Bugs in the van, snake in in the grass.

There is a reason Camping La Gave is only €13.60 per night, it"s somewhat ramshackle and the facilities are basic. However, the owners are very welcoming and its position, next to the river and a short uphill stroll from the beautiful village of Sauveterre de Béarn make it a good place for an overnight stop.

It's odd how your reaction to places changes over time. I remember taking a photo of the war memorial in the centre of the village the last time we were here, about ten years ago. I felt the monument was crass and over-sentimental. However, today I was touched by it. At least it memorialises grief and loss, not the usual myths of sacrifice and the glorious dead. Everybody loses in wars, the victors and the vanquished equally. I can't be doing with all the British Legion poppycock, it will be good to be abroad this November as the centenary of the armistice will be even more ridiculous than usual.

The other thing in Sauveterre de Béarn that I missed on our previous visit was its church. I did not miss it literally, the monument is enormous, but I failed to notice just how beautiful it is. A great example of late Romanesque and early Gothic. The tympanum sculptures are unusually well preserved - Christ in Majesty, a more uplifting image than the Last Judgement scenes which adorn many other churches from the same period in southwest France.

The most popular tourist spot in the village is the old thirteenth century bridge below the walls. It was built as a toll bridge when the village was a stopping place for pilgrims heading for Santiago.

When we returned to the van we did another quick bug audit. Only two in the cab door jamb, I think we are winning here finally. The late afternoon light was beautiful. I grabbed the Canon and took a stroll along the riverbank hoping the DSLR would capture the colour more accurately than the camera phone. I've become quite lazy about taking photos. I used to make more of  an effort.

Walking back sometime caught my eye, a movement among the fallen leaves at the side of the path. A snake! The biggest one I have ever seen outside of a zoo, perhaps two feet long. Without getting too close I managed to photograph it.

After a bit of Googling I decided it may have been a juvenile western whip snake. Quite common and not venomous. I was pleased it was a young one, adults can grow up to a couple of metres apparently.

Tomorrow, onwards to San Sebastian. We are looking forward to the pintxos and if the weather continues to improve I might even manage a swim.

More bars than Amsterdam.

We are only here in Oleron Ste-Marie for its bars, not that the place is a party town, the bars in question are chocolate ones. We rented a house near here about ten years ago and came across the large Lindt and Sprüngli factory on the outskirts of town by accident. Back then the factory shop was a slightly scruffy looking place in an old warehouse. It mainly sold discontinued lines and bags of 'wonky' chocolate at a fraction of the usual cost. It was full of Spanish people raiding  from the other side of the mountains on a spot of chocolate rustling.

These days the shop is a much swankier place with a café and 'chocolate bar'. It has changed direction somewhat, now selling the standard Lindt offer at a discounted price rather than old lines and factory seconds.

We parked our bikes by the side of the shop and headed in for a bit of chocolate rustling of our own. After a few minutes of browsing I began to feel uncharacteristically jolly. Was it the waft of chocolate in the air hitting some deep seated pleasure spot in my brain, or is communing with fellow chocolate aficionados simply an inherently happy endeavour? Everyone seemed to be smiling.

Chocolate has to be one of humanity's more inspired inventions; as drugs go, it has few downsides and its pleasures are immediate, if a tad short lived. We bought about €30 worth of chocolate supplies. We will mail a few bars back to our kids to reassure them that we have not abandoned them entirely. The remainder will keep us going for months. We have managed to control our chocolate habit, limiting ourselves to one square each to accompany our after lunch expressos. Sadly, it seems we lack the discipline to apply an equally moderate approach to wine.

Our entire trip through France has been designed around our visit to this Lindt shop; otherwise we would have taken the coastal route like last year. We returned to the van for lunch, broke our own rules and had two small chocolates with our coffee, living on the edge here .. 

Next it was back to the bug hunt. Our war of attrition is beginning to yield results, after a quick reconnoitre of the moho's nooks and crannies, including the space above the pull-down bed folded into the roof, we only found six beetles skulking in the shadows. Yesterday there were dozens. I caught and released the stragglers, I really don't like killing creatures needlessly.

