2024 - a tad epic, somewhat rainy

As 2024 drains away down time's sludgy plughole the moment looms when it becomes impossible to resist the urge to reflect on the past 12 month's travels. Looking at the stats its been a year of second places. In terms of time, 168 days travelled comes up a little short of the 175 days we clocked-up in 2016. Similarly, we drove 10,157 miles, a substantial distance, but not quite as far as  2022's total of 11,681. 

However, we visited eleven different countries, the most in we've managed in a single year. Before I become too self congratulatory about this, I have to admit they are all places we've been to before, hardly in keeping with the mission we set ourselves at the outset - 'to visit new places'.  Nevertheless, although we didn't manage to visit any new countries there is always somewhere different to explore  even in familiar territory.

On our winter trip to Iberia we focused on revisiting familiar places in Spain. However, in Portugal we discovered an excellent inland campsite in the Alentejo which is open all year - most aren't. Markadia is located on a promontory surrounded on three sides by the Albufeira da Barragem de Odivelas. We'd headed there as it looked like an ideal spot for me to finally conquer standing up on my stand up paddle board. It looked to be in the middle of nowhere, we had no particular expectations about the place.

However it was far lovelier than we we expected. Idyllic in an quietly understated way. A simple campsite lost in nature frequented by people who just liked to stop and stare, A park-where-you -want kind of place where the only rule was you had to be at least 10 metres from your neighbour - designed for introverts - right up my street!

The only disappointment was my failure to stand up on my SUP!

I don't think we visited anywhere new in Spain, though in some senses any return visit has novel aspects. Although we had stayed before in the area autocaravanas on the outskirts of Mula, a small town in Murcia, we had never bothered to walk into the centre. It proved to be lovely. 

This unassuming place has one of the best small archaeological  museums we have ever visited. What makes it special is the well curated and exhibited artifacts from 'El Cigarralejo', an Iberian settlement from the pre-Roman era. Our knowledge of late Bronze Age and Iron Age Mediterranean peoples has been shaped by Greek and Roman writers who regarded other cultures of the time as 'barbaric'. Archaeology tells a more nuanced story.

On our way back to the van we crossed Mula's central square. The public space has recently been revamped. It was meticulously maintained - leading us to lament how public spaces back home are neglected and often  litter strewn.

We spent June on the west coast of France. Again familiar territory, pleasant enough but hardly spectacular. We are familiar with much of France, though some bits are lovely, most of it is quite tedious and becoming increasingly so. Like many first world countries France seems ever more commodified, its retail sprawl the most dismal we have come across outside of the USA.

Still, we enjoyed days we spent on the north shore of the Gironde around Blayes and Talmont.

The Ile de Re was crowded, a classic example of over-tourism Of course our photos tell a different story, snapping the only empty beach on the island complete with a characterful cloud. Maybe Noirmoutier would have been a better choice we pondered.

However, the few days we spent at Raguenez Plage then Brignogan Plages on Brittany's north coast, were delightful. Spring flowers and serious geology equals a happy Gill! 

Our autumn trip was shorter than usual because we had booked six week a long haul trip to the far east and New Zealand from November to mid December. Our plan for September was simple, some time in the Italian lakes, then down to Trasimeno and home via the Cinque Terre. Things did not go to plan, after a lovely few days camped on the shores of Lago Idro the weather took a turn for the worse. Cold and rainy to begin with, then the forecast worsened predicting damaging storms. 

We headed to the south of France, a good move as the north of Italy suffered devastating floods just days after we departed. However, in Provence we encountered another problem. The place was packed, it became a real challenge to find campsites and aires that weren't 'complet'. 

So we moved on to the Costa Brava - it was less frenetic but unseasonably cold and showery. Again we only photographed the sunny intervals, it's true the camera never lies but very few photographers seek the truth - what they want is a memorable shot.

So overall maybe it was not our most successful trip, but it had its moments.

Happily the forty days in November and December we spent in Japan, New Zealand and Singapore more than compensated. Seven flights, 21 different hotels and motels, a 1400 mile road trip around New Zealand's North Island, lots of opportunities for glitches, cock-ups, delays and cancellations. Happily the trip went to plan and the only glitches were minor ones - Gill inadvertently left a brand new linen shirt at one of the hotels; towards the end of the trip I overlooked our mini-cool-bag , gifting room service an inadvertent tip of four cans of Good George IPA and half a dozen bars of delicious Whittakers chocolate. So really a remarkably trouble free trip!

