France – Page 12 – DJmotortouring

VANYA’S VIEW (Part 1) Brighton to St Aignan

Having successfully survived my first week in the Boomobile without any tears or tantrums (at least not from me but you should see Dave when he loses at Scrabble) I am actually looking forward to the next part of our journey. Dave has been quite chilled so far. I am sure that anybody who knows him will find this hard to believe.

The auspicious start stumbling upon and dining in a Michelin listed restaurant (despite being with the dogs and wearing t-shirts and shorts) went a long way to easing my initial fears – nothing to do with the Pouilly Fume of course.

Dogs awaiting their first Michelin experience

On our second night Dave asked me to find a campsite north of Caen which I happily did. According to Dave it was so far north I could almost have waved at Ro in Portsmouth. He has since been more specific with his requests.

Next we started travelling further south to find some sun and escape storm Ellen which was battering Britain and we found a lovely place called Montrichard. A small medieval town on the River Cher with a couple of wineries. The one I wanted to visit, Monmousseau, Dave assured me was the inferior cellar and we should head to the one where he had already sampled some wines the previous day. Indeed the wine was pleasant but the fizzy bottle of Monmousseau we imbibed with our dinner that night was superior to any we had tried. In fact Dave had the lions share….. Speaking of wine, I have found the French equivalent of Spain’s Cava and Italy’s Prosecco which is called Cremant. It is produced by the same method as champagne and if it wasn’t for the Euro 4.99 price tag from Lidl then I would have thought it was indeed champagne. There are 8 regions that produce it and I am speedily working my way through each of them to find my favourite. So far it is Cremant de Limoux and I may have to make a slight detour to that winery – I have been put in charge of the satnav after all 🙂

We then headed to a campsite at a place called St Aignan stopping for a few hours on the way at Amboise. The Chateau Royal d’Amboise hosted Mary, Queen of Scots as a girl and it is somewhere I would have liked to explore (following my new found “lockdown” obsession of Tudor history) but unfortunately the dogs weren’t allowed in. St Aignan is a lovely medieval town, all cobbled streets and a slightly dilapidated but nonetheless beautiful chateau, which is still inhabited by descendants of the family that built it. We enjoyed a leisurely wander through the grounds and had a couple of glasses of wine in a nearby bar to watch the world go by. A perfect Sunday! There is a famous zoo nearby that I was keen to visit but again dogs weren’t allowed entry – next time.

What I have enjoyed so much about the van is the flexibility of just going where we want when we want. I was concerned that I would find it too claustrophobic but, unlike the UK, the weather has been consistently pleasant and we have sat outside every evening (I have won the last 4 games of Scrabble this week by the way). The campsites have all been very clean with good facilities although last Saturday there were rather a lot of children on our site. Next Saturday I will try and find us an adults only place, but not a naturist one despite Dave’s specific requirements.

We are currently moving further south (edging ever closer to the Limoux vineyard) en route to Andorra and I am actually looking forward to this next week (but don’t tell Dave!)

Chahaignes (Pays de la Loire) & Ternay, France – August 2020 (Tour 3)

Today was about making up some lost ground caused by Vanya wanting to get as close to our daughter in Portsmouth as possible without our actually leaving France (see previous blog) and so; we headed back down the Cherbourg Peninsula through St Mere Eglise and Carentan (both scenes of bloody fighting during WWII and of absolutely no interest to Vanya) to first Chahaignes in the Pays de la Loire region of north-west France and second Ternay in the Vienne.

Our reason for travelling to Chahaignes was to take advantage of something we joined before leaving the UK – France Passion. This is a service scheme whereby some 2,000+ farmers, winegrowers and craftsmen/women across France have agreed to provide free 24 hour stopovers on their properties to motor-homers. It is wonderful. For the 30 Euros a year it costs to join France Passion, the motor-homer gets a free spot to park for the night (sometimes well off the beaten track) with an opportunity to meet the locals and try their produce. There’s no obligation to buy but why not use some of the money that might otherwise have spent on camp site fees on really fresh produce that you like?

