We first went to France in the summer of 1977. It was my first visit, Gill had been before as a teenager on family holidays. Is there a year since then when we haven't taken a trip across the channel? I can't think of one, and in most years we have made multiple trips, not just for holidays but also to visit Gill's sister who lives in the north near the Belgian border, as well as a few emergency booze cruises back in the day during February half-term to stock up on wine and beer.
I guess we were a bit starry eyed about the country at first, observing the place through a Peter Mayle inspired rosy glow. Some of our colleagues bought second homes the the Vendée, Poitou Charente or Le Midi for very little, we were tempted but never quite had the means to do it. Still, we had great family holidays camped out in the sun and we loved the outdoorsy existence, the inexpensive wine, the beautiful, uncrowded countryside and the gorgeous beaches of Les Landes, Gascony and Corsica.
Towards the end of the last century France changed, and so did we. It happened quickly. I remember visiting the Dordogne in the mid Eighties, perhaps the town was Argentat, it was very beautiful, but somewhat rundown and ramshackle, conforming to every Francophile stereotype you can imagine - sunbleached denim coloured shutters and Deux Chevaux, mossy cobbled streets, a rusting pissoir, the stench of drains and whiff of Gauloises. A couple of years later we returned, the entire town had been given a facelift. The hazardous cobbled path by the river had become a stylish paved promenade complete with geranium filled planters and the rickety steps replaced by marbled ones with a wheelchair ramp next to them. The ancient houses were freshly painted, the pissoir removed and the drainy smell had gone. It was an improvement without a doubt, but it felt charmless. You cannot design the idiosyncratic, it happens by accident.
The process we first noted in the small Dordogne town engulfed the entire country over the next quarter of a century. Now retail sprawl encircles every French town and city with an enormous hypermarket at its centre. Somehow a country once famed for gastronomy now boasts the most Macdonald's restaurants in Europe. France can feel corporate and bland, once endearing idiosyncrasies have been reinvented as the deliberately quirky, lamposts at bizarre angles, ridiculous sculpture on roundabouts, hazardous over-designed traffic calming. It all can become somewhat tiresome, Gill coined a phrase for it - 'Frenched-out'.
However, it's fair to say it wasn't just France that had changed, we had too. As our elder two kids reached their teens they became disenchanted with camping by the beach type holidays. Nobody wants to spend a month in the sun with disenchanted teenagers! So we started to rent villas with pools and ventured further afield than France, to the Costa Brava and Tuscany and Croatia. Later fly drive trips became the thing, to Greece, southern Italy and the Atlantic seaboard of the US and Canada. We realised that some destinations are far more welcoming than others. Spain, southern Italy, New York city were all places where the locals made an effort to make us feel at home. What we also realised is that easy going and welcoming had not been our habitual experience in France over the years, offhand, rude and occasionally belligerent was the norm. I guess the sunnier climate, regional food culture, beautiful countryside and lovely coastlines, attractive towns and villages, all of these things more than compensated for the cool reception. However we learned as we travelled more widely that you can find these qualities in other places that also offer a warm welcome. So, we became 'Frenched-out'.
Avoiding the country altogether is difficult if you are heading for southern Europe. So after this year' failed attempt to make a go of our bumpy relationship with La Republique in future we'll stick to familiar fast routes through it, splashing the cash on its overpriced motorways to reach more amenable destinations or by using the direct ferry to Spain.
I think the last four days have been the final straw. Our plan was to spend time in Loupian by the Etang de Thau then move on to Cala Montgro in the Costa Brava. A simple enough, but we have been motorhoming long enough to know nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
The first day was fine, a drive of about 200kms from Bologna to a campsite near the mouth of the river Magma near the border of Tuscany and Liguria. It was a trip of two halves, the first part on the autoroute to Parma, arrow straight across the flat plain of the Po basin, past Modena and Reggio Emilia, stylish modern factories line the roadside, the area between Turin and Bologna, along with Germany's Rhineland is a hotspot for European manufacturers and one of the EU's wealthiest regions.
At Parma we turned south joining the E33 towards La Spezia. I thought we had been this way before but it seemed unfamiliar. I realised that I had mixed it up with the motorway to the west of it linking Milan and Genoa. They look similar drilling through the Ligurian Alps in a series of tunnels and viaducts. It's Swiss civil engineering that gets the plaudits but Italy has equally spectacular infrastructure.
The highest mountain on the route were near the coast at Carrara. The scars of two thousand years of marble quarrying meant their rock faces gleamed in the summer sunlight like petrified snow.
Italy boasts some famously beautiful coastal scenery - the Cinqueterra, Amalfi, Cilento, the northern coast of Sicily and Taormina. It's also fair to say that this is the exception, much of the country's seaside is somewhat tawdry and over-developed, somewhat poverty striken in parts too - more reminiscent of Rhyll or Clacton than St. Trop or Marbella. Our destination, Sarzana, at the mouth of the river Magna was indisputablly more Rhyll than St Trop. In truth we had few expectations, the name of the campsite was hardly uplifting - Irongate Marina 5b. It sounded a tad B movie, an impression re-forced by the nearby Italian naval helicopter base whose constant coming and goings reminded me of the opening credits of Apocalypse now. The site itself was a tad run down, geared towards seasonal pitches not tourers, but ok for an overnight stay and the riverside location was quite attractive.