Not that the highlights of our Far East tour appear here. This blog is about motorhome travel, not long-haul. Maybe at some point I will upload a few of the 2500 pictures we took with a few comments to 'Mohofreedays'. My other 'blogspot' is more of a travel memoir than an active blog, somewhere that we keep record our occasional long-haul trips. 

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The beginning of the end.

Trips actually end when we park the van in front of our house, unload, , then drive it back to the farm on the outskirts of Buxton where it's stored. However, the beginning of the end happens much earlier, the moment when incontrovertibly we are homeward bound. More often than not it coincides with saying goodbye to the Mediterranean and turning northwards.

It is a valedictory moment that demands a symbolic act. Visiting Meze market seemed a good way to bid farewell. Every Thursday and Sunday the the big space in front of the market hall and the nearby square by the Marie are packed with stalls, some selling produce others bric-a-brac and terrible clothes. 

We bought some overpriced veg and a loaf that purported to be local. When we googled the name on the paper bag it turned out the bakery had a dozen or more outlets across Languedoc and the southern Auvergne, employed 250 people and was dedicated to supplying bread to many local markest. It raises the question how local is local. 

Still, Meze market remains a much loved  instutuon even if the people selling veg, meat and cheese aren't really local producteurs and half the non-food items look like they've been 'sourced' at Amazon. We'd hoped to get lunch from the Market Hall bar who usually serve up oysters and prawns from the Etang. 

For some reason food was not available. We had a drink anyway, Gill went for a local rosé, I decided on sparkling - water. My post viral taste problem forced me to go teetotal for the first time in 52 years. Over the last couple of months I 've managed a small glass of beer, more recently a spirit sizes shot of sherry. Sadly wine has a vinegary aftertaste, so here I am hitting the Perrier.

That's what we did yesterday. Today time to head north. It always makes me feel sad. This time we attempted to soften the blow by only heading 49km up the A75. 

Our original plan was to include a couple of stops at lakeside campsites so I could practice standing up on my paddle board. I can do it, but getting from a crouched position to upright still feels alarming and I need to practice the movement until it becomes normalised. 

At best the weather this trip has been unsettled, occasionally alarming. Our stay at Lake Idro was cut short when the van developed a leak and we needed to find a place that could repair it. We shelved our planned visit to Lake Trasimeno because storms were forecast. Cala Montgro was breezy and the swell in the cove too challenging for a SUP novice. It's all been a tad frustrating from my point of view.

So now we are here at Lake Saligou near Clermont l'Herault. It's a manmade lake in an area of spectacular red soil, it looks a little otherworldly.

We rented a house on the opposite shore in 2012, the area is not by the Med but close enough to enjoy a Mediterranean climate, which is a delightful thing - deep blue skies, sunny days, but breezy. From a distance the lake looked idyllic.

Up close it looked like this... 

 

Nobody was out on a paddle board, even the stalwart kite surfers found the conditions challenging, momentarily hydrofoiling across the lake like butterflies in a hurricane before falling in.

By evening the winds dropped a little, 17kph gusting to 26kph. I inflated my board, donned a wetsuit and headed out. Standing-up wasn't an option but it was fun just using the board like a kayak. Then it got squally, SUP's are light and currents and strong winds blow them about. I began to have difficulty controlling the board and became concerned that if I was blown into the middle of the lake I would not have the strength to paddle against the current back to the beach. 

I headed to a nearby cove and ran aground. It was a long way to carry the board back to the van but that seemed the safer option. Later, I googled SUP and wind strengths. The site recommended that beginners don't use their boards in winds stronger than 9kph, I had been out in more than twice that. What I needed was flat calm conditions to build my confidence up I decided. 

Next day we were due to leave the site before 11pm. When I woke the wind had dropped. I was back out on the water by 9am. However, it was still a bit choppy. Again I had fun using the board kayak style and paddled out into the middle of the lake, still I didn't have the confidence to stand-up, it's a mental block issue, I can do it but my brain says no even if there are the smallest of wavelets. Annoyingly two hours later as we drove out of the site Lake Saligou was like a mirror, a gaggle of standing up paddleboarders were out there. I can't see me getting back on the board until February when we are in Portugal. I had hoped that on this trip that I would have been able to get beyond the novice stage on the board, unsettled weather put paid to that. It's frustrating.

