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.