We thought we had better visit the town while we were here rather than merely raiding the chocolate factory. We decided to walk in this time. It was only a couple of kilometres. Oleron has that grey, slightly dour look of a mountain town. It reminded me of Jaça, which is directly south of here on the other side of the mountains. The older quarters of Oleron are quite substantial, with a ring of nineteenth century terrace houses encircling the medieval centre which straddles the confuence of two rivers, the Gave d'Aspe and the Gave d'Ossau.

I wondered where this Belle Epoque prosperity came from. Textiles, according to Wikipedia, not any old thing. The mills of Oleron Ste-Marie were the main producers of the classic Basque beret. As niche markets go, selling berets to the French at the beginning of last century must have been like striking gold. No hat making now, the main industries are chocolate bars and aircraft undercarriage, an odd combination, but both crucial in their own way. It's good to see a rural town with a thriving manufacturing sector.

We had a chat about where next. Time to head for Spain we agreed, but we had found an inexpensive campsite in the nearby village of Sallies de Béarn. One night there then off to San Sebastian we decided

A major spree, a minor swarm and other misadventures in France's South Yorkshire

The D339 wanders more or less directly south from Marmande to Oleron St. Marie in the foothills of the Pyrenees, a distance of about 150 miles. It's a second 'French Yorkshire' another attractive but needlessly extensive tract of flat countryside tucked away in the southwest, creating a pleasing, but entirely, spurious symmetry with the wheat fields of the northeast..

ever southwards, dead flat, dead straight...Gill tends to drop-off, but she must have been awake here...click!

Immediately south of Marmande we crossed the broad flood plain of the Garonne. Today the golden light of autumn bronzed the fallow fields. Leonard Cohen's line from 'Suzanne' occurred to me, 'and the sun pours down like honey'. The scene marked a moment of arrival, after days of driving southwards it was the point where I sensed that we had got there. We drove by a dun coloured farmstead shaded by a big umbrella pine. The fields beyond stretched away into the heat haze. Momentarily the landscape looked very Italianate, reminiscent of the eastern Po valley, or the broad plains of Puglia.

As we neared Les Landes, the countryside changed. More wooded now, we drove down avenues of golden leafed trees, the straight road creating a long vista which vanished into smudgy blue. Clumps of purple heather dotted the roadside and the bracken fronds were tinged with the browns of autumn. Under a bright blue sky it was all very beautiful. Sometimes travel is simply joyous.

It took longer than we had anticipated to reach our planned lunch stop, the E Leclerc hypermarket car park just off Mont de Marson's 'rocade'. The place was brand new, containing a big mall as well as the hypermarket itself, all swankily designed, a temple to the French obsession with 'le shopping'. It's difficult to understand how moderate sized towns can sustain such extensive retail sprawl on the outskirts yet their centres remain prosperous looking. Disposable incomes here must be higher than at home, I wondered if housing costs are lower. Conversations we have had over the years with people from Holland and Germany have led us to conclude that disposable middle incomes in those countries are higher than in the UK because house prices and rents are lower. Maybe it's the same in France. 

Whatever the reason, French hypermarkets only ever seem to get bigger. In a way their contradictions reflect France more broadly. The giganticism, uniformity and civic purpose reflect republican values, a contract between state and citizen. Though the scale of this particular retail monster, complete with a spectacular symmetrically designed central avenue leading to a majestic facade recalled Versailles - it seemed to aspire to majesty more than egalitarianism.

However, what it stocked, particularly in the food department, reflected a different France, a patchwork of unique localities nested within distinct regions. An area in the centre of the hypermarket had been cleared to showcase different cheeses. There were dozens of them, each a local speciality. French wine is characterised by similar localism too.

On our travels through France we have happened upon many examples of towns which have retained a speciality trade - Millau's haute couture glove makers, Pradelle's DOC Puy lentil producers and our visit to Neufchatel en Brey last year which happened to coincide with the annual cheese festival. The entire town turned out to celebrate the place's unique heart-shaped cheese Pride of place in the central square had been given to the local cows, prize specimens parked nose first into narrow stalls so townsfolk and visitors alike could admire the beasts' magnificent rear ends, particularly their spotless bright pink udders. 

