Calais
Sunday evening, 30/6

It's our last night in France (for this trip, but we'll be back!). 

We've had two days just sitting and driving (and for some hours, just sitting, because of the terrible traffic jams we encountered approaching and in Lyons!).

We kept on extending our stay at L'Isle sur la Sorgue (LISLS); having originally checked in for two nights, we ended up staying six (and aren't we lucky to have that flexibility).  During that time we revisited some old favourites (Fontaine de Vaucluse, Apt, Saignon) and found some new ones (Roussillon, Lacoste, Menerbes, Gordes*, St Saturnin). 

[* Unfortunately we had only a brief and cursory look at Gordes; parking issues meant we didn't get to walk around in it]

We had quite a few 'plats du jour' or 'menus du jour', sipped local wine or cidre in some great places, cycled, walked and drove along narrow roads through ancient villages.   Rob needed to replace some boots that wore through and luckily found the ONLY pair of size 48s in all of the shoe or sports stores in LISLS and Apt.  We made new friends and have added to our French.

With all of this, we have fallen in love with the Luberon area!  It was such a wrench, yesterday, to leave those warm sunny days for the clouds and occasional rain we came through as we crossed France diagonally.

We used French toll roads for the first time this trip and are still reeling.  They are so expensive, especially as our van is so high.  We spent 120.60 Euros (about 172 AUD) on tolls, more than we spent on fuel, to come from Provence to Calais.  And at one point there was a vast toll-collection area, with many staffed as well as automated toll booths.  We asked why we were exiting the toll system, as we were continuing on toward Calais and the answer was that there were three kilometers (yes, that's right) of 'free' road before the next toll section began.  What a huge infrastructure establishment, (and inconvenience) for 3000 metres of freebie!

And speaking of the Autoroute system, see if you can answer this without any knowledge of the French highway system....  
           What highway took us to Reims?   (Hint: Say the question aloud)  Answer below.

Tomorrow we're  booked on the 11:35 ferry to Dover and the next phase of our trip.

And here's one view of colourful Roussillon, a place we really loved.

Cheers,

Judy and Rob

Answer to highway question:  The A4 of course.

The Luberon
Monday evening, 24/6/13

We're in our little campground, just 1.5 Km outside L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and it's Monday evening, after a perfect day (although a little windy).

Since our last post from Rocamadour, nearly a week ago [apologies for our tardiness] we've been and seen and done a lot.

The trip south from Rocamadour started out in pretty heavy rain.  At one point we stopped for coffee in a little roadside inn and saw truly horrifying TV footage of serious floods in the Lourdes area.  They were very confronting, with helicopter rescues, huge trees hurtling down raging rivers and smashing into bridges.  Of course, we were only getting a tiny part of the story as all the commentary was in French.  We deduced, with a little help from their maps, that the serious floods were in the far SW, but with a serious flood risk also in the NE.  Fortunately, we were well clear of the problem areas.

We spent a little time exploring more of the Lot River valley downstream of Cahors, then made for a campground just outside St. Cirq Lapopie.  There we spent a day enjoying the medieval town and being amazed at a towpath that had been cut into the side of the cliff.  They needed to haul loaded barges upstream, and where the cliff came right down to the water's edge, they carved a path, perhaps 2m wide and of varying height [high enough to walk along, but you need to watch out if you're on a bike].  Here's a bit of it.

They tell us that the barges were hauled by women, unpaid so virtually slaves, because they were cheaper than horses or oxen etc. 

We stayed two nights almost under the walls of Carcassonne, giving us plenty of time to walk all over this amazingly scenic, yet touristy city.

Then, on Sunday, we drove here, via Montpellier and Aigues Mortes, and in other words, the Mediterranean!!

 L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue is an absolute gem, one of our favourite places.  We've had a great day walking around it and will stay on and use it as a base for day trips out to other nearby attractions.  Unlike most of our recent visits, L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue is still alive as a town in its own right, and is not just kept alive by visiting tourists.  It is quite a bit bigger than we remembered it from 2000 and really bustles, even on a Monday!  Certainly there are plenty of tourists and other holiday makers, but they [we?] are not the only people out and about and drinking coffee and spending money.  Here we are, doing a bit of that ourselves...

With its incredibly clean, green water, this is such a photogenic place, as most places so far have been, that we've been taking an extraordinary number of photos, a far call from the days of film cameras and the care we took, deliberating on whether or not to snap what we saw.  It will be a major task, sorting through when the trip is over.

As you can easily tell, we're thoroughly enjoying ourselves.  Hope you are too!

Judy and Rob

Rocamadour
Tuesday evening

We're still in the general area of the Lot, which we think is beautiful.  Here's the look of the countryside from Penne across the Lot valley so that you can see why we like it so much:

We used our campground at St Sylvestre as a base for a bit of exploring, making sure we visited Agen, Condom, Villeneuve-sur-Lot and some of the areas to the south, and now we've let Tomtom bring us by narrow mountainous back roads to Rocamadour.

