractor approached, and there was Pepe, towing a huge trailor piled high as the sky with our firewood.   Errrr we need some more sacks.  To make matters worse, as Pepe dropped the wood from the trailor he pointed to the sky, and even with limited Spanish I understood him to say “you better move this lot damn fast cos it’s gonna piss it down in a minute”.  Which it did of course, but thankfully after we had heaved in and covered up our heating source with some tarpaulin or thrown it into sacks.  We eventually got some pallets to stack a proper woodpile, but for a few days everywhere we went in the house there were logs, logs and more logs.

Part of settling in also included venturing out to the local stores to stock up on Spanish food, which didn’t disappoint.  The food here is really good quality; rosy red peppers as big as your head, and what’s more it’s an enjoyable shopping experience – the ‘fruterias’ are a bit like walking into the British greengrocers we had before supermarket domination removed much of them.  Someone actually selects and weighs your vegetables for you, and there are buckets of nuts and lentils and beans piled high with scoops propped in the top.  It’s like some vegan pick ‘n’ mix utopia.  What’s even better is that the food is really cheap, the cheapest we’ve found in all the countries we’ve travelled to in Europe.  And at last, we have an oven.  After 6 months of limited cooking facilities, we are now churning out pies and gratins and cakes, thankful of all the walking to do or this could be a weighty winter.

By now we were getting to grips with the woodburner.  It’s a bit sink or swim frankly as these Spanish village houses don’t have central heating; they don’t need to since most the time they’re sweltering in 30C+.  But unless you master the art of fire, you’re going to have a very cold winter, and actually it’s not as easy as you think unless you were lucky enough to have an open fire to hone your skills on at some point in your life.   Which we clearly had not, but we nailed it eventually. 

At last, after a couple of weeks of rain, the sun re-appeared in the sky and we started to get some of the weather we had expected of a southern Spanish winter.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not sunbathing weather, although we did go to the beach in November, but the days are bright and warm in the sun and best of all the sun stays in the sky for a good couple of hours longer than at home.  We got our hikers on and started to get out into the snow-capped mountains that surround us here.  The closest peak however, Corbello, still evades us.  In our naivety we had looked and thought we’d do it in a couple of hours, but have subsequently heard that it’s a 12 hour round trip…it will take a bit more planning, a 6am start and…goddamit – where’s the Kendal mint cake when you need it?  We’ve also had the running trainers out again, and against both our expectations, have actually been enjoying doing some hill running.

After all this healthy frolicking about we decided it was fine time we headed out for the night, which we anticipated being a rather tricky affair since there isn’t even a bar in the village we live in.  However, we read about a Sunday jazz jam session in a bar in the next village over, Niguelas, which was only a 25 minute walk away so we headed for it.  Not many walks to the pub include a stumble across the side of a valley in pitch black darkness, but it’s one of the eccentricities that makes living here so enjoyable.  Anyway, after a half hour of wandering around Niguelas we couldn’t find the place and had damn near given up when we thought we could distinguish the sound of jazz guitar far off in the distance.  Following our ears, at last we arrived at our destination, and walked into a great little bar, which oddly happened to be owned by a girl from our village who had been wanting to ask us along but had been too shy.  It was an awesome night, spent knocking back mojito’s and listening to great music.  Best of all, we got chatting to an American guy called Andrew and his Spanish girlfriend, Eva, who are right up our street (metaphorically not literally) and who we have spent a great deal of time with since, mostly playing the fantastically named game ‘Cornhole’, which I wont tell you anymore about as we think there’s a big market for it in England and shortly plan to make our millions….oh ah hah hah hah.