We might find this mildly amusing, or a little odd, but cheese fest reflects the political structure of a centralised state linked to local institutions - a marie in each commune - a plethora of quangos promoting local products - localism celebrated through village and town festivals - all this gives France a solidity and shared identity that no longer exists in the UK, if it ever did. What we have seen in four decades of visiting France is incremental economic development enabled by a coherent, stable political system. Such centralism is an anathema to Brits, we don't like big bureaucracy, as recent events have shown. The final cost of our swashbuckling individualism is not yet clear, but it is worth reflecting that when politicians remind us that the future is bright because the UK's economy is the sixth biggest in the world, they tend to gloss over the fact that France's is fifth, and their population is a little smaller than ours.

On a more practical note, aside from my cockeyed attempt to re-imagine an E Leclerc hypermarket as a paragon of 'La Republique' our mission was simple, buy a baguette, use the loos in the Mall and have a quick lunch stop in the car park. However, life is never straightforward and a break that should have taken less than half an hour ended up taking over two.

Part of the reason was our own doing. We became hapless victims of IKEA syndrome. You know how this goes. Blithely heading into the store with the sole purpose of buying three LED light bulbs and some replacement cushion covers you emerge hours later full of meatballs, £210 poorer, trundling a trolley piled high with three different sizes of flat pack bookshelves called Billy, a new cover for an Ektorp sofa (50% off), a set of voille curtains and a random collection of plastic kitchenware with vaguely Nordic sounding names like - Mügins, Søftuch and Skint. Back at the car an animated conversation ensues concerning who should return to purchase the LED bulbs that you set off to buy in the first place.

Our visit to E Leclerc, Mont de Marson was a Gallic variant of the aforementioned retail meltdown. We went in for a baguette and a spray can of insect repellant but emerged an hour later with a 'chariot' looking like this.....

I suppose it's a fairly modest example of IKEA syndrome, nevertheless though the baguette and the bug-spray cost a mere €4.60, the final bill was more than twenty times that amount. The haul, as you can see, was mainly liquid in nature. The logic behind our minor spree was as follows. The van will be in Europe until next March, though we are flying home for Christmas. This means we must buy any French products we want now in bulk. This includes Lavazza Mattino coffee without which life is unbearable, available in E Leclerc at half the price than at home, and cheaper even than in Italy. A quick calculation - two scoops in the morning for our filter, then a Mocha pot full for expressos after lunch - we probably get through a 100g bag per week, so a four pack per month - we needed five packs to get us through the trip....

The same logic applies to beer. We are very particular about 'beer o'clock' - Leffe blonde 25cl usually, Goudale occasionally for a change (love the orange and coriander notes, but too expensive and strong as our everyday choice). The store had a buy two get one free deal on 20 bottle cartons. What's the point of having a cavernous rear garage if you don't use it? 

We even remembered the baguette and the bug spray. The latter purchase proved fortuitous. I mentioned yesterday that we had been inundated by brown flying beetles while parked overnight in the Marmande Aire. We are prepared for such moments, fully armed with an electronic bat that fries bugs, a swat for squashing them and spray cans to gas them. We had used all means to repel yesterday's attack, so much so that our chemical weaponry required replenishment. Sadly, as we unpacked our beer laden trolley it soon became apparent that the beetle swarm, far from being repelled, had simply gone to ground, hiding in the van's many nooks and crannies, and now as the afternoon warmed-up they re-emerged by the dozen. Gill, normally the most rational and level headed person imaginable, took this very badly, squealing every time she saw one and exiting the van at speed. Dozens crawled around the cab door jams, a small swarm appeared behind the fuel filler flap, the net blinds were covered in bugs. It was like a nightmare.

Luckily, unlike wasps or houseflies, our bugs were somewhat dozy, partly due to being armour plated, giving them the appearance of a thumbnail sized prehistoric monster. It was easy to pick them up one by one and squish them, but there were scores of them. I don't like killing creatures needlessly, but what other option did we have?

Finally, two hours and a half hours after stopping for a baguette and a spot of lunch we set off once more. It was a lovely drive from Mont de Marson towards the Pyrenees. The forested plain of Les Landes changed to more undulating country as we crossed into the Pyrenees Atlantique department. Soon it became positively hilly, the roads bendier and narrow at times. Old stone bastides clung to the hill tops south of Orthez. Occasionally grey mountains swathed in cloud appeared on the horizon. The area of the Béarn is a lovely bit of France, but little known. 