We are still at the stage of taking baby steps north, in denial that we have to be in Calais in just over a week's time. We headed to Millau. It's a place which we have observed over the past two decades transform itself from a dour looking upland bottleneck into a stylish, cultured town with a bit of a provençal vibe. 

Two things have contributed to Millau's makeover. The eponymous viaduct removed the traffic jams. Then some time late last century the drab looking concrete faced houses got colour washed in regulation Cote d'Azur ochres, terracottas and soft pinks.

We've seen this process of 'St Tropificaion' elsewhere. I've tried to find out a couple of times when exactly the fishing villages of the Cote d'Azur acquired their signature colouration. It's trickier than you might think, I haven't come across an article that directly explores the question. I would guess it can't have been before the mid-nineteenth, it was only then that developments in the chemical industry resulted in cheap pigments that allowed the mass production of coloured paints. When the pointillist Paul Signac visited St Tropez in 1898 his paintings reveal the waterfront houses were colour washed.

 

When we first visited the south of France the classic Riviera colour washed look tended to be concentrated in places near the coast. The towns and villages inland looked more dour, mainly dull concrete facades with the odd pastel painted frontage here and there. Then St Tropification spread, firstly in Provence then into parts of Languedoc. It's a nice thing.

We had no grand plans. The campsite we use in Millau is next to the Tarn and only a ten minute walk from the town centre.

We have a favourite café in Place Maréchal Foch, the food is nothing special but we love the location. The square lives up to every day-dream you might have about 'le Midi', cafe tables sunlight dappled, the square itself arcaded with a fountain in the middle. 

The town's primary school occupies one corner. The building is old, the front windowless with an ancient grand doorway. It looks a little forbidding for a place of learning for young children. At noon a gaggle of parents gathered outside to collect their kids. From benches dotted about the square a few of Millau's senior citizens observed the mid-day ritual. I sensed the familiar pulse of communal life, the moment exuded a quiet optimism, how small things can be uplifting in a troubled world.

The cafe's menu has evolved from last year when we ordered a well made croque monsieur with a side salad. The 'menu formule' was too much for us at lunchtime. It wasn't possible to go 'off piste' this time so we settled for two small salads off the lunch menu. As small salads go they were very big and somewhat random, a melange of ingredients thrown together without much thought about flavour combinations. 

Mine included a French attempt at spanakopita. Feta in filo packages was a bit Greek, but no herbs or garlic to make it flavoursome. Gill's salad was equally bland and the eggs with greyish yolks she left to one side. Nevertheless, it is a lovely spot to have a relaxed lunch.

Judging by the posters and graffiti the town seems quite left leaning and forward looking.

 

The modern developments are not horrible, just a tad over-styled. 

The place's post modern take on public seating was quite sculptural, better to look at than sit on.

And that's it, goodbye to the south. What follows next is a long drive home breaking all our self imposed rules about not making a mad dash for it. Experience has taught me that three days of driving with two stops is the longest I can manage easily before I need a two night stopover somewhere. To fit in a visit to Gill's sister in northeast France we are planning a six day drive home with five consecutive overnight stops. Why am I doing this to myself? I have no idea.

A patch of new fashioned charm

Camping Car Parks is a network of 500 motorhome aires, mainly in France, that you can pre-book using an app. It lists all the locations and how many places are available in each. The app isn't perfect but it has taken a lot of the uncertainty out of finding places to stay in France. Furthermore, their aires are well maintained so you have some guarantee that the water will be turned on at the service point and the chemical toilet emptying less of a biological hazard than in the free Aires established decades ago by local 'municipals'. They seem to have more or less given up maintaining them. This trip we stumbled upon an inadvertent advantage of the app. It provides an approximate indicator of just how busy an area is. If the Camping Car Park with forty places is listed as full, then the chances are the nearby campsites are going to be rammed too, So when the Camping Car Park at Meze showed it had a handful of places we upped sticks and headed for it hoping that the nearby municipal campsite at Loupian would be have space too.

It worked. We stayed one night in the aire in Meze, phoned the site at Loupian next morning and were settled in there well before the reception closed for lunch at noon. We did consider just staying put at the aire, however, though the surrounding area is a bit of a rural idyll the immediate environs are somewhat god forsaken. The Camping Car Park adjoins a municipal run outdoor leisure area established between two 'plan d'eau'. Typically French, but in this case the 'eau' has dried up in the 'plan' which is now a cracked mud lake bed. To give a slightly urban vibe to the dismal scene the motorhome parking area is adjacent to a graffiti daubed skate park of Olympic proportions. 

