Caves & Castles

This is our journey back to France, Spain & Portugal to visit some of the things we’ve overlooked in the past. Read more

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Trip start
October 3, 2024
Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Our First Free Camp
October 3, 2024 in France ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C
Back at Gravelines, our first stop and we’re an hour earlier than we thought. The sun is shining but there’s a chilly breeze as we’re on the coast and we’re sharing our free park up with 3 other mohos but there’s plenty of space.Read more
TravelerIs there anything to do in the area?
10/3/24Reply
Misadventures Of WandaThere’s a nature trail here that takes you into the village which we did last year. Really this is just a stop gap.
10/3/24Reply
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Crossing the channel
October 3, 2024 in England ⋅ 🌬 15 °C
We made excellent time and got an earlier ferry, goodbye England see you at Christmas.
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Stocking up & breakfast
October 4, 2024 in France ⋅ ☀️ 7 °C
We had a great nights sleep, it was really quiet. Our first stop this morning was the Super U fuel station and then it was over the road to Lidl to get our first shop and breakfast from the bakery. Our junk food cupboard is still looking pretty poor at the moment.Read more
TravelerIf you could add coordinates or what 3 word for your park up areas that would be fabulous 👌
10/4/24Reply
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
A hard days drive to chartres
October 4, 2024 in France ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C
It took us 5 1/2 hours to drive 210 miles but we finally arrived at our second free park up and the first thing I did was go for a 5km run to stretch my legs. When I got back a dinner of Cordon Bleur was ready for me, how very French.Read more
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Exploring chartres
October 4, 2024 in France ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C
This is our third time visiting Chartres and even though this wasn’t a planned visit. It is a beautiful city and well worth a walk around.
We set off through the park at 5pm and Chartres is one of those typical French cities that comes alive in the evening and everyone was coming out and heading into town, we couldn’t believe how busy it was and the amount of shops still open.
We followed the Chartres de Luminares path, which is a tour that starts at dusk and runs through until 2am every night where you follow a row of lights on the floor around promenant landmarks in the city. The self guided tour takes in the Basilica of Chartres and the world famous Chartres cathedral and many of the ancient medieval buildings and streets and it is lit up at night with holograms. We’ve seen the holograms twice already and we just settled on the non illuminated tour this time.Read more
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
A cold morning
October 5, 2024 in France ⋅ ☀️ 5 °C
We had another great nights sleep in our free aire at Chartres. It’s been unseasonably cold so far on this trip with temperatures down to just 4°c at night.
This morning we woke up to a thick mist hovering over the park and city. Once that lifts we’ll be on the move again.Read more
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Marcilly en villete
October 5, 2024 in France ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C
This is our stop for the day. Just 60 miles away from Chartres and 10 miles away from Orleans this is one of our favourite Motorhome stops. It has all services, public toilets and bins aswell as many hiking and biking trails. This is one of the prettiest and quietest villages we’ve ever visited and it’s a lovely chill out spot.Read more
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
France is great for gravel
October 5, 2024 in France ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C
Took the bike out through the forests, Marcilly en Villete is great for biking. Miles & miles of off roading.
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
A wanda into town
October 5, 2024 in France ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C
Got back from the bike ride and then took a stroll up into the village to visit the Boulangerie where we picked up some rum and raisin bread pudding.
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Medieval city of Mennetou sur Che
October 6, 2024 in France ⋅ ☁️ 15 °C
This morning it is raining and we left our park up in Marcilly en Villete at 9am and took a 90 minute drive to our next free aire which resides just outside the walls of the medieval city of Mennetou Sur Cher.
This is a tiny old Medieval city that I found watching the Tour de France.
The aire is the other side of the main road and we have to cross what would have been the drawbridge to enter the old city.
The city and buildings inside date back to the 13th century and all of the streets are still cobbled. It’s an amazing place to walk around.Read more
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
A Visit to the Graveyard
October 6, 2024 in France ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C
While there was a break in the rain we headed out to photograph the town with my proper camera. Then we took a visit to the graveyard and the oldest grave we found was from the late 1700’s.
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Stretching the legs.
October 6, 2024 in France ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C
While the rain held off we decided to take a walk along the edge of the river. We covered 5km in total and it was a beautiful walk. Then it was back to Wanda to make dinner and settle in for the night. More rain is expected later😢😢Read more
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Trying to dodge the rain.
October 7, 2024 in France ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C
Our plans changed this morning when we awoke to heavy rain. Our itinerary was to take us to street art city and a little aire close by but street art city now costs £16:50 each to get in and we wouldn’t be able to get any photos so we scrapped that idea and decided to continue straight down.
Our next stop on the list is the castle of Val but that drive would have taken all day so we’ve decided to break the day in two and after stocking up on supplies on the edge of town we decided to stop at a town called Felletin.
Our supply run was mainly for snacks and junk food although we did get fresh bread and I managed to find horse chestnut jam which is unbelievably tasty especially in the pan au chocolate.