This should have made the drive delightful, but our thoughts were still focused on the ramifications of 'bug-gate'. Gill was feeling particularly doleful having come across a number of on-line accounts of motorhomes being reduced to piles of sawdust by the larvae of a particular species of brown flying beetle. The fact that all of these accounts seemed to emanate from over the Atlantic seemed to provide little in the way of consolation. For once I seemed the less catastrophically minded one. Nevertheless, I could provide no answer to the question, as how do we eradicate the little beasts from all the van's hidden spaces 

Lunchtime delays resulted in arriving bang on Oleron's Friday rush hour. The 'rocade' was packed with workers impatient to get home to start 'le weekend'. Sadly their progress was halted as students from the local college poured into the streets at the same time, heading for a dozen or so coaches which clogged-up the traffic even more. We edged through, camping 'Pyrenean Nature' was on the opposite side of town, it was destined to be a day of slow progress.

'Pyrennean Nature'  -  it's lovely...

Rarely do campsites get such glowing online reviews as Pyreneean Nature. The Acsi & Campercontact apps and Google maps all praised the place's generous pitches, excellent facilities and scenic location. It was all true, but we had little time to appreciate this as I crept about the van, electric bug-bat in one hand, insect spray in the other. Gill directed from a safe distance, 'There are two more on the skylight...one is crawling up the windscreen...have you checked the bathroom?' The hunt continued.

Towards Béarn

Continuing my mild obsession with the second letter of the alphabet our next destination is Béarn, a lovely, yet often disregarded bit of France centred on Pau. However, rather than drive 170 miles in one go we've planned to break the journey at Marmande, allowing us to call into a motorhome dealers about ten miles south of Bergerac to peruse leisure batteries.

In the event we balked at the prices - €265 for a 110 ah AGM type, €170 for a gel model with the same capacity. We think we will hang on for a few days and see how the battery manages before writing it off altogether.

South of Bergerac the D933 wanders through some low hills near Montbazillac. As you would expect the slopes are covered with carefully husbanded vines. It is one of those bucolic spots in France that oozes 'bien etre'. We passed a small road leading to a village called St. Abondance, - that figures, I thought.

Ther's wine in them ther hills

The Aire de camping-car at Marmande is in a large park on the edge of town outside the old town walls. It is very spacious and attractively situated in a wood. We suspect it is the old municipal camping ground redeveloped as a paid for aire. At €10.20 for 24hrs it is quite expensive, but EHU is free, the surroundings are pretty and it is an easy walk into the pleasant old town.

Marmande aire

The only downside is the place is infested with large evil looking brown flies, or perhaps flying beetles. Insects don't bother me but Gill is not happy at all, especially as I seem to have found an extra safe place to store the bug spray, but cannot remember where.

Lots of these - a swarm of them  really.

We walked into town stopped for our first 'deux noisettes' in the only busy looking cafe in the main square. Marmande looks quite prosperous, there's a big Michelin factory marked on our map and a shop had merchandise for the A380 in its window - maybe Airbus have a presence too.

Cafe time!

After wandering around for a while and staring at the ancient town walls we found a track across the park to the banks of the river Garonne. We scrambled down the sandy bank to a shingle beach. Among the pebbles were cockle shells. Are there freshwater shellfish? We have no idea - something to Google when return to the van. It transpired there are indeed many species of freshwater shellfish. Most are inedible.

Ancient walls..

The Garonne

Freshwater cockle shells?

We decided to get the Cadac out and BBQ the sausages we bouight at Bergerac market. They were ok, but a but under-seasoned and a tad 'dense'. Sausages in France are a bit hit and miss, some are tasty others bland, like these. The seared courgettes and peppers were good.

