Cotes de Blaye and beyond

Our plan had been to head north from Lacanau to the tip of the Médoc then take the ferry across the Gironde to Royan. In September 2017 we did the opposite, heading south, making a sentimental stop-over at le Gurp to revisit somewhere we had stayed on our first road trip to France in the early 1980s. However, these days nostalgia is something we consciously try to avoid. The older we get the less time we have, so why waste it looking backwards? Embrace the moment! Which in this case means heading back to Bordeaux and travelling up the northern side of the Gironde, somewhere we had not visited before. Our other antidote to ageing - do different stuff!

The decision paid off, the landscape of the northern bank of the estuary is significantly different to the opposite one. The gravelly soil of the famous vineyards on the south side of the estuary is one of the things that give the vintages of Paulliac and Margaux their unique character. Are they still regarded as the pinnacle of world viniculture?  I have no idea, but what is certain they remain among the world's most expensive tipples.  

We were heading for the old wine port of Blaye, centre of the Bordeaux appellation 'Cote de Blaye'. In fact the area has been renowned for wine production since the Middle Ages, long before its more famous cousins across the water. Just looking at the landscape hereabouts you can tell the wines will be different. The Medoc may produce highly sophisticated wines but the flat landscape looks thin, scrappy almost. The countryside between Bourg and Blaye is gently undulating, very green and fertile looking, a mix of vineyards, cereal crops and pasture, a veritable land of plenty.

The aire de camping-cars at Blaye is run by the local authority. It's one of the best designed we've come across with big pitches, wide access roads making manoeuvreing easy and a service area where the drains actually drain. Hallelujah!

It's prettily positioned too, on a low hill overlooking the broad estuary and next to a swanky looking winery at the Chateau Marquis de Vauban. It too has a motorhome aire and offers wine tasting and tours of the vineyard. The cheapest wine on offer was €12.50 per bottle so failed to meet the third third condition of our wine buying criteria - interesting, delicious but inexpensive!

It was a ten minute cycle into town along a smooth but unmetalled track by the shore. It was pleasantly wooded and passed below old cliffs which must mark the ancient river bank. A big Vauban fortress sits atop the cliffs, with another on the opposite shore. Just for good measure on a small island in between the two on the somewhat oddly named Isle Paté there is a third fortress, all constructed in the 17th and 18th centuries. Clearly the various Louis of the time were paranoid about defending Bordeaux.

We locked the bikes near the entrance to the fort, opposite the tourist office. The Vauban defenses in Blaye itself are so extensive you can't actually capture them in a single photo. 

It was Sunday afternoon, the town was sleepily quiet with just a few tourists wandering about. We spotted an ice cream shop. So had everyone else. We formed a confused gaggle around the counter, it's the nearest thing you get in France to a queue. 

Service was painfully slow but we weren't in a hurry. Eventually we got served and tubs in hand headed off to find a seat. We caught up with the rest of the ice cream gaggle who were occupying some bench seats next to fountain in a small public space opposite the Mairie.

Blaye's an attractive place we decided. Beyond the shopping area there is a less frequented area of eighteenth century mansions and wine merchants houses which testify to the town's former preeminence as a wine exporting port.

These days the area looks slightly unloved, a half forgotten backwater. It was quite confusing too, a bit of a maze, but we ended up back at the riverside eventually, but not quite where we expected.

 A Sunday 'brocante' was winding down in the scruffy park by the river. Google translate defines 'brocante' as a 'flea market', this one looked more like a car boot sale.

 Beyond the park we reached Blaye's river port. A queue had formed for the ferry across the Gironde to Lamarque in the Médoc.

 

It was a small boat, however there was one coach built motorhome in the line. I checked the notice board, it seemed vans and motorhomes up to 3.5 tonnes were allowed - the cost €37. Using it would have saved us an hour or so driving and avoided the Bordeaux rocade. Splitting hairs, our moho would have been a tad overweight at 3.7 tons, but actually it's not obvious, our van looks identical to all the other C-class 7m motorhomes mostly badged at 3.5 tonnes. The only time this became an issue was at the toll booth for the Store Baelt bridge in Denmark. The jobsworth at the barrier insisted we present our V5 document and then charged us €80 - the rate for a small truck. Also, next May it's going to be an issue once again when I have to re-apply for my driving licence. In order to retain the C/C1 vehicle categories I will need to pay to have a medical form completed by a doctor. 