Each dot on the map identifies farmers, winegrowers, etc who participate in the France Passion scheme

Perhaps not surprisingly, the place we chose to visit first was a winery and so it was that we arrived at the “Domaine de la Raderie” in Chahaignes…

That’s the place we chose for our first France Passion visit…

Although the parking was fine, we elected not to stay the night at the Domaine de la Raderie (too many wasps) but it was not a wasted journey. We left with 6 bottles of a rather nice Chenin Blanc, 3 bottles of Bulles de Raderie (not bad at at all) and a 5 litre box of something else that Vanya liked.

An hour or so later and just before it got dark we arrived in the small town of Ternay and parked up for the night in a free Aire which had seen much better days. No matter, we were the only ones there and it was peaceful. Moreover, we were well poised to try more wine tasting down in the Centre-Val de Loire. Montrichard here we come.

St Vaast La Hogue (Normandy), France – August 2020 (Tour 3)

This second day saw us move west through wonderful Honfleur and then up the Cherbourg Peninsula through Carentan and St Mere Eglise to the pretty harbour town of Saint Vaast La Hogue.

Saint Vaast La Hogue is towards the northernmost tip of the Cherbourg Peninsula and in totally the opposite direction to our intended route but, it seems our arrival there was entirely my fault?!? Vanya pointed out to me after our arrival that I had asked her to find us a camp site to the north of Caen and she took that to mean anywhere north of Caen. That we ended up 70 miles further north looking across the Channel to Portsmouth was my bad. I should have been more precise.

I’ve always liked Honfleur

Vanya prefers St Vaast

I’ll check that tower out tomorrow

Still, we have now been to Saint Vaast La Hogue and sat outside a cafe with a beer or two watching the world go by. And most enjoyable it was too.

St Jouin Bruneval (Normandy), France – Aug 2020 (Tour 3)

And so begins a third tour in the Van, which I am advised by Vanya is now renamed the “Boomobile”. Having had enough of our lives being put on hold by the lock- down we decided last week to simply collect the ~~Van~~ Boomobile from storage and head for Europe. Not sure how long we will go for but, it won’t be for more than two months this time as Vanya wants to be back in the UK for her next birthday.

So it was that early on Monday 17 August 2020 we (Vanya, myself and the two dogs) geared up and made our way to Folkestone to take the 35 minute shuttle under The English Channel to Calais. Thereafter, a 172 mile drive from Calais saw us in a small campsite at St Jouin Bruneval, Normandy.

I didn’t realise it until after we had arrived but this is where Operation “Biting” took place during WWII when British Paras under Major John D Frost concluded a successful raid on a German radar station – The Bruneval Raid. At that time, February 1942, there was not much of a village here; it seems to have sprung up since around the small chateau (yes, the chateau is still there) which figures in just about every old photo I have seen of Bruneval in the early 1940’s…

Back to the present. After checking in to the campsite, we decided to take the dogs for a walk along the cliff tops and then; talk about a stroke of luck; in the middle of nowhere overlooking the English Channel we stumbled on a Michelin Listed Restaurant (Le Belvedere) run by Jerome Geulin. We weren’t dressed for the occasion (shorts & t-shirts) and we had the dogs in tow but he very kindly gave us his last table and served us some great mussels and an excellent duck together with a fine Pouilly-Fume.

What a great start to this year’s trip!

Avignon (Provence), France – Feb 2018

The journey from Taradeau was fine (mostly motorway) until I reached the walled city of Avignon itself. The campsite I was heading for is just outside the walled city on the Ile de Barthelesse and my (not so) trusty sat-nav insisted on taking me through the walled city with all it’s narrow lanes. It wouldn’t have been so bad and I could perhaps have made it except that it was Wednesday and much of the city is closed to vehicles on a Wednesday (or at least on this particular Wednesday):

After driving around the narrow lanes for a while (using bus lanes when I ran out of road) I gave up on the sat-nav and followed my instinct (and a road sign) to the Ile de Barthelesse. For all it’s smug superiority and foreign languages, the sat-nav cannot recognise the days of the week. Hah! One up to me.

