Day 31 - Hello France

What a day! We started off waking up surrounded by fields and fields of grapes, walnut and hazelnut trees with amazing mountains in the distance. It was absolutely beautiful 😍. We left mid morning, stopping quite soon at a pet food shop because we were running low on treatos for Marla and Charlie nipped into the supermarket next door for lunch and a few supplies.

On our way again and we soon had a dilemma - Garmin was suggesting a route that would take an hour longer than Google Maps was suggesting. Google was going to take us along the wiggly Maritime Mountain roads, Garmin wanted us to drive about 40 miles in the wrong direction and then end up on some wiggly roads anyway…. so we went the quickest but most wiggly way! It’s certainly not for the faint hearted. It was up, up and up for a long time. We stopped when we thought we were at the top for a break and to take some photos - turns out Big Dave really needed a break as his fans were going into overdrive! And we actually hadn’t even got to the top. Thankfully there wasn’t much traffic on the road at all. I had to overtake a few cyclists, and I pulled in a few times to let people go round me. I had just one moment of meeting oncoming traffic and having nowhere to go, so I just pulled over as much as I could without disappearing over the edge and let the cars squeeze past me - everyone made it safe and sound! The way back down the mountain was much easier, it was shorter and it just felt so much easier going downhill rather than up.
We arrived at our camp for the night around 3pm and we were all very glad the days driving was over with!

Tonight we are staying in a Camping Car aire, it’s a network of aires that need to sign up to join, are given a card that you load up with some pennies, then tap in and tap out with and it takes off however much you owe. It’s €15 for this one, and has toilets, water and waste disposal. There’s 50 spaces and only about 5 of us here for the night, so very peaceful. We can hear a very small bit of road noise, but mostly the river next to the site.

Tonight for dinner we had some pizza’s which I’d picked up a supermarket the other day. Turns out that adding some mozzarella balls to a pizza with a very thin base will mean it pretty much will fall apart in the oven 🤦‍♀️ and also that if anything is a bit too far back in the oven (and therefore close to the flames), it will set on fire 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ still all perfectly edible thankfully 😂

After dinner we had a wander up and down the cycle path that runs next to the river and had a play on some fitness equipment, and got attacked by the local flies.
Back to the van for a nightcap of Limoncello (which was pretty unpleasant 🤣) and watch a couple of episodes of silent witness to relax.Read more