Next day we drove 65kms north west towards the mouth of the Gironde, staying at an aire de camping-car in the marina at Meschers-sur-Gironde, a small port a few kilometres from Royan. Gill had found an interesting cycleway from here through the 'marais' to the village of Talmont. The place was marked with two stars on our Michelin road atlas indicating it was of significant historical interest.

I have a thing about estuaries, the emptiness of their marshlands and mudflats, the big skies and ever changing silvery light, how they look entirely different depending on the tide. Perhaps the Gironde is Europe's largest, I wondered. I couldn't off the top of my head think of a bigger one. The continent's bigger rivers tend form deltas - the Rhine, Rhone, Danube and Ebro. 

The shoreline between Meschers and Talmont is dotted with unique wooden structures built by local fishermen. Basically they are big fishing huts on stilits with an enormous nets attached to a crane at the far entrance of the pier. At high tide the nets are lowered into the water, as it ebbs fish are trapped in the big net and at low tide the fishermen winch in the net - et voila! A big catch without the need for a boat. Some of the structures are stiii in use, most were somewhat picturesque wrecks.

We arrived at Talmont. Maybe the stars on the Michelin map should have alerted us the the fact the place might be a tourist trap. It has been graced with the title of a 'tres beau village de France' - Rocmadour, Mont St Michel, Pont Aven, Eze, we've been to a few! We know what to expect, ghastly craft shops, over-priced restaurants, over restored traditional buildings. It is what it is, after all nobody in England would head for Bourton-on-the-Water, Robin Hood's Bay, Grasmere or Bakewell and expect to find authenticity.

Like all these places the ancient centre of Talmont is traffic free, however it's the first time we have been instructed to leave our bikes in the car park. The jobsworth was friendly, but insistent. 

Talmont has an Romanesque church by the river but otherwise is a pretty, but architecturally unremarkable place - a grid of low whitewashed cottages.

 

It is very flowery, specialising in two metre high avenues of hollyhocks, enormous rose bushes, scattered among alleyways packed with craft shops and cafes.

One of the small squares had an enormous lime tree in the middle of it. 

It's the setting that gives the place it's particularly charm, otherwise it's just another soul-less tourist trap. I became unbearably smug after Gill asked how old I reckoned the church was. "Looks late eleventh century to me," I ventured. Google supplied the foundation date - 1085. Thank you to Dr Alexander who delivered the Early Medieval module at Manchester University in 1974, I still remember the basics half a century later! I didn't take a picture of the whole church - just one of a scary looking gargoyle. 

Gill had wandered off by this time to admire some low limestone cliffs to the south of the village. At least geology has no designs upon the observer, unlike state sponsored art which, in the case of the Romanesque basically was designed to subjugate and terrify the populace through politicised religious propaganda.

When we got back to Meschers we decided to check out a well reviewed café by the fishing port that had a tapas menu. It was closed, as were all the other cafes, except one. The place had odd low slung seats, like normal stainless steel and wicker café chairs but with sawn-off legs next to low tables. Despite them being uncomfortable and problematic for over sixties to actually get up from we persevered. 

We ordered 'deux demis but were served two 50cl beers and were charged €13.50. Maybe that's the going rate, we don't go out for drinks very often. The waiter was spectacularly off-hand and rude. It's France, it happens, we are more used to Hispanic and Italian hospitality, but we know France well so  should not get irritated by the fuck you attitude. But I do, and did.

 

 

Never mind Frap, what about Framba?

We've moved about 50kms north of Cap Ferret and are now booked-in for a few days at Camping le Tedey on the shores of the Etang de Lacanau. Google Translate defines 'etang' as pond in English. However the pond we are parked next to is considerably bigger than Windamere, the largest lake in England, so it seems to me that in French a 'pond' means something different than in English, or at least it has a more specific meaning. The French seem to use the term to describe any body of water that forms as a sump in a wetland irrespective of its size. We do have an English equivalent - the meres in Cheshire - but then we also apply this term to lakes formed glacially such as Buttermere or a reservoir like Thirlmere, which all goes to show that one of the glories of the English language is its innate approximation - the result of centuries of making it up as we go along. 

The reason we are here is to hone my skill, or more accurately, reduce my incompetence as a stand-up paddle boarder. Gill has a a more positive take on this, pointing out that I am very good at paddling it's just the standing-up bit that is proving somewhat challenging. 

Camping le Tedey  proved to have qualities we hadn't quite bargained for. It's enormous, with almost 500 pitches scattered amongst the pine trees, including hundreds of mobile homes and safari tents. In high season it must be a hell-hole - packed out with over-excited French families en vacance. All adolescents are irritating but none quite so as French fourteen year old boys.