Through Andrew and Eva we’ve met some other people and it’s great actually hanging out with Spanish people.  Actually, it’s great to have friends again, as due to the rate at which we’ve moved around in the van, we haven’t had the chance to get to know anyone well enough.  Obviously it isn’t the greatest time for lots of Spanish people, many we meet are highly trained and smart people out of work.  It’s getting to be a common theme in Europe, but the economic crisis has definitely hit Spain hard.  Not that you would tell by the amazing generosity of the locals – we have been brought gifts of food from nearly every Spanish mama in our village – bread, membrillo, caqui fruits, coconut cake – all delicious and wonderfully kind.  The only sign of hard times in our little village are the quantity of stray cats and dogs around.  Spain has a reputation for strays of course, but the economic crisis has left so many more pet owners dumping their animals onto the streets.  It’s heartbreaking, and along with the rest of the English people in the area, we find ourselves separating our scraps (and even buying food, suckers that we are) for the poor blighters nearby.  There is one dog in particular that has charmed the pants off us, who gets a regular feed whenever we see him.  We’ve nicknamed him Buddy and if we could take any with us it would be him. 

So, as you can probably tell, we have fallen in love with our little valley in Spain.  Mostly, we are very grateful for the experience of actually living amongst Spanish people in a traditional village and being part of the community, which is not something you get to do on a conventional holiday.  It’s incredible, and we both like to think that perhaps we’ll live around here more permanently at some point in the future.  And now, we have visits from friends at home over Christmas and New Year coming up and many many more games of cornhole I’m sure…life is good, viva Espana…

a-walking we go

Gonna Ma-beya un it

‘I must remember to sit down and write the blog’ ‘don’t let me forget to sit down and wrote the blog’ ‘shit, I really have to sit down and write the bloody blog..’ 

Ok, so it’s been ages since we’ve had the chance to update our pictorial and worded travel diary.  This is partly due to laziness, having lots of other interesting stuff to do or a series of hilarious run-ins with our local Spanish internet shop which appears to have the gravitational pull of Hattie Jacques and has exerted such a Toulon-like grip upon me that I had find it impossible to avoid entering and have another fall-out with the proprietor – he really is a disagreeable chap and sold us a lie god dammit – so I enjoy our little get-togethers.

Anyway, after a few ‘discussions’ we have finally sorted out a net connection that isn’t powered by the local donkey and that allows us sufficient GB’s to kick-start our blog again.  Apologies to our four Caribbean readers about the lack of recent broadcasts but we’re back on air now so hook yourself up a hammock, grab a can of Lilt and join us as we continue our journey through space and time….ok then, just France and Spain.

We left off waaaaaay back in mid-October, as we were just about to carry out a load of second viewings of property dotted across Brittany and in differing states of repair.  We viewed countless property the first time around remaining open minded about all we looked at, despite condition or location, and found some lovely property in the wrong location or a dog of a house in favoured location, but nothing felt quite right.  Anyway, we whittled it down to a few decent ruins in our favoured location of south-eastern Brittany and headed out to see them again.

Before we go into how we got on something that we both began to feel as we spent more time in Brittany was that, as lovely as it is, it can feel a bit too quaint and quiet (especially coming from the mean streets of E’Dwich) and what we’d originally set out to find ‘wow, look at all this peace and space’ became a little bit ‘shit, look at all this peace and space’.  France – and Brittany in particular - feels like a perfectly safe and decent place to live, everything seems nice, quiet, clean, pretty damn near perfect… a bit like the Truman Show.   There just doesn’t appear to be that extra something exciting that we have found in so many other places present in Brittany.  But property is cheap, the countryside is really nice in parts and the people we’ve met have always been extremely friendly to us.

This has left us just mulling over if we would/could permanently live there, and we’re still not sure of that right now. We met a really decent bloke who was around the same age as me (still young, full of verve) who had moved to Brittany sometime ago, set up his own property investment company and was trying to sell us a house.  He took us around a few houses, really helpful, telling us why each one was the perfect investment opportunity for us and we all got on well so we took him for a coffee after completing our viewings.

No sooner had we sat down when he was suddenly like ‘look, I’m trying to sell you a house and all but do you REALLY wanna live here?’ and went on to explain how he’d moved out for the ‘better quality of life’ more space etc but that the remoteness/rural life nature & lack of City hustle and bustle can be very hard to adjust to, so he said he was moving his family further south and that we should give serious consideration to our plan of moving lock-stock to Brittany as it can be a little sleepy (not his exact words).  Either the best, or worst, Estate Agent going.  Good man. 