Felletin has a huge free Motorhome area with free water, toilets, and a grey and black dump station. Later we’ll take a walk into town.Read more
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Exploring Felletin
October 7, 2024 in France ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C
After lunch we headed out to explore Felletin, as per usual we arrived to explore when all the shops are shut.
This is a really quirky little town with newly cobbled streets and for some reason the local crochet club seems to want to cover everything in wool. Every single bollard in the high street was covered aswell as all the benches. When we went in the park we found them covering a bench with a patchwork crochet blanket.
Of course we looked in the church and down either side it was lined with local saints but as someone was sitting in there contemplating whether there really is a god we didn’t venture to far in.
At the far end of the town was what looked like another church but on entering it was actually a garden. It was an amazing place and by the looks of the lights in the floor it’s lit up at night.
By 5pm it was raining again. We’ve never had such bad weather when we’ve first arrived in France ever. Autumn seems to have come early this year.Read more
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Fuel, Fuel & Go
October 8, 2024 in France ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C
We left our overnight spot just after 9am.
It would be an hours drive to our first location but en route we stopped for Diesel. Our first LPG fill up because we left home with only 1 full bottle and some fresh food.Read more
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Chateau Du Val
October 8, 2024 in France ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C
Second stop of the day was our first castle. The castle of val, It is currently closed on week days because we’re just out of season but really I was only here for outside photographs.
Luckily the weather held up and we had blue skies and no people for plenty of Drone shots.Read more
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Medieval Salers
October 8, 2024 in France ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C
Our 3rd stop of the day was the Medieval Village of Salers. This town dates back to the 11th century and unless you have a house or shop in town there is absolutely no driving and there are car parks for cars, coaches and motorhomes just outside the town but it does cost £4 per day even though we can’t spend the night here.
It is a beautiful cobbled town with lots of ancient buildings and passageways and we’re glad we stopped to visit.
Then it was time to push on to find somewhere to sleep or as we like to call it put operation tortoise into effect.Read more
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Operation Tortoise
October 8, 2024 in France ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C
We’ve had quite the journey getting here today. We’ve seen hundreds of Buzzards and deer on route and we also saw a huge snake crossing the road that I managed to avoid. We saw a cow giving birth in a field at the side of the road and then just before we found our parking spot for the night we had 2 wild boar cross the road right in front of us.
We have a beautiful free park up for the night in the grounds of the Chateau de Montal. We’ve been and explored the grounds and we have the whole place to ourselves except for a dog walker. It should be super quiet tonight.Read more
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10/10/24Reply
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Autoire
October 9, 2024 in France ⋅ ☁️ 18 °C
We had a lovely nights sleep at our parking spot by the chateau and we left at 9am and once again it was raining. Our original plan for the day was to visit the caves of Presque but they are privately owned and currently only open on Sunday so we skipped that and head to our next destination.
Autoire is one of, if not the most beautiful village we have visited. It really looks like the village from disneys beauty and the beast and you half expect Belle to open a chateau window and start singing. It’s an unbelievable place to walk around.Read more
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Cascade de Autoire
October 9, 2024 in France ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C
From the village we headed down a narrow single track path and into the woods follow the course of the river.
After a 30 minute hike we were at the waterfalls. This was the next stop for us and the falls were huge.
After the falls we carried on hiking all the way up the side of the falls and back onto the main road. This was the route of the 2024 Tour de France and the riders names were still sprayed on the road.
Then we turned right and continued climbing until we could climb no more. We were at the top and we could see for miles in every direction and luckily the rain had stopped and the sun came out.
We continued hiking it had now been 90 minutes and the path narrowed as we passed the danger signs and continued.
Another 30 minutes later we came to an abandoned chateau hanging on the side of the cliff.
After a quick explore we started making our way back down the side of the mountain.
2 1/2 hours and 7.5kms of hiking later we were back at Wanda. We had climbed 313 meters and it really felt like it.
It was now 1:30pm and we had planned on spending the night at Autoire but we were in abit of a bowl and the internet signal was really weak and we need wifi to make a booking for tomorrows trip so we moved into the village of Padriac to another free aire. And it’s raining again.Read more
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Goufree du Padriac
October 10, 2024 in France ⋅ ☁️ 12 °C
We slept great in our free park up with 2 other motorhomes next to us. It rained most of the night but this morning it had stopped.
At 9;30am we used the on site water relay and paid 3 euros by card to fill up our water from the slowest tap in the world. Then we took a 5 minute drive up the road to our first stop of the day and our first major cave.
Goufree du Padirac starts as a huge sinkhole 150 meters deep that then runs into a monstrous cave system that in total covers over 20 miles.
The tour is self guided and we were given an audio guide at the entrance. Then we descended the first 50 meters by elevator before going down steps the next 100 meters to the floor.
It was very wet because of all the rain and dimly lit which was a nightmare for pictures but we walked 200 meters before getting into a boat where we were ferried a further 500 meters until we got out and walked again following the path of the underground river next to us. This is as far as the public can go but cavers follow the river and at points they have to dive down and swim for up to a kilometre under water. It takes 3 days to follow the entire flow of the cave and river and come out 20 miles away.