Right now we are sitting outside under the stars. It has been a beautiful day. From what we can tell the whole of Europe is having a spell of summer in late September. Even Buxton is a warm and sunny 18°; Sarah reports temperatures in the thirties in Lisbon, and here in the mid afternoon a pharmacy display showed 31°, though these tend be optimistic rather than accurate. We need to relish the moment, the warmth will not last forever, days are shorter and the leaves are turning; we are lucky to wander these southern roads during the long golden autumn that stretches into November. It's our fourth year of doing so; we know from experience though some days are glorious, there will be stormy periods too.

As darkness deepened Gill fired up her 'Star-gazer' app. We duly noted 'Vega conspicuous overhead'. Low on the northern horizon were four bright points of light. It was obvious what the one on the left was, it had a distinctly reddish tinge. The app confirmed it was Mars. This made the twinkling one to its right Saturn, the faint speck between them Pluto, and the bright planet peeking between the pine tree branches had to be Jupiter. A truly planetary experience. 

The BBC reported yesterday that this week is the fiftieth anniversary of the West End opening of the musical 'Hair', so I suppose it is appropriate to have our very own version of 'The Age.of Aquarius' unfolding overhead. When 'Jupiter aligns with Mars' was supposed to herald the age of 'peace and understanding; 'Then peace will guide the planets\And love will steer the stars' went the refrain. What we got was global environmental degradation, billionaire bankers and Donald Trump. New-agers have less ambition these days, thankfully they've abandoned clairvoyance and taken-up lactose intolerance and mindfulness instead.

Three Bs and Beyond

The first 'B''is for Bergerac where we are planning to stop for a couple of days. Again we experimented with a different route south taking a middle way between two usual routes, one of which heads through the Poitou Charente via Poitiers and Saintes, the other through Limoges and the Perigord. This time we headed for Anguoleme and Riberac. What do we think? Well, it's quieter than the other two, but some stretches of the D13 are narrow. As for the scenery, pleasantly wooded with occasional vistas over low rolling hills - attractive rather than stunning.

Bergerac is a pretty riverside town with half timbered houses and shadowy squares. The camping municipal is on the opposite bank to the historical centre. We have a great view of the Dordogne from our pitch , a peaceful scene mostly, occasionally animated by training sessions of the Sport Nautique de Bergerac located across from us. The beginners skulls group is particularly entertaining as they have not quite mastered rowing in a straight line yet. Either that, or they all drunk, there does seem to be a lot of whooping and shrieking.

Riverside pitch

Before lunch we walked into town. The food we brought with us is beginning to run low. After talking a few photos of the old houses we happened across the covered market, a contemporary steel structure designed to blend in with the traditional architecture around it. It was quite small, ten or so stalls selling local produce. 

Bergerac's old streets

The market hall is recent

This is what Buxton Market Square could do with we agreed. It's a tourist town, surely the demand is there from locals and visitors. As it stands the attempts to revive the traditional open air market are doomed by the rainy climate. Perhaps British people are insufficiently interested in locally sourced food, or maybe there are insufficient local suppliers.

This conversation kept us occupied while we bought items for lunch and entertained ourselves snapping examples of quirky French design, they are masters of the inadvertently naff.

Quircky duck ornaments

Truly ghastly statue of the town's most illustrious son - Cyrano de Bergerac.

By the time we were crossing the bridge back to the campsite around 1sh it had developed into a glorious early autumn day, deep blue sky, temperatures in the upper twenties, the trees beginning to colour. We must treasure these moments as it can be changeable at this time of year no matter how far south you wander.

So we had a relaxed afternoon by the van. We travelled 700 miles in four days to get here, much of it on 'D' roads which take extra care to drive on. We can sustain an average of 150 miles per day and feel ok, more than that and the driver becomes grumpy.

Long junch

'Beer o'clock with a view

Later I took the opportunity to take my second 'run'. I have downloaded the BBC app. 'Couch to 5k' which purports to be able to gently lead couch potatoes from sofa to a five kilometre run over a period of nine weeks. We shall see. I am still at the self conscious 'I feel bloody ridiculous' stage as I wheeze along, but I suppose I will get over that.