Avignon is lovely. France is lovely.

Avignon on the Rhone. The (part) bridge is the 12th Century Pont St Benezet (sometimes known as the Bridge of Abignon). 18 of it’s 22 spans were washed away in the 17th Century and it has been left that way

Crossing over from the Ile de Barthelesse (using a more complete bridge), the most prominent of all the buildings in the old town are the two standing alongside each other on the Place du Palais; the Cathedral Notre Dame des Doms with it’s guilded Virgin Mary and the 14th Century Palais des Papes (another Unesco World Heritage Site) built to accommodate the pope and his entourage after the newly elected pope Clement V chose to stay in his home country rather than move to the (then) wholly corrupt city of Rome:

… above, the Palais des Papes (plural because a number of subsequent popes, another 6 I think, preferred Avignon to Rome) and, below, it’s immediate neighbour the Cathedral of Notre Dame des Doms with the guilded Virgin Mary watching over Avignon…

Views across the city from the Palais…

There are other impressive churches to see in Avignon; principal among them being the Basilique Saint Pierre d’Avignon, the Eglise St Didier and the Protestant St Martial Temple but I had seen enough churches in Italy to last a lifetime and the rest of my day in Avignon was spent perusing Les Halles (a large covered market with just about every food you could imagine – local chefs attend the market every Saturday morning and give free cookery lessons) and sitting outside a cafe doing what should be done when the sun is shining namely, drinking coffee and watching people go about their daily life. You can’t beat it.

Having said that, I’m going to make an observation (in the form of a question). Has anyone ever had a decent cup of coffee in France?

Taradeau (Provence), France – Feb 2018

I left Sestri Levante intending to make one further halt in Italy, 120 miles away in San Remo, either for a late lunch or even to overnight depending on what San Remo has to offer. After a straight forward journey in wonderful sunshine I arrived in San Remo as a thunderstorm started. When moments later it started to hail, I set off towards my fall back destination, Monaco. It was snowing as I drove through Monaco and I didn’t even pause for a coffee – do you blame me?

Into France, past Nice and Cannes where there was heavy rain, westward towards the blue sky. I even passed Antibes without stopping and that place was one to visit for the Absinthe alone. To get to my age and never have tasted Absinthe is not right.

… San Remo and Monaco – I’ll let you know. I remember the days in the Balkans and in Greece when I would simply move the Van to where the sun was expected to be

Anyway, I stopped at Taradeau in Provence, a town of less than 2,000 people, and there’s nothing there to talk about (although the Provence countryside is beautiful and the people very friendly) except; the sun shone and I chilled for the best part of 2 days. I tell a lie – there was a Hyper U Supermarket and lots of other shops; probably the best range of foodstuffs I have seen in months. I grabbed a supermarket trolley and I was like a kid at Christmas.

The food that first night was tremendous. Lots of little hors d’oeuvres, a full plate of fresh prawns the size of small lobsters and then, best of all:

… Toulouse Sausage in a French Stick followed by Pecorino cheese with a fine Chianti Reserve

Nothing else to report because I have done nothing but sit outside in the sun. I head off to Avignon tomorrow.

Zurich, Switzerland – Nov 2017

Today was mostly about getting the winter tyres fitted (would you believe it cost 860 Euros !) and, thereafter, travelling to Zurich for a reunion with a dear friend and her partner for dinner. The journey from Colmar took little more than two or three hours and I was soon parked up by the lake in Zurich and then trekking and using the local tram service across the city for our reunion but, more about that and Zurich later.

Colmar (and Eguisheim) was great and it wouldn’t be right to move on from such a charasmatic town without leaving a couple more photos (and a copy of a striking painting by the Baron Francois Pascal Gerard) that reflect some of the more cultural aspects of the place. As you well know, this trip of mine isn’t just about drink, food and pretty sights and/or sites…

Frederic August Bartholdi, a French sculptor born in Colmar renowned for designing “Liberty Enlightening the World” aka “The Statue of Liberty”.