Judging from our fellow travellers, sixty plus French males' preferred retirement present to themselves tend to be petrol head orientated - either a gleaming 1000cc plus motorbike or a funky looking dune buggy. As they faffed about with the trailer to load or unload their boys toys  disconsolate spouses stood by clutching two crash helmets. 

When we turned up at the Loupian campsite it did have a few spare emplacement, but was much busier than we had ever seen it. Lots of caravans from Holland and Germany and next to us a British one. The couple from Devon were nearing the end of a month long stay. It was something they'd done regularly for years apparently. 

Caravanning versus motorhoming, they are fundamentally different propositions I think. Two tribes, with different expectations, preferences and attitudes. In our twenties it was the limitations of cycle tourism that attracted us, its less is more vibe. To some extent the same is true with a motorhome. Caravans do offer the possibility of home comforts on wheels. Our van may have leather upholstery, but basically it's just one step up from a transit van with a mattress in the back.

How long have we been coming here I mused. I looked it up, the first time was in late October 2014. The village of Loupian has changed in the last decade. On our first visit it was a bit of a backwater, beautiful, but somewhat decayed. A few of the village houses looked abandoned, including a couple of the big ornate mansions that were former wine makers properties. 

Each year we've returned things have developed a little. Now all the houses are occupied, there are more families living here, not just old folks. The village shops have reopened and the village's infrastructure and transport links improved. 

This year's innovation is a weekly produce market on Wednesdays, supplementing the larger ones that happen in nearby Meze every Thursday and Sunday.

I am not surprised the area around the Etand de Thau has become much busier. There's a lot to do and see around it's landward shore, places to sample oysters and local wine, a string of small ports all connected by bike tracks. The crusty old Mediterranean port of Sete is easily accessible by bike, bus or a ferry across the Etang.

Everytime we came we discover something new. Last year it was the flamingos that gather in the marshes beyond Meze. This year we turned off the bike trail to Balaruc les Bains to visit the village of Buzigues. It was delightful. 

There are still tracks across the marshes towards Marseillan that we have not explored, so I guess we will return again.

However, not in September probably. It is very busy now, vibrant rather than peaceful. The older I get the more I crave tranquility. 'The world is too much with us late and soon', Wordsworth observed, and he didn't even have to deal with Instagram or X.

Cala Montgro, while the world went mad.

I am not someone who gives up easily. I have determination, or as Gill sees it, I'm very stubborn. So it took an act of considerable will power for me to abandon our original plan to go to Lake Trasimeno and head for Languedoc and the Costa Brava, so even if that was going awry I was not open to be easily persuaded to change my mind again. 

We stayed two nights in Roquebrun-sur-Argens' sanatorium for the bewildered caravanner. It wasn't a total waste of time, we did some laundry while looking for somewhere else to stay for a few days near the Etang de Thau. Every site Gill phoned was full, as were all the nearby Camping Car Parks apart from the one at Remoulins near the Pont du Gard, it had a couple of free pitches. The app recently introduced a new feature wich enables you to book ahead, but it's an additional extra you have to pay for. We decided it was worth having, then booked in for a night and hoped for the best, as the messaging on the app seemed quite ambiguous. It does work though, there was one spare pitch free when we arrived mid afternoon.

Gill continued phoning around. The only site we found with space was one a couple of kilometres up the road next to the Pont de Gard. We stayed there in May 2018 on the way to Corsica, I remembered the place fondly, a nice informal wooded site that attracted a good mix of people. So we booked in. It was as I remembered it, a lovely spot among pine trees by the river, a five minute cycle ride from the famous aqueduct.

It's an easy going, relaxed kind of place with a calming atmosphere, just what we needed after days of driving on busy motorways. 

We unloaded the bikes and pedalled off to admire the bridge. 

It is spectacular, not just the structure itself but the sophisticated understanding of hydrology and topography that the larger system implies. 

Later I took an evening stroll down to the river. I got chatting to two young German women who were hauling their paddle boards onto the small shingly beach. I wondered earlier if I should inflate mine. They reckoned the river was so low that standing up was not an option as they kept running around. So probably it would not have been worthwhile, especially as a rocky stretch upstream means you can't reach the Pont de Gard itself on a paddle board. 'In a kayak maybe', they surmised.