Evening on the river

Back to the question of Bs. Two more - battery buggered! We are not sure, but twice on the way down while wild camping the leisure battery has drained in the morning. This van has a single battery whereas the previous one had two. Still, given we have solar power we don't think it should run out of juice like this. The results - much Googling about leisure batteries - gel or AGM, 'amp hours', deep cycle versus dual use... the extent of our ignorance is spectacular. We have found a moho dealer service centre near Bergerac airport, maybe on the way to Marmande tomorrow we will take a look. The question remains, is our leisure battery completely buggered, or just a feeling a little elderly?

A pocket guide to French Yorkshire

Though Gill and l grew-up in the Northeast, we spent our entire working life in and around Manchester and the Peak District. Visiting relatives always meant a trip through Yorkshire. Over the years we came to appreciate the 'White Rose' county's charms, its prosperous looking villages, handsome Georgian market towns and mighty cities, both industrial and historical. Nevertheless, like Christmas pudding, Gary Lineker or 'Strictly', it is possible to have too much of a good thing. As we trundled up the A1 from Doncaster to Darlington the we were often assailed by the thought, Yorkshire may lovely but why is it so big? The place could be easily shrunk by a quarter and lose nothing of its charm.

The same thing is true of France, though the country's topography demands judicious cosmetic surgery rather than shrinkage; midriff reduction is in order. The area we dub 'French Yorkshire' is a seventy mile wide prairie belt that stretches from Chaumont in the east for almost 250 miles to Chartres in the west. There is no way to get from Calais to the South without crossing this brain-numbingly tedious tract of cereal crops, a fact the travelling Turpies bewailed at least twice a year as they sped towards the Med each Easter and Summer. 'Who needs all this,' we asked, 'isn't there supposed to be a wheat mountain?'

Talking of mountains, Auden observed that seen from a distance they appear as a 'wall', but up close 'turn out to be a world of their own'. Plains are the same; seen from above they seem flat as a pancake, however, when traversed, they become patchworks differentiated by clumps of woodland and small river valleys. In the case of 'French Yorkshire' the eastern end is the most prairie-like, the western fringes bordering Normandy more undulating and pastoral.

Thankfully it was the latter route we followed yesterday, south from Sées through Alencon and across the Loire at Tours. After two grey, stormy days it lifted the spirits to see the sun. Though driving was hard going due to the plethora of roundabouts that dot French 'D' roads, the route itself down the D438 was lovely - a mixture of shadowy avenues and wooded valleys with ancient villages, each with a ruined 'donjon' guarding an ancient river crossing. It's classic soft September weather, as Wordsworth described it, 'An autumn day with silver clouds and sunshine on the grass.'

Whereas last night we lodged somewhat un-romantically in an Intermarché car park, tonight's stopping place conforms more accurately to a stereotypical vision of La Belle France' - a charming nowhere in particular. Tonight's particular nowhere happens to be La Celle St Avant, about 50 kilometres south of Tours. The village's archectural highlights are two giant concrete grain silos that are so big they are marked on our Michelin road atlas. However, the Marie of this patch of ordinary France had the nous to develop the nearby 'plan d'eau' into a small country park complete with concrete picnic benches, a jogging track and a Aire de camping-car with a service point and electrical hook-up. We've taken a pleasant stroll around the lake, admired the sunset, swapped pictures of our super-moon with Sarah's in Lisbon. France is full of simple pleasures; place and community still matter here.

It is important to remember these small pleasures because sometimes France can be infuriating. Frequently we talk about becoming 'Frenched-out' and get irritated that a 700 mile drive through it always lies between England and the delights of southern Europe. Hence our wishful thinking about a geographical nip and tuck. However regular practice has revealed numerous routes south across the boring wheatfield bit. The rule of thumb is, the further west you go the more undulating the landscape becomes. Maybe this route south on 'D' roads from Rouen to Tours is the most attractive we've found so far.

The alternative is to hit the autoroute and go as fast as you can. These days we can't justify the extra fuel consumption and expensive toll charges, though 'l'autoroute de soleil' was our preference when we were in work with more money but less time. Most importantly, never attempt a lateral journey east to west across France's inland sea of wheat. We tried that once on the way back from Germany. The effects of a whole day of cornfield voyaging was so traumatic we were inspired to make a short video of the experience in the style of a public information film. It's important to for all British motorhomers to watch it as it serves as a warning to anyone tempted to linger too long in France's Sargasso Sea of wheat.