We’d also seen evidence of the risk of buying property and moving abroad in the form of a lot of half-renovated incomplete ‘dreams’ that owners were now trying to sell or property that had been bought from the UK and just left to rot, not something we want to end up with and doesn’t endear you to the local community.

Anyway, with all that in mind the properties that we went to see for a second visit turned out to be just too far away from life for us, too rural or in small hamlets with not much going on so we ruled them all out.  We’ve not searched for or bought property before but something happened to us during our search that I guess a lot of people experience; we found ourselves comparing everything against the very first place that we viewed and that we had found on-line whilst still in the UK, the mighty Lignol!  Not only did we find ourselves talking about it but also we’d find ourselves visiting it, again and again, countless times like it was our own. It’s not, but we want it to be.  So after an extensive search and a long drive back up from Italy to Brittany we’ve picked the very first one we saw over 12 months ago (luckily for us there has been four failed purchase attempts to date by others so it’s still available).

Awesome ruin it is, set into some lovely land and not too far from both the nearest small and decent sized town.  Anyone reading this (including the four Caribbeans) will hopefully discover all this anyway, as you will be helping re-build it.  There’s not the business opportunity we were looking for at the site, yet, but there could be potential to expand in the future and even though it’s not ours we do get that feeling of coming ‘home’ when we visit it.  Just most homes don’t have trees growing in the lounge.  So, easy part done, identifying the property we want, now we have the very difficult process of trying to actually make it ours by having an impending offer accepted and securing a modest French renovation mortgage, not as easy as getting hold of cash in the UK and a blog entry of its own.  Who knows if we will actually live there in the future, just getting it re-built will be enough to start with. However, anyone reading this (including the four Carribeans) will be expected to put us up for a while in April if none of this comes off, could go either way as it stands today.

Right, with that partly sorted it was time to leave Brittany and follow the sensible birds and retired cock-er-nees down to southern Spain for winter and to the house so kindly donated to us by Wendy and Graham. Located in the village of Acequias, not far from Granada in Andalucia, and at about 900m altitude up the side of the Sierra Nevada it’s a great place to head to for winter!!

Up to this point we’d done so much driving, so much travelling and spent so much time in the van that we decided to blast down to southern Spain as quickly as possible, sometimes at terrifying speeds close to 55mph.  Also, with the northern European weather beginning to turn on us and the relative sanctuary of open campsites with warm showers now few and far between we couldn’t wait to get to Acequias. 

So, not much to tell you about the trip down other than we passed through:

Biarritz - great looking place, even on a cloudy day – full of trust-fund receiving surfers.

San Sebastian - awesome place to visit, brilliant city in stunning setting – full of trust-fund givers and an elderly community not unlike that in the film Cocoon.

Other than some place in the middle of Spain that was it for major stops on our journey south, we really went for it and the bus is none to happy with us for it.  It’s a shame that we missed a lot of Spain on the trip down – although the middle drive from north to south is a pretty monotonous stretch of nothingness, nothing but whole loads of nothing, save a few ropey industrial looking places – but once we get settled we plan to head out and explore more, we also wanted to save something for the journey back north next year (if we don’t just keep heading south).

Arriving at Acequias was brilliant.  Mainly because the van took a beating on the way down, we’d really pushed it, but also because we’d been looking forward to the comforts of living in a proper solid structure ever since the summer ended and the great European rains of 2012 arrived.  Naturally, because we’d spent the best part of seven months in our awesome van and now needed to adjust to living in a house (we tried to drive it to BP and fill it up with diesel but we can’t get it started, engine trouble we suspect..) it felt a bit weird getting out of the bus knowing it would be for quite a while.  We also had the slightly unnerving sight of the lovely local Spanish mama’s lining up to stare through the windows at us for the first week or so, must be a local custom or something, but they are all proper old mama types, very umm, ‘curious’ for want of a better word but also very welcoming.