Although quite touristy, Rocamadour amazes us.  It's on the ancient pilgrim trail and the town, sanctuary (church) and chateau are grafted one above the other into the side of a vertical cliff.  If you buy real estate here you would need to look at more than just a plan view because the vertical dimension is at least as significant as the horizontal ones.  Here's an overall view:

In an echo of 'Daddy Cool' they even have a place called Rocher des Aigles! 

We had a great lunch of Confit du Canard today so decided on a lighter meal this evening.  And, just our luck, there's a lovely little restaurant over the road from the caravan park.  We'd just gone in to a table at the window when there was a commotion outside.  There was sudden wind, huge hailstones (most a bit bigger than a marble, a few the size of golf balls), followed by heavy rain and all the outside diners came rushing inside.  And of course a moment later all the lights went out!  But the chaos was short-lived and we soon had perfect omelettes, cider and creme brulee.  The outside tables were under large awnings which were under even larger cherry trees, laden with fruit so when the chaos subsided the outdoor eating area was strewn with the hail, a few leaves and a lot of ripe cherries.

We're not sure where we'll be writing from next but we're keen to have a look at the meandering stretch of the Lot just west of Cahors, so we think we'll head there tomorrow.

We're getting the occasional email from family and friends and have been enjoying catching up on people's news.

J and R

Beside the Lot
Friday evening

We are beside the Lot, in St Sylvestre, which is just outside Villeneuve-sur-Lot. It is a warm evening with bright sunshine and we are about to have some local cab-sav with some incredibly (!) smelly cheese (smells really bad; tastes really good). We hope that your bit of the world is good too!

Since leaving the busy city of Bordeaux, we've slowed down.  We stayed three nights in a small lakeside caravan park at Casteljaloux. From there we made a day trip to Nerac (after a brief stop on the way for coffee at Lavardac [or 'Luv-a duck' as Rob calls it] to see the Roman bridge) which we loved.  There have been serious floods in the last couple of weeks and the canal-barge business is not operating due to the number of damaged locks and boats.  And of course the rest of the economy is also affected.  We had lunch at a little place beside the river, which was much quieter than usual.

Yesterday was drizzly and therefore very low-key for us.  We rode our bikes from the lake into town for coffee and watched in amazement as huge semis rumbled through the narrow streets that are further restricted by the setting-up of carnival rides, (dodgems, merry-go-rounds and the like) on and overflowing from the tiny square.  We think it's challenging driving the van through such streets, so we are filled with admiration for the men and women driving such huge vehicles.

Today a strange thing happened.  I thought I'd asked TomTom to bring us through Villeneuve, but somehow he misunderstood and seemed to be skirting the town.  In doing so, we went through Pujols, a tiny medieval village on a high hilltop overlooking Villeneuve.  It is fantastic!  We had great food, astoundingly beautiful surroundings, brilliant sunshine and the time to enjoy them all.  Here's our lunch spot..

Good on TomTom for taking us there; but after all, he does get his instructions from the heavens.

And here's the view of the Lot from our campsite this evening ...

Regards from Judy and Rob

Bordeaux
Monday evening

Greetings from beautiful Bordeaux!  What an interesting city, fifth biggest in France, and second oldest seaport (second only to Marseilles).

We stayed Saturday night in a small caravan park, surrounded by old and prestigious vineyards near the tiny town of Lussac, then on Sunday visited St Emilion, which is old and interesting, but very much on the tourist trail.  Maybe only because it was Sunday (or maybe it's always the same) but there were loads of tour buses and crowds and very up-market wine stores and restaurants.  There was clearly a lot of money to be made looking after all those teeming hordes (of which we, of course were part, but not a lucrative part for the local industry).  We had a good look around and left for Bordeaux.

We had decided just that morning to stay in a hotel in central Bordeaux, rather than try to manage traveling through the suburbs by bike or public transport.  So we found a nice place (actually turned out to be a perfect place!) and set a course with the new Tomtom.  It was only when were well into the city centre that we had any difficulty.  Admittedly a few one-way roads have recently been changed around, but we managed well, up to a point.  A few times we were instructed to turn into a road, then found out that we couldn't, but we improvised a bit and got by.

There was one place that we kept returning to, with tomtom instructing us to go into a huge pedestrian zone, complete with huge barriers.  So we'd make a slightly different turn and tomtom would tell us to make a U-turn.  (By the way, have you ever noticed how often there's a police car immediately behind you when you have to make dodgy turns in a cumbersome vehicle in a strange city, whose signs are in a foreign language and where some of the streets are about 10cm wider than your car?  But they don't seem to care, or maybe they just sigh, look at our number-plate and dismiss us as English!)