The forecast for the next week or so in the Costa Brava looked promising. We decided to give up on the Languedoc coast, it was full, and head for Cala Montgro early, staying a few days in the area around the Etang de Thau on the way home later in September when some of the Cyrils and Mabels, Hans und Elkes, and Jans en Betjes decide to trundle northwards. The past week has been frustrating, but we made a good call, disastrous flooding in northern Italy is all over the news, more or less exactly where we would have been staying.

Illa Mateua campsite was busy but not heaving. How busy places have been has surprised us, but when we checked back through the blog we realised that we don't travel in early September that often and maybe the first couple of weeks of September is especially popular - summer warmth but fewer children on sites. This year our six week trip to Japan and New Zealand beginning in late October has forced us to travel earlier than usual. However, the Schengen visa rules have affected us too. We require a three month break somewhere in the year to 'reset' the visa 90/180 rule. November - January makes the most sense for us, we can have Christmas at home then head off to Spain in the last week of January on the ferry. The downside to this is it forces the starting date of an autumn trip back into the latter part of August as we need around seventy days to have enough time to explore the more distant parts of this Mediterranean, like Greece, Sicily or Sardinia. 

We don't like rushing about, though we just have in order to dodge the storms in central Europe and Italy To make amends we booked into the site at Cala Montgro for a week. 

It just slipped by. In the beginning we were happy to simply relax. We both were a bit off colour. Some minor bug we'd caught, possibly on the bus into Bologna where the artsy looking guy sitting across from us looked very 'pale and wan', coughing weakly as if cosplaying John Keats.

Cala Montgro is one of the most beautiful coves we know in the Mediterranean, developed on one side, natural forest on the other. 

Nearby l'Escala is a pleasant low rise resort, the area is easy to be in, somewhere we are happy to come back to.

One of the things I was looking forward to on this trip was getting beyond the novice stage on my paddle board, I know I can do it, but still find the act of standing up a bit alarming. I just need more time on the board to the point where being on it feels natural. Cala Montgro is sheltered and can be flat calm if it's not breezy. Sadly the one thing the weather isn't at the moment is calm. I did go out on the board, it was ok using it like a kayak, but just too choppy for me to have the confidence to stand up.

So we just mooched about, took walks along the clifftop path at the back of the campsite,

and wandered along the promenade by the beach.

The beachside restaurants aren't expensive, but they are places to have a meal rather than tapas. My taste is still affected by what I suspect is some sort of post viral problem. It has also supressed my appetite, so eating out is not quite the treat it used to be. Delicious snacks are a better bet, and luckily Spain's tapas culture makes one of the best places in the world for tasty morsels. 

'WAIKIKI', a cocktail bar near the beach opens six days a week from 8.30am to 2.30am, serving tosta style breakfasts until eleven then classic Spanish tapas plates from then on. We had lunch there one day and promised ourselves breakfast the next time we're back.

We keep returning to Cala Montgro because it's a particularly lovely spot with a laid back vibe. A place where it's easy to sense that life can be good. And it can be, but not for everyone. I have a habitual morning routine when we travel. Usually I wake up before Gill around 7.30am, get up and put the kettle on to make coffee. While waiting for it to come to the boil it is difficult to resist the temptation scroll through the BBC news app. The headlines are rarely uplifting but generally not particularly shocking either. Today they were. The news of Mossad's plot to maim and kill Hezbollah's commanders by booby trapping thousands of pagers and walkie talkies seemed scarely believable. It had the intricacy of John le Carré novel combined with fiendish ingenuity you get in James Bond movies. It really was a moment when truth seemed much stranger than fiction. It was only when my initial incredulity waned that I sensed the true horror of the act, state sponsored terrorism really, carried out mercilessly with no consideration on the impact on civilians including children. Why do Western democracies continue to supply arms to Israel when they use them to kill and maim civilians? The world does feel as if it is sleepwalking towards a horrible global conflict. I thought of the lines Auden wrote as a young man reflecting on the rise of Hitler, how prescient his anxieties turned out to be

"Soon, soon, through dykes of our content 

The crumpling flood will force a rent 

And, taller than a tree,

Hold sudden death before our eyes.. "