We arrived at the house quite late at night and a bit disorientated so preceded to get well smashed on cheap Rioja and rum.  Banging headaches we stumbled out onto the roof terrace the next morning to be met with a fantastic panoramic view of the valley that we find ourselves right next to, the Sierra Nevada mountains and farther beyond to distant villages.  It looks like a great place to spend time.

In return for the kind loan of the property we are undertaking some repairs so have spent our first week at the house doing one or two jobs, getting to know our immediate surroundings and just relaxing into relaxing, all the while looking up at the mountains wondering how great it will be to walk them, getting excited about getting out into the local community more, cycling the challenging looking roads and maybe even heading to the beach, in November.  We also need to source combustible material and get to grips with our wood burner as we suspect it could get cold around here.

More of which will be posted in a less shoddy time frame in the next week (or so).

Hasta bloody Luego!

No title no cry.

Full circle...back to Brittany

Last time we caught up we were at the Dutch run campsite near the town of Cordes-sur-Ciel.  This felt like a last few snatched days of holiday; we were reaching the end of September and this together with our climb northwards, would leave us preparing for some chillier climes.  Cordes-sur-Ciel is a beautiful town, dotted with wonderfully weird little shops - one displayed a full fighting scene of little plastic soldier toys - you're left wondering if they sell very much, or perhaps this is 'art', who knows..  Anyway, another hilltop town, but this one beautifully French, and a couple of hours spent pleasantly strolling (or rather huffing and puffing up steep inclines).  After three days relaxing in this area, we proceeded with our climb to northern France, arriving in the Dordogne and staying at an aire in Tremolat, not far from Bergerac.  By now we were getting back into this aire business - the Tremolat one by example being pretty much as good as any campsite, if you can go without electric and have your own washing facilities your stay in France can be very cheap and easy.

Onwards early the next day, and since we were heading that way, we decided to make our last stop before Brittany at Chatelaillon, just south of La Rochelle.  I'm not sure Michael and I have ever come to France together without ending up here at some point, and in fact it was the destination for our first ever foray into French camping many years ago, when it took a whole day and a couple of bottles of cider to even get the tent up straight!  Anyway, for some silly reason we're sentimental about this place as in a weird way it feels like where it all began.  On this occasion, we had received a text from a fellow weather obsessional warning us of the forthcoming gales, however still decided upon the aire spot directly infront of the beach, and therefore at the mercy of any weather coming in from the Atlantic.  A windy and rainy walk along the beach later, we shut ourselves in the van which swayed from side to side in the high winds through much of the night.

After a short drive, we found ourselves on the boundary of Brittany and in need of hot showers, so checked in to a campsite on the coast at Penesten, which thankfully had wifi to while away two more days of constant rain.  I suppose this is the point it hit us that our summer was over.  No more flip flops.  No more suntan lotion.  Not even shorts weather, and the thought of craving ice cold frappe's suddenly seemed both ludicrous and a million miles away.  Anyone who know's me well will realise it took me a few days to adjust to this realisation and come out of my stinking mood!  There was however house hunting to look forward to and much of our time was spent lining up appointments for the coming weeks in Brittany.  And we had a regular visitor to the van during this time of a cheeky little cat, who had clearly sussed us out as complete pushovers and the best place to hide out the terrible weather. She operated on the 'if I keep really quiet they wont notice I'm here' tactic, and then when we attempted to shoo her out the door that evening, switched to all out attack, leaving us both bleeding and zig-zagged with scratches...needless to say we lived up to our pushover tag and let her stay since she was quite nice company when not being forced out into the cold.

Due to the weather, this campsite was also the scene of mass death in the local pigeon population.  We arrived back to the van one afternoon to a birds nest and dead baby bird that had obviously been dislodged from the tree in the winds.  The campsite owner removed the bird and told us in broken English, and mock splatting noises, that many had been falling over the last few days.  This was evidenced an hour later as a second baby pigeon, who had clearly been clinging desperately to the branches above since his nest fell an hour before, gave up and fell within a metre or so of us standing by the van.  Poor thing made a noise like a deflated football as it hit the ground.  Anyway, it made walking under the trees quite tense for our remaining time there...and was the first time I missed my cycle helmet.