The tour took us about 90 minutes and I feel it was worth the £16 each as it had been on my list since before we got Wanda. It’s more money than we would normally spend on an excursion whilst travelling.
From Gouffre du Padirac we then took a 5 mile journey to our next location and park up for the night.Read more
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10/11/24Reply
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Cycling Rocamadour
October 10, 2024 in France ⋅ ☁️ 15 °C
Our next stop was Rocamadour. A fortified town with a huge monastery at the very top and ancient pathways and roads twisting up to it. This was another sight I had seen from the Tour de France.
We parked in parking area 4 which is a dedicated Motorhome area but the downside is it costs 16 euros for 24 hours. Very expensive by French standards and we’ve realised that this whole area is a huge tourist trap. On the way out of the caves the lad in the lift told us that in July and august they get 20,000 visitors per day to the cave.
Luckily we are only sharing this car park with one other person this time of year.
After parking we took a walk down the footpath and the town was right in front of us. It was an amazing sight just seeing it grow out the side of the cliff.
We took what they call the photographers path down into the town although it was very photogenic and once at ground level we took a slow walk through the cobbled streets looking in the shops passing through 3 ancient archways.
Once it started to rain again we turned around and started back for Wanda up a huge slope carrying us the 150 meters from ground level back up to the height where we had parked.
Once the rain had stopped I decided to get my bike off the back and head out.
I left the car park and headed towards town but before I got there I turned left on the road and hit the S bends that snaked all the way to the bottom. This was the route of the 2024 Tour de France.
I headed down the winding road at 50kph through a tunnel where all the TDF jerseys had been painted on the walls and then the riders names started appearing on the road. I was cycling in the footprints of some of my hero’s and as the road veered up and started climbing more and more names appeared.
I was super excited to be riding on roads that I had seen on the tv, and although it was a short ride of just 30km it was over 500 meters of climbing with gradients of 10%.
I got back to Wanda at 5:30pm and just as I finished putting my bike on the back the heavens opened and it helled it down.
At 7:30pm the rain had stopped so we took a walk back along the paths in the dark to see Rocamadour lit up and get some photos. It looked beautiful at night.
Then it was back to Wanda to settle in for the night.Read more
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
Stopping for Essentials
October 11, 2024 in France ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C
We left Rocamadour at 9am for a very murky drive through thick fog. We could barely see the town as we passed by and I kept the speed to a minimum as these French drivers do love to cut the corners and drive with no lights on even when they can’t see.
Our original plan for today was to stop
at another medieval town but the closest parking for motorhomes was going to cost us 12 euro for parking and extra if we wanted water and as we had just paid more than enough tourist tax in this area we decided to skip that and head straight down towards Toulouse and do a laundry and food shop.
Half way down in Montauban we found a huge E’Le Clerc shopping centre that had a huge selection of shops. This was like lakeside and blue water combined and getting in and out of the car park for the laundry was a nightmare.
The laundry took 30 mins for the 9kg washing machine and then 45 mins to dry and it was 5 euros for the wash and 3 euro for the dryer.
Our next stop was Lidl a few miles down the road to get fresh food for the next 2 days and to stock up on milk and fresh water.Read more
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A night in Grisolles
October 11, 2024 in France ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C
Our next stop of the day was in Grisolles and this is where we would be spending the night and we were lucky to arrive here at 3pm because as the afternoon went on more and more motorhomes arrived and some of them were huge.
It’s not the most pleasant aire. Really it’s just a car park behind the community centre but there is a dump station and fresh water and even though the town isn’t the prettiest they have done a really good job of giving us travellers somewhere safe to sleep that had easy access.
The aire does overlook the Canal system which has green routes running down both sides for hiking and biking and they go on for hundreds of kilometres with access to hundreds of towns and villages on the way so if hiking or biking is your thing this is a great spot.
By the time night fell there was hardly a decent space left in the aire and large motorhomes were still arriving. We were lucky to arrive when we did.Read more
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Caves & Castles Misadventures Of Wanda
A ride along the Canals
October 12, 2024 in France ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C
We had nothing planned for today except moving down further so at 9:30am I headed out on my bike for what I thought was going to be a short leisurely ride.
I headed down the cycle path at the side of the canal and had a good pace of 30kph. Around 8km in I overtook a French guy on a mountain bike and after 10 minutes I realised he was drafting me so I sped up to 33kph to try and shake him.
The thing is when your drafting your not using any effort and he was just sitting in my slipstream while I did all the work. I kept this pace up for 5km and then I just as I was pretty much cooked I slowed down and he overtook me and gave me the universal sign for get on my wheel and I started drafting him.
He had already slowed down only pulling at around 30kph and he pulled for around 1500 meters before he gave up and said he was cooked. We said Ciao to each other and I thanked him for his little effort and took off until I had 20 km under my belt and then I turned around and headed back to Wanda knocking out 40kph in 90 minutes.
Back at Wanda Ellie made me Jaffels in the the Jaffel iron using last nights left over dinner of peppered sauce pork sausages and French Camembert. The cheese tastes great but it’s stinking the fridge out.
At 12pm we left Grisolles and headed down.Read more
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