At the moment the site is fairly empty. It would be spookily so but for the management's strategy to fill the place by offering themed events outside of July and August. Our arrival coincided with a Brazilian weekend hosted by a Bordeaux based dance academy. The site had fixed up two dance floors, one in the aerobics area tucked away behind reception and another larger one covered by a canvas roof near the lakeside Sunrise restaurant. Both had sound systems that could have graced the Dance tent at Glastonbury.

The order of the day seemed to be morning and early afternoon Latin dance coaching sessions followed by an opportunity to take to the floor and strut your stuff. We know this because the pa systems were set at a volume that ensured we could hear all the goings-on clearly. However it was not too intrusive as we were a few hundred metres away from both venues. Practice sessions used prerecorded tapes, we recognised a couple of songs by Jorge Ben, which always guaranteed to raise the spirits.

The small beach that I used to launch my paddle board was next to the larger of the two dance venues. I didn't see much of the activity as I was concentrating very hard on staying upright. but I could hear the music. It was provided by a duo consisting of an accordionist and a drummer. They played along to a backing track with a distinctly Gallo-Latin rhythm. It was syncopated enough for the dancers to salsa or samba away but the accordionist was quite unable to shake off his cultural roots. The melody sounded like the kind of off-the-peg effort you might find in a late Fifties Ealing comedy set in Montmartre. I added bad Gallic Latino to my inner catalogue of terrible French pop music. If French rap is 'frap' then frangled Samba becomes 'Framba'..

The dancers themselves seemed happy enough. They weren't exactly 'Strictly stars' but they were not novices either. There was something rather fetching seeing them salsa away in the sunshine, a couple of dozen couples - a complete mix of ages, shapes and sizes, black, white, straight, gay - don't be so cynical I told myself.

What is undeniable is they had reached a stage of competence that I could only dream about so far as my attempts at paddle boarding were concerned. I have become more confident and there is a picture of me standing up, but actually I had run aground, so that doesn't really count.

After a while I was joined by another paddle boarder. He looked to be in his sixties too. He had fixed a fabric seat to his board which turned it into a kind of flattened kayak. When I Googled this later it turned out to be quite a common hack and the kits to do this are easily available on Amazon. It's a thought but I am still determined to manage to learn how to stand up.

Back on shore the dancers had gone home. Gill had been befriended by a stray collie dog. All he wanted was to find a human to throw a stick into the lake for him to retrieve. So we obliged.

Next day we took a morning walk along the lake shore. The campsite is extensive, partly because it is wrapped around a big tract of partly forested  old dunes. 

It doesn't take long at all before you feel completely away from it all, just you, the forest and the mirror still lake

Eventually the path reached the area near the site restaurant. The pitches around here have small wooden huts on them, we wondered what they were for. A French woman called me over to ask if I knew how to turn on the gas cylinder on her stove. In the end I managed to do it and in the process  solved the mystery of the little huts. 

They contain a small camping kitchens with stove, cooking equipment, a fridge and coffee maker. It means people under canvas don't need to bring camping stoves with them and it makes the wooded site much safer because all cooking equipment and gas cylinders are contained within the huts. 

Next day my plan was to continue my quest for verticality. We have we worked out a much easier method of getting the awkward 10' board from our pitch to the beach about 400m away. By strapping the end to our folding trolley we can trundle the thing there rather than lugging it by hand. Sadly there was a downside.

 

Somehow the removable rear fin that stabilises the board must have fallen off when we trundled it back yesterday. It's not a disaster, it's a standard SUP component and available on Amazon for about £10. However, replacing it will have to wait until we get home which puts the kibosh on any further attempts to stand up on an SUP.

Has it been fun at Camping le Tedey? I guess so. Would we come back? Probably not. Maybe the same is true about the south west coast of France generally. 

Its big beaches and opportunities for 'fun in the sun' make it a great area to come with kids. Other places such as northern Italy, Denmark, or the Costa Brava I think are our preferred late Spring destinations. They are a little further but Denmark is welcoming whereas France is somewhat 'sang froide'; Italy and Spain are alluring too - the Mediterranean in late May and early June is gorgeous. Then there is the ferry to northern Spain, we are due a return visit to Galicia and the area around Porto. All preferable to France, I think. "Not more baguette and cheese for lunch!" I groaned. We declared  ourselves officially 'Franced-out'.

Sea of green

Our campsite is situated in the forest behind the long line of dunes that stretch all the way from the Gironde' estuary to Bayonne, a distance of about 220kms.