So, now we were in Brittany, our intended future home.  We had plans to explore some of the regions and pockets of Brittany that we had not been to, before our viewings started in few days.  This began in La Gacilly, a town right on the border of the Morbihan which hosts the largest photographic exhibition in France every year.  Fortunately, the exhibition was on when we arrived, and consists of open air installations throughout the cobbled streets, and several large format photo's pinned to the side of buildings and businesses throughout the town.  The aim of the exhibition is to make people think about the future of the planet, and this year's theme was People and Nature.  Awesome.  And a good introduction to Brittany no less.  We pootled around some nearby villages and then ended the day camping at Port Foleux, a very poignant stop since this was where we headed off on our trip from five months ago.  It almost made us question whether we had dreamt it all...

Then of course the viewings began.  Which actually brings us up to present day, as over the last 10 days or so we have attended viewings with various estate agents and notaires (basically like local solicitors that manage a list of properties for sale in their area) in many of the regions within Brittany.  It's been a very strange experience in the main, partly I suppose as we have never purchased a property in the UK, let alone in a foreign country.  The serious nature of what we are proposing to do has definitely sunk in over the last week, sitting at our desks in London full of bravado talking of buying a property in France is very different to actually doing it, that's for sure.  There have also been fairly rude awakenings in terms of planning laws and land usage; any potential campsite or business we had in mind would need to be fought for tooth and nail in most cases.  In others it is simply not an option, or too expensive.
It's not all bad news and negative experience though; we have seen some lovely parts of Brittany, and naturally living over on the continent feels as though it opens up the whole of the Europe, but particularly the rest of France, the beautiful country that we love.  We have also seen some properties, which although in some pretty ruinous states, are definitely options for us in terms of having a home for the future, and let's not forget that it is a buyer's market at the moment here in France so what you get for your money is actually quite a shock when compared to over-inflated prices in the UK.  What we have seen however is perhaps the effect of the economic downturn in the UK, with lots of British bought and half renovated properties back on the market; financial circumstances have changed for some and their dreams will have to remain unrealised.  Of course, in some cases, these British owned properties were bought with no intention of renovation, simply as a 'sit on and make money for nothing' scheme, however with no rising market these people have lost out on their moneymaking schemes.  In these instances it's easy to understand some of the French animosity towards the Brits!

All in all it's been a great experience, and we are glad we arrived in Brittany early.  We are still determined to   have a stab at moving our lives over here, however not wanting to end up with a project we can't finish, we'll be making sure we get our sums right.  In fact we have some second viewings at the weekend so let's watch this space.

Who lives in a house like this?

Smack my beach up

I was going to title this blog entry ‘Up shit creek’ but that wouldn’t have worked because all of the beaches, bays and creeks we have seen recently have been spectacular (unless you include the creeks belonging to the two old dears in swimwear bent over in front of us momentarily blocking the beautiful view of Cassis bay)..

So, where have we been since we left Anna in Nice? (by the way, if you ever find yourself in a gorge with Anna do get her to perform her ‘Last of the Mohicans’ impression, her interpretation is Oscar worthy).  The plan was to skirt along the South of France (S.O.F from hereon in) a bit more before starting to bend our way back up towards Brittany - where we have to plan re-joining normal life - via the Midi-Pyrenees whilst trying to get as much swimming in as we could, be that in the sea or wild.  So we’ve spent as much time by bodies of water as we can, whilst the sun still shines and the water still warm, all the while further exploring the country that we will soon call home.