Цифровая репродукция находится в интернет-музее Gallerix.ru

Another famous son of Colmar was the Napoleonic General Count Jean Rapp who is shown in a painting by Francois Gerard presenting the captured Prince Repnin-Volkonsky to Napoleon during the Battle of Austerlitz.

Colmar Railway Station – I only show this because I passed it on the way to Eguisheim and it reminded me of the railway station in Gdansk, Poland.

Zurich tomorrow.

Eguisheim, France – Nov 2017

So I did it. I cycled from Colmar to Eguisheim.

More about Eguisheim in a moment (and the town is well worth a visit) but first some advice on getting there. Don’t cycle it or, if you must cycle it, do not rely on the sat-nav in your vehicle for directions. Before setting off I committed the route on my “top of the range Pioneer system” in the Van to memory and left feeling quite confident that I knew where I was heading. All went well to start with (the cycle paths in this part of France track most major roads and are fantastic) but then, after a really nice fast bit coasting downhill round a bend and bombing along a wholly empty right hand lane I realised I was travelling along the hard shoulder of the motorway to Strasbourg. It was a very sheepish me that dismounted and walked back along the motorway to find an alternative route. I’ll probably figure prominently in the French equivalent of one of those “Cops” TV programmes where they show video from motorway camera. Oh well…

Eguisheim is a lovely place, renowned (at least locally) for it’s fine wines and flowers. Flowers were not much in evidence (it is winter) but I tried a couple of “verre(s) vin blanc de la maison” and they were most enjoyable. It’s not a big town but it is crammed with character as I think the photos will show:-

Needless to say, it is pretty much all pedestrianised.

I won’t talk about the cycle journey back. There was a railway line and lots of ploughed fields and, honestly, it’s just a bad memory but, it doesn’t detract from the fact that the town of Eguisheim is magical (and it is so close to Colmar).

Colmar, France (Day 2) – Nov 2017

Staying in Colmar for a couple more days. I need some decent winter tyres for the Van and they cannot be delivered until Wednesday morning. There are worse places to be while waiting for winter tyres but I should have had this done while back in the UK waiting for the house to be sold. My schoolboy French really doesn’t lend itself to a protracted conversation as to the merits of different winter tyres. At least the people at Best Drive Tyres didn’t laugh but I’ll not rest easy until I have seen exactly what it is I have ordered.

Tomorrow I am thinking of cycling (yes, cycling – they say you never forget how) to a place called Eguisheim, a few clicks from here. Eguisheim was recommended to me by a local guy I met today in the Irish Pub (of course there’s an Irish pub here!) as being every bit as nice a place to visit as Colmar. Well, I think that is what he said – He couldn’t speak English (and he was French, not Irish. Lol). Time will tell. I have to get to Eguisheim first without my sat-nav.

Meantime, a few more photos of Colmar:-

*Inside the Irish Bar. That’s my Murphy’s*

Colmar, France – Nov 2017

Rain woke me at 05.00 and prompted an early departure to Colmar (rain sounds much louder in the Van and will take getting used to). It ceased raining as I arrived at Colmar and found Camping de L’Ill (just a mile from the town centre).

Camping de L’Ill has all mod cons (although the swimming pool has been emptied for winter); is situated in very pleasant surroundings (close to a bar/restaurant) and; best of all, at least for the moment, I have it pretty much to myself.

From what I could research and have been told about Colmar I expected something special and I wasn’t disappointed. I’m just back from a 6 hour walk around the town (except for a couple of hours in a very good bar/restaurant that will receive a mention in my trip advisor review when or if Will tells me how trip advisor works) and it is one of the most charming towns I have ever visited.

It was surprisingly quiet even though there was a 10 km fun run taking place which finished in the town centre. This is the advantage of arriving out of season.

No more words; just a handful of the 50 or 60 photos I took although they don’t do the place justice…

I think that is the River Lauch which is a tributary to the L’Ill