The main reason we stopped here was quite mundane, on Streetview the local Lidl seem to have a very big car park. We've struggled with parking the moho at supermarkets on this trip. They've either been impossibly busy or had height barriers. Happily the one at Sarzana was almost empty so we were able to stock up for the next week or so. The town itself looked to be one long strip of grim retail sprawl, but being Italian it oozed vulgarity with panache. A somewhat weather-beaten bill board next to Lidl boasted that the the nearby sex supermarket stocked 10,000 different articles. This led me to speculate if this signalled that the natives were much more imaginative between the sheets than us, or perhaps less so as they required so much additional hardware, or maybe it's the case that in this, as in life generally, they are simply more theatrical.
Next day we drove the length of the Ligurian Riviera, past the Cote 'Azur and into Provence, all on toll motorways. There is no feasible alternative. It's further than it looks on the map - 360kms. The more urban sections around Genoa and Savona in Italy and skirting the urban sprawl of Nice and the Cote d'Azur were busy and at times hazardous.
Once over the French border we descended into a nostalgia fest. For us the route is dotted with memorable moments. The giant white pyramids of the Marina de Baia des Anges appeared for a second or two then a patch of forest on the banks of Brague. "Camping Antipolis!" I exclaimed. We spent four or five Easters there over the years when our elder two were small, now three decades ago. A motorway sign to the picnic aire at Sophia Antipolis flashed by, we celebrated Sarah's fourth Birthday there at the play park.
Soon we left the coastal sprawl behind and passed the big forest of Mediterranean pines covering the craggy slopes of l'Esteril. On our very first Mediterranean trip in 1992 our aged Vauxhall Cavalier suffered a split radiator hose on one of the area's mountain roads. A local French family came to our aid. The man fixed the hose with my minimal assistance and his wife accommodated Gill and our two kids, proudly presenting her with a cup of tea.
Their remote farm house was overlooked by the outcrop's tallest peak, Mount Vinaigre. It was and still is topped by satellite dishes and masts. As we sped past it on the motorway we recalled that Matthew, then aged five and a bit, was convinced he had discovered the whereabouts of Thunderbirds headquarters. Onwards, passing Mont Ste Victoire on our right then Les Alpilles. I was changed by my first encounters with these landscapes, they smoothed my edgy northern soul and the colour and light came as a revelation. So these days we may have become somewhat 'Frenched-out' but I am indebted to 'Le Midi', in my thirties the place opened my eyes to a wider world and made me more adventurous.
However, right now it became increasingly obvious that we may be in a bit of a pickle. The south of France appeared to be 'complet'. Gill phoned ahead to our usual place - the Camping Municipal in Loupian - it was full, as was every other site in the vicinity that she tried. She then noticed that all the coastal aires in Languedoc on the Camping Car Parks app were listed as full. I was feeling quite weary having driven almost 700kms in two days, struggling to find somewhere to stop was the last thing I needed. We decided to try some places further inland. Gill eventually got through to a site that neither rang out without answering nor was set to unhelpful message mode and actually had a pitch, it was not too far off our route up a minor road to the north of Roquebrun-sur-Argens.
If you wanted to stay for a couple of weeks in a camping bungalow in beautiful Provençal woodland setting, or park your caravan with a view out the picture window that reminded you of Cezanne then Camping lei Suves would be perfect. Hilly sites with trees are never great for motorhomes but we found a pitch eventually that was merely tricky to manoeuvre into rather than nigh on impossible.
The place was packed with elderly German and Dutch caravanners here for the duration. I can see what attracts themn to the place, especially the big poolith landscaped terraces around it. Serried rows of well basted septegenarians sunned themselves by the mirror still Hockney blue waters.
No big splashes here though, just quiet sizzling in the afternoon heat. We were glad to have found somewhere to stop, but it wasn't somewhere we would choose to go back to. It was perfectly situated for seeing the sites of Provence and the Cote d'Azur, most of them within an hour's drive by car. However the narrow road outside the gates was a bit of a rat run and not safe to cycle, not was there any local places to take a walk. Instead we explored the maze of tracks between the trees within the campsite. Before the place became packed with emplacements it must have been a beautiful tract of woodland.
Most people seemed happy enough to simply sit in the sunshine. September is definitely high season for the grey haired. It gave the place a faded sanatorium vibe, packed full of people, most of them younger than us, aspiring to be elderly; collectively 'going gently into that goodnight'. Over the past year or so I have begun to 'feel my age' too, but I am affronted by it, I am not going gently, surely it is better to 'rage against the dyng of the light' and grow old with as much disgrace as you can muster.
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