First up was the mainly rocky coastline of the La Lavandu area. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked the so called ‘chic’ part of the S.O.F - it was way less crass than I thought it was going to be and especially when compared to its Italian neighbour- but just a little further along the coast towards Marseille and away from Cannes, St Tropez etc there can be found some lovely little spots if, like us, you prefer to get away from beaches offering overpriced sun-loungers and hideously botoxed faces.  A bit of scrambling and you can pretty much have a spot on the beautiful Med all to yourself. So we found an awesome little campsite to stay at for a couple of days and relaxed by the clear blue sea for a bit, in beautiful sunshine (sorry Anna!!). It was at this site that I’m ashamed to say that I found myself wanting another… sincerest apologies Gus but that VW Delher was beautiful… ‘Oooohh VW Delher, how I yearn for thee’.  I found myself staring at it all longingly..

Proper chilled by now we packed up and headed out for the quick scoot along the coast to Marseille airport to collect more visitors!!  So, who would be appearing through the ‘Stars in Their Eyes’ doors of the arrival lounge this time? Is that, is that Eddie Vedder and Kylie Minogue*? No! Even better than that it was The Wrights, Mr & Mrs Wright that’s Darren and Emma Wright!! Dazzer and Em, how amazing to see them arrive.  We’d booked a place in La Pradet (the fantastically named ‘Lou Pantai’) back towards from whence we’d came and it was on the 2 hour or so drive back to the campsite that we had our first encounter with what was to become a most formidable foe; bloody Toulon.  Toulon. If you ever find yourself in this region, anywhere on the A50 or A570 and you need to get from Marseille to St Tropez do all that you can to avoid Toulon. Go as faaaar around it as is possible. I’d suggest that going via Switzerland is best, just to be on the safe side, coz once stuck into the spidersweb that is Toulon, there’s no escape. Struggling is futile, the more you struggle the more entangled you become: climb mountains, swim oceans, dig tunnels, just don’t go through Toulon (unless you have a fetish for traffic jams and sex toys, then THIS is your KINDA TOWN!).

Helen and I had not been to Lou Pantai so were a little apprehensive on arrival. Sites can be hit and miss and we wanted Daz and Em to have a nice chilled place to stay but we needn’t have worried. It turned out to be a really well kept, proudly ‘eco’ place run by a lovely couple.  Daz and Em settled into their modern cabin, we arranged our pitch and then a lovely evening was spent catching up whilst downing loads of Italian red we’d saved.  We got up earlyish the next day, had French pastries for breakfast and headed out for some local beach action.  Although not directly on the coast a short walk from Lou Pantai will take you to some lovely coastline and four or five individual beaches with lovely clear blue sea, good snorkelling too.  To get to our chosen beach we had to take the route through the nudist beach area.  Emma said to Helen later that whilst I was walking through it I sounded like the Rain Man – ‘Oh, oh god, oh no, oh god, not happy’.  Man, there’s some sights permanently burnt onto my retinas..

We spent a lovely afternoon here (a few beers, some exploding) talking to Darren and Emma about our future plans for Brittany, which was good, coz Dazzer’s a creative type so once you start him riffing on things any number of good ideas come out.. clever man, gave us lots of good stuff to think about.. this also helped avoid talk of our beloved, but shite-right-now, Reds - JTF96 the truth, at last!!

The plan for the second day was an awesome one, something I’d be looking forward to for a while – a trip to the Creeks of Cassis!! Although, this also meant going back through Toulon…bloody Toulon.  At least the town planners - probably recognising that having two motorways ending in the same small city centre was madness - had the decency to dig a huge bloody long tunnel under the entire city heading west to east, shame it was only the one way though.  So, arriving at about midday in Cassis and after having trouble finding parking we made sarnies, packed rucksacks, donned sun-cream and headed out in search of ‘Les Calanques’.  The only way to reach the calanques is on foot, unless you take a touristy boat trip, and despite the intense heat we were all determined to walk it.

After a bit of hit and miss with directions we finally found the beginning of the creek trail. Gutted.  We asked some locals which were the best to strike out for and how long it would take and were told that the nearest were at least an hours walk away.  It was getting into the afternoon and stupidly we had only put a few hours or so on the parking meter and the walk meant we would have had to eat our sarnies whilst swimming and leave pretty much as soon as arriving, not worth it.  We’d lost the creeks.  Despondent, we all headed back into Cassis but then still had a wicked afternoon on the beach near town. This was still stunning, amazing views (two old dears aside) and amazing water for swimming. Burnt and happy we headed back to base but not before having to battle ruddy god damn Toulon city centre again..

