Italy, Provence, Deb's visit & nudists

We found the sun by heading south, past Milan and Turin, at the Italian seaside town of Albenga where Antonio and Maria-Grazie welcomed us at their agriturismo (private land with basic camping facilities). We explored the old town on foot and then further a field on the bike. We were the only Brits staying but the other Italian campers made us very welcome and invited us to join them for a Saturday night pizza party. We had a great few days, practised our Italian, we're given a bottle of local wine and a chilli plant and were then made a great offer by the owners to return for a month next year!

From there we took the toll motorway, rather than the twisty coast road, across the French Riviera, and €70 later arrived in the Petit Luberon hills in Provence. At the end of August, the summer holidays were virtually over and the campsite had plenty of space and a lovely pool to cool down in. This part of France, just north of Aix-en-Provence is real Provence famous for its fields of lavender, wine and olives. We had the roads to ourselves as we circumnavigated Le Petit Luberon, riding through sleepy villages of terracotta tiled houses surrounded by grapevines dripping with bunches of grapes ready for harvesting. This was an area of France that we hadn't visited previously but one which we would return to. We couldn't stay longer as we had a rendezvous in Montpellier with Debra, one of Sandra's sisters, who was joining us for a week. So we headed to Palavas-les-Flot, as close as we could get to the airport.

The next morning, we headed over to Charlemagne campsite in Marseillan Plage, our home for the following week. The site had every facility and a full entertainment programme that we made full use of including aqua gym, modern jazz dance lessons, archery, body strengthening (only Deb did this!), water slide, and nightly evening entertainment. The miles long sandy beach was just across the road and made for a great beach walk lapping the Mediterranean sea. We visited the market and bought olives, sausisson and wine, cooked al fresco and dined out locally all with lots of laughs. On the last day we took the train in to Montpellier from where Deb flew back to the UK and enjoyed a delicious lunch in the sunshine of a pretty square before we said our goodbyes for a while.

A couple of days later Chris and I did the beach walk again but this time in the opposite direction. Within a couple of hundred metres, we noticed that there were a few nudists on the beach. A couple of hundred metres later and we realised that we were in the middle of, what we later found out was, the world's largest nudist colony! We weren't bothered but tried to act cool and nonchalant as we walked along the shoreline knowing that we had to do the whole thing in reverse. We saw every shape, size and age during our walk and Deb was very disappointed that when we were together, we had turned left instead of right on the beach, when we told her about it!Leer más