The beach is about 500 metres away, but a stiff climb over the dunes. From the top -  westwards there is nothing but the emptiness of the ocean,  pale grey today under a steely sky. Turn east and you find a sea of green, the vast pine forests of the Aquataine littoral spreading out as far as the eye can see. 

How big is the forest, I wondered? Google came up with an area of 10,000 square kilometres. It's difficult to envisage this without resorting to  spurious comparisons - slightly smaller than Yorkshire, half the size of Wales, four times the size of Luxembourg, so big you could fit six cities the size of London into it. On a world wide scale that's not enormous compared to the Amazon or central African rainforests, but what makes this forest so remarkable is it entirely the product of human intervention, there is nothing wild about it whatsoever. Created in the latter years of the nineteenth century it must count as one of humanities biggest feats of geo-engineering.

We are staying on Cap Ferret, the narrow Peninsula that separates the big Bassin d'Arcachon from the Atlantic. It's the only inlet on the ruler straight coastline between the mouth of the Gironde and Bayonne. 

Cap Ferret is hardly undeveloped, but the tourism is low-rise and consists mainly of chalet style villas among the trees. One of the reasons we are here is that the forest has hundreds of kilometres of cycle trails most of them well surfaced and clearly signposted. We agreed that after the wet Spring in Derbyshire where we had not been on our bikes at all we would take it easy - some short gentle pedalling to get our cycling legs back. 

The strategy failed completely. On the first morning we planned a trip of a couple of kilometres towards the Bassin's shoreline. It proved slightly difficult to get down to the waterside, the shore is often inaccessible, hidden behind private villas or lined by oyster beds that are fenced off.

So we decided to cycle along the tracks through the forest up to the lighthouse at the end of the promentary. It too was hidden behind locked gates. 

There was a public beach nearby. From it you got a great view of the Dune de Pilat that rises up above

 the south shore of the bassin. At 106m it is the tallest sand dune in Europe. 

After lunch we explored the cycle tracks to the north of the campsite. You might think that a route through a giant pine forest might be monotonous. It's true, the tracks do wend their way through seemingly endless plantations of fir trees, but they cover old dunes so the ground undulates. Moreover, the pines are are not set in serried rows and have been under-planted with shiny leafed evergreen shrubs. 

So it's peaceful and calming to cycle through the forest, occasionally glimpsing a sunlit glade, especially as there are so many tracks to choose from they're uncrowded. Solitude comes in short supply these days, it's easy to forget just how sustaining a simple bit of peace and quiet can be.

Next day, a repeat of yesterday, with the added pleasure of discovering a really good boulangerie about a kilometres away, again down a lovely track through the forest towards the bassin at Piraillian.

Another simple delight - Camping le Truc Vert was full of small birds sparrows, green finches and Chaffinches. They all had worked out that the humans camping in the forest provided a ready food supply. The sparrows and green finches arrived every time we ate outside, but they were wary kept their distance. Not so the chaffinches, they were fearless, hovering momentarily like hummingbirds beside our table seemingly signalling 'look at me, I need food!' 

When this did not produce the desired result our new feathered friend simply landed on the table to help himself. There is a thin line between 'very cute' and 'bloody annoying'.

So, we will recall our few days camping here in the forest with fondness. It's pleasing when a place proves unexpectedly lovely. However, all this loveliness came at a cost. When Gill checked Google Fit it noted we had cycled 68km in the last two days. I ache more or less everywhere. 

Another 27 days of France

Last sentence from the previous post - 'the clocks have changed, the evenings are longer, we have 28 Schengen days left....where next?' Having written a novella length diatribe on the weirdness of the French, guess where we are now? Of course, halfway through day 5 of 27, camping in a lovely wooded site beside l' Etang de Lacanau in southwest France.

How did this happen? It's all about our dwindling ration of Schengen days. For most working people the thought of being to take 28 days holiday on a whim must seem like a dream, it is fabulous. However touring by motorhome though liberating has limitations too. Practically speaking it's challenging to cover more than 300kms per day, I prefer to keep it to under 250kms. To get to the Gironde coast I drove for four consecutive days, but I felt exhausted by the time I arrived at Cap Ferret. Age is catching up with me, I probably should take a break from driving after three days. This means that in a month long trip, if we wish to have a couple of  weeks based in one area then the south of France, Costa Brava, Italian Lakes or Cinque Terre are possible at a stretch. We wondered about green Spain, but at £1400 return the Bilbao or Santander crossing is too expensive. 