Our next two days together consisted of more local beach action then a boat ride over to the Ile de Porquerrolles - Emma, ‘is there anyway of saying this without it sounding like pork rolls?’ – where we hired, and trashed, bikes, cycled the well-laid-out scrambling tracks all around the island, found brilliant beaches, clear warm waters to swim in and encountered Forrest Gump on the boat on the way home.  Another awesome day spent with friends by the Med.  Sadly though, this was our last day together.  As with everyone that has come out we have to say a HUGE thank you to Daz and Emma for taking the time to come and see us, for the fantastic laughs and for the lovely generosity you showed us.  I’m thinking here of our last evening together AND for all the washing up.  I hate the washing up… god damn bloody bubbles… We hope that everything goes really well for you.  You just know we’ll be making a trip a bit farther afield as and when..

So, lessons learnt we took the longer scenic route back to and beyond Marseille to its airport to drop Daz and Em off (Marseille ain’t no picnic to negotiate in the van either) through the hills and woods of Provence avoiding central Toulon and circumnavigating Marseille and bid farewell to our friends.  Helen and I had been in this region for a while (not complaining though) but both felt that is was necessary that we started to make tracks somewhere new.  Heading east thoughts turned to where we would spend the evening, to what excitement lay ahead, joy that we’d left Toulon behind forever but regret that the Creek of Cassis remained unconquered – how good was the swimming there that we’d missed out on?? 

As often happens when driving I found myself daydreaming, for some reason mostly thinking of nightmare scenarios that would never happen, ‘what if’ type thoughts.   One was ‘what if Dazzer or Emma had left a passport in the cabin and we had to drive the 2 ½ hours back to Lou Pantai, through Toulon again, glad that didn’t happen’….. ‘Oh shit babe’, ‘what?’, ‘I’ve left my bloody passport behind the reception desk at Lou Pantai’, ‘oh good’.  Van eventually turned around we had to drive all the way back, this being our sixth or so drive along this stretch of road and back through shitting Toulon again, in bloody rush hour, WHY!!??  I don’t even know where the beads that are in that sex shop window are supposed to go but I might just get them now.  Whilst sat in Toulon’s traffic I’ve noticed them steadily come down in price over the last few days.. could be a once-in-a-lifetime deal??

Lou Pantai, bless em, took the blame for the passport which was really really kind of them and insisted they should have given it back rather than me having to ask for it.  So they gave us a free night, dudes.  Dazzer via a text had also called the situation correctly, the gist being ‘man that’s shit, but you should go do the Creeks now’.  Good man, hadn’t thought of that. 

The Creeks of Cassis are one of those things you just have to do if you’re ever down here. They are spectacular.  Daz, Em, we are gutted to say that from the point where we were all together and decided we had to turn back we found out we were just twenty minutes from the first one (pictured below) and the second one was not much farther on. If it’s any consolation the one that we were going to head for together ‘En Vau’ was well over an hours walk (Helen and I making it much harder on ourselves by taking a 40 minute wrong turn on a ridge, in the heat, with big back packs on) and involved a very steep climb down shifting rock ground into a valley, not the best if you don’t like heights. Not sure you would have enjoyed it!?

After our long walk to En Vau we were slightly disappointed by the amount of people there but it was well worth it, really dazzling place this.  Although, despite being a hot day due the time we arrived and the narrowness of En Vau the sun was hidden just behind the top of the ridge. Never mind though, we’ll still swim, especially as there aren’t any people in that crystal clear blue water and we’re well hardcore after our gorge swim with Anna; ‘fu..fu..fucking hell, it’s FREEEEZING!!!’. My god was it cold, you got one of those ice-cream headaches if you swam more than a few strokes with you head under the water but we stuck it out and were rewarded with an incredible swim.