Eventually, after driving down every tiny road and lane in the middle of Bordeaux, sometimes (I think) in the wrong direction, we pulled up (not properly parked or anything like that, although we would have if it had been possible) and phoned the hotel.  It was only then that we found that we DID have to enter the pedestrian zone, using an intercom at a barrier, giving them a four-digit code from the hotel and having the barrier magically sink into the road, out of the way!!  Would have been handy to know in advance!!!  Anyway, we made it and it has been WELL worth it.  Here's the van on Sunday afternoon on Cours de L'Intendance (the photo taken from our balcony).  Don't be fooled by the apparent spaciousness, outside this zone, the traffic is densely packed into narrow one-way streets and hardly moving!

 When we saw how lucky we'd been with our choice of hotel, we decided to stay two nights.  So today we've walked miles and seen heaps.  Tomorrow we'll leave (through week-day traffic!!) and head either NW or SE.

Regards to all from us.

Loire River
Friday evening

 Our ferry crossing , Dover to Calais via P&O on Wednesday, was so easy.  And so cheap!  We'd paid over GBP60 a little over a week earlier as foot passengers, so we were pleased that this time, with a vehicle, it was forty-something GBP.  But then we were given two 10 quid vouchers to spend on the boat (very handy) which brought it back to twenty-something quid!  Can't afford not to cross! [And we even still had some of that duty-free gin from the previous trip].

We drove to a little campground near Abbeville, called Val de Trie.  Although we initially registered for one night, we ended up staying for two.  It had a pool, the most charming receptionist, a bar and they take your bread order [baguettes, croissants etc] for the following morning!  That first night we were low on groceries, so enjoyed local cidre, and beef bourguinonne outdoors at the little bar/cafe/restaurant.

 Thursday was spent in the warm sun, exploring Abbeville on its market day, and Pont-Remy, beyond Amiens, which we almost reached in our canal boat in 2010.  Here's a little of the Somme River at Pont-Remy.

As we travel, we marvel at the differences between the French and English, typified by their caravan parks.  We've already shown you a sample of the "Caution: Steep Bank" and "Caution: Hot water"  signs that are everywhere in English parks [even when there was absolutely NO hot water].  Well the French are much more relaxed about such things.  In England we were carefully instructed as to which corner of our vehicle had to be aligned with the small site number post, but they wouldn't even try that here!  In England they have a warning sign informing you of the gender of the person who cleaned your bathroom, but here you are quite likely to have a person of the opposite type in the next cubicle as you shower (or try to shower while pressing the button to keep the water running).  And one we really like... In England there are bells and/or hand operated sirens to sound an alarm if there's a fire in a caravan park, but in our present park, the instructions, written in English, start off with "If you see a fire, keep quiet."  How laid-back is that?!

If you want to follow us and find this remarkable place, you'll need a very good map [or Google Maps etc].  It's called Parc du Val de Loire and is near Mesland [a little east of Tours].

Weather today, beautiful!  33C when we went through one small town with a big thermometer on its digital sign.

Not sure how far we'll go tomorrow.  We'll see.

Hi to all from Judy and Rob.

Brighton

It's Sunday evening here and we've been in Brighton for the last few days.

After we left Lincoln, we went to nearby Market Rasen Racecourse and rejoined the Caravan Club.  We had a feeling we were near the airbase where Judy's father, Ken Roberts, had been stationed (he piloted Lancasters during WWII).  Judy's sister Marion knew that he'd flown from Ludford Magna and when we googled it we found that we were less than 10 miles away.  We visited, of course, and found that the site of the airbase is now a huge paddock of rape/canola.  There were traces of old wartime concrete roads, but the runway blocks have been moved away and now form part of the fill for the Humber Bridge earthworks; so whenever you cross that bridge, you're driving over the old Ludford Magna runway!

From there to Brighton would have been a breeze except for the traffic jams where we crossed the Thames.  But we made it and have been enjoying seaside Brighton in sunny weather ever since.  In fact we've extended our stay to four nights and plan to cross back to France later during the week.

The old Lonely Planet in the van says of Brighton that it is "a fascinating mix of seediness and sophistication", which sounds about right.  Although it couldn't be more different, I think it's a bit like Surfers Paradise too.  But for all that we're loving it.  The Royal Pavilion defies belief and the pier, on a sunny weekend day at the end of the school holidays, is tightly packed with people of all ages spending money and having a great time.  You certainly don't get the feel that the UK is in recession.

Today we encountered hundreds and hundreds of Mini Minors that had participated in the London to Brighton Mini Rally.  [Shades of Genevieve the movie]  We're astounded that so many minis are still operational worldwide, but so many here is staggering!  A lot have been restored, many are in original trim and some have been tricked up in various ways.  So, can you imagine a very long stretch limo based on a mini?  Sounds incredible, but it was only one of the weird and wonderful variations we saw today.

We're at a Caravan Club site, two miles from the centre of all the action, so it was an easy walk in yesterday and today we got the bikes working and rode.  It is even more manicured and orderly than most Caravan Club sites and is complete with the usual warning signs.  In case you can't read this one it says "Caution: Steep bank".  [Is it just us, or is this really hilarious?]

So, best wishes to all at home.  Hope you getting just the rain you need.

Regards from Judy and Rob