So we've opted for a more modest plan heading first to the Gironde's Atlantic coast then back via the Ile de Ré and Brittany. The Roscoff crossing will take us home through Cornwall so we can revisit the Eden Project. Of course all of this is to studiously ignore more northerly areas of the near continent - Holland, Belgium or Germany. We have toured here, undoubtedly there are interesting places to explore - the Meuse and Moselle and Ardennes for example. However, I think we just have to accept that we prefer southern landscapes and Europe's Atlantic fringes. Belgium may have many admirable qualities, soulfulness is not one of them!

In our quest to find the simplest way to escape the UK by motorhome we have used a bewildering variety of routes and departure times. The problem is that, unless you use a longer sea crossing, London and the M25 loom like a big blot  between Buxton and the continent. 

Perhaps the route we used for this trip is the most straightforward. So long as you leave around 9am you will get to Newhaven in plenty of time for the late afternoon departure for Dieppe. 

The ferry arrives at 10pm French time and there is a well organised aire de camping car beside the port, no more then a couple of minutes from the exit. 

Next day we headed south stopping at a Camping-car park a few kilometres  beyond Le Mans. It was located in the camping municipal which was closed. Reviews on the app mentioned it had been flooded the previous week. It all looked a bit forlorn. Onwards, splashing the cash on the autoroute hoping to make rapid progress and incurring over €60 in tolls in the process. 

Our next stop-over, just off the N10 south of Angoulême at Roullet Sainte-Estéphe, was more characterful than the previous one - a free municipal aire next to some beautiful water meadows. The surrounding area had been developed as a green space for the local community. Overlooking the area was a recently constructed residential rehabilitation centre complete with therapeutic pools and a gym. The rooms on the first floor had balconies that overlooked the meadows. In comparison with other countries in Western Europe there is no doubt that the NHS now seems very old fashioned and somewhat disfunctional offering Kwik-save healthcare. 

We walked into the village. It looked typically Charantais, the grand old houses built of pale stone  with sun-bleached louvred shutters the colour of washed-out denim. A couple of reviews on the Search for Sites app mentioned a good local boulangerie. We bought a couple of cakes and a quiche. They were good, no soggy bottoms! It was a good traditional boulangerie, once ubiquitous, now more rare. 

The owners may have been good old fashioned French bakers but they were not averse to embracing modernity. The shop had a big automatic baguette dispenser that served bread 24/7. The baker was re-stocking the machine while we in the shop. It was late afternoon so I guess the bread would be perfectly edible until after midnight.

This was not the only example of 'cuisine robotique' in the place. An automated pizza machine was situated just across the road. We've noticed these by the side of the road in passing recently but never managed to examine one close up. 

The pizzas range from €10 - €13 depending on the number of toppings you choose. You can buy them cold to warm up at home or the machine will do it for you for a couple of euros more. Some of the flavours like BBQ beef or curried chicken would make an Italian have a nervous breakdown. 

Gill  WhatsApped a photo of the machine to our offspring - "You should have tried one," Sarah commented. Perhaps purely out of curiosity we should have - another time maybe.

 

Next morning we walked back to the boulangerie to buy bread for lunch and a couple of croissants hot breakfast. When we returned the moho next to us was being winched onto the back of a big transporter. It was a similar C-class Burstner Ixeo to ours. As we passed we sympathised with the owner as she watched her 3.5 ton bundle of joy being carted off. They are not called motorhomes without reason. I would feel quite bereft if this happened to us. As for the owner she managed a rueful little smile and a very big gallic shrug - c'est la vie....

So we were pleased  that today our vvissictitudes  were merely minor annoyances. We were making good time towards Cap Ferret until we discovered the Pont d'Aquatiane over the Garonne was closed. This meant we had to go clockwise around the Bordeaux rocade adding-on an additional 45 minutes to our journey. Still, we arrived by early afternoon with the driver feeling happy at the prospect of a few days of staying put.

So here we are in Camping Camping Sandaya le Truc Vert situated in a beautiful pine wood with the endless dunes and beaches of the Atlantic a 700m stroll to the west and the oyster beds of the Bassin d' Arcachon a kilometre or so to the east. It was a tiring four day drive to get here, expensive and tedious in equal measure because we used toll motorways much of the time.

After we pitched up we took a stroll  through the forest and over the dunes. The endless beaches of the Aquataine coastline stretched away to the south and north. 

Inland the pine forests seem to go on forever, they look as if they always have been here, but in fact they are entirely man-made, planted in the late nineteenth century to prevent the vineyards of the Médoc being destroyed  by dune creep.

The campsite looks good, the weather forecast is fine and the area has lots of cycle trails to explore. 'All good' as Gill is wont to say.