Our complimentary stop at Lou Pantai was followed by a further two free evenings. One was at a decent aire occupied by a load of cats, any number of which we would have taken with us (not a Hoxton amongst them though) and for the second we got back to proper free camping again by parking up right beside a canal on our own in the lovely town of Agde. France being France this was completely hassle free, they are waaaaay more relaxed here about vans parking up than anywhere else we have been and you can get some incredible spots. We couldn’t swim here, water not up to much but cest la vie (that’ll be the French coming along nicely..)

Next up was a campsite near the city of Narbonne set on a bay and in a natural park. Looked at lot like north Norfolk I thought, particularly Blakeney, so was therefore good for cycling on account of being mainly flat.  This place had the most aggressive mosquitoes we’ve ever come across though.  I had about four or five attached to my back at one point, in the daytime.  I put a top on to combat them but they just bit me through it, little buggers. This campsite was notable for two things. A brilliant pool designed for proper length swimming and individual camping spaces the size of tennis courts, obscenely and stupidly big. So much space you see, it’s all the spare land they have in France, they almost mock you with it; ‘ere izz your-a comping pitch, itz az beeg az your Bedfordshiez’.

Although we were a few kilometres from the coastline it was here that we finally let go of the Med for the foreseeable future and headed north and inland.  Helen (who always finds amazing things for us to do) had done some investigating into the best wild swimming locations that we want to seek out.  First up was Point du Diable on the Gorge de l’Herault just north of Gignac.  Our aire book listed a place in the town of Aniane just short of Point du Diable so we headed there.  Crikey, Aniane is a weird old town full of League of Gentlemen type characters but a cracking little place, probably.  There is a strangeness about it we that couldn’t put our fingers on that made it both off-putting and appealing.  It did stink of wet dogs and piss though, that didn’t help.  Proper alternative, squatty, traveller type town worthy of another future visit I think.

Anyway, when you start getting up into this region it all gets very impressive.  Needless to say Point du Diable didn’t disappoint and was a truly great swimming experience.  I won’t try and describe it but there is a picture below, the last one, which as good as it is doesn’t tell you the whole story, and we had a blast here.  We arrived early enough to be the first and only people here for our swim starting off in the large lake type pool, then up into the gorge and under the three bridges.  Not even the experience of having people way above on the bridges take pictures of us playing about in the water could spoil it, we agreed that it might even have made it a little better.. a great place to swim this.

From here we headed to another aire at Fraisse-sur-Agout in the upper Languedoc region, just shy of the Midi-Pyrenees area.  You have got to come here and drive this region, man it is incredible.  Spent the whole journey ‘look at that’, ‘wow, look at that’ - forests, rivers, lakes, gorges, big climbs, rolling hills incredible little towns.  We just don’t have anything like it really at home, not on this scale anyway. 

Fraisse-sur-Agout itself is nice, if a bit twee, but the aire was really good. It cost €7 but was worth it because it was right by a river, quiet and offered all of the facilities we (desperately) needed both having suffered a little ‘digestive trouble’ over the previous few days, leaving us err, a bit clogged up and not able to go to order as and when the opportunity arises, at campsites or supermarkets, like we usually do.  Oh yeah, life on the road man; Athens, Nice, Carrefour supermarket disabled bogs, seen all the sights.  Anyway, it was here at Fraisse-sur-Agout aire that my earth finally moved after a 3 day hiatus but that I then had to suffer the ignominy of a succession of teenage French girls on a field trip running out of the toilet that I’d used holding their noses and making puking noises.  Bang a gong, approaching 40, cool as ya like.

Our final destination of this blog entry was/is Cordes-sur-Ciel chosen for no other reason than it’s in the general direction of where we’re headed and is in a lovely area – I’ll leave Helen to tell you about this place though.

France, as we knew already but are discovering more and more, is absolutely stunning. It offers everything you could want if you’re active and like to get out and about and if you like peace and space from time to time you couldn’t place yourself anywhere better.  Huge big old vast bloody country, but just over the same population as back home, no one to be seen some days!  I think we’re going to like living here.

*Sorry Emma, couldn’t think of any other blonde antipodean lady!