Do you Know the way to St-Tropez(with apologies to Dionne Warwick) - Onto the Rich and Famous Playground of St-Tropez - 13th May 2016

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Everyone knows that song, ‘Do you know the Way to St-Tropez’. Well at least that is the way that that song made famous by Dionne Warwick in 1968,has been going through our heads since we put St-Tropez onto our must visit list for the BBA V3.And today is the day we make to St-Tropez and not San Jose as the song title is really about.

We said our thank you’s and goodbyes to Thomas, one of our host’s (Chantal must have been at work) and headed off towards Arles to get us on the right track to the Cote d’Azure.

We hoped that Gina had plotted a path that would take us around Marseille, which is a large and busy city with a substantial amount of industry and a large seaport which would probably mean significant traffic and mostly in the form of large trucks.

The D14 taking us out of the Camargue was like all the others we have driven over during the past two days, narrow and not up to cars travelling at 90kph.We were pleased to clear the area as opposing vehicles hadn’t changed their tactics which we had experienced as we drove around the Camargue.

We weren’t quite sure whether the N568 would take us clearly passed Marseille but as it turned out we managed that and didn’t even see any of the city and we were soon on the D96 heading south to the coast and lunch at La Ciotat on the D559.

The weather was dry but with a high overcast and there wasn’t quite enough warmth from the weak sun to have a boot lunch.

We had made good progress up to now and had we known what was ahead in Toulon then we might have looked to try and get onto a tolled highway to keep the momentum going.

The scenery along the coast was delightful with the iconic pine tree everywhere. They are a species that is unlike our pine trees at home as they don’t grow higher than 4 or 5 metres and are rather bushy in shape.

Small seaside towns came and went and then we arrived in the outskirts of Toulon.

We had seen one of those electronic billboards at a roundabout that change their message every 10 or 15 seconds and had got part of the instructions to get to Auchan so we could do our shopping for supplies for the next 3 days. Should we go round the roundabout again and hope that the Auchan advert would pop up again as we approached the billboard? We did but the message didn’t appear so we gave that idea away as the traffic volumes picked up to heavy and we slowed to a crawl.

Then Intermarche supermarket appeared on the GPS and we changed our immediate destination to get us there. Success!

We were low on supplies and so our shopping took over 30 minutes in the massive supermarket before we were ready for the checkout.

Now one of the great things in Spain was that many of the supermarkets operated a system of one queue to a checkout and when you got to the front of the queue you were directed by a number that came up on a screen to the next available operator. Great system! Not so here in France. You get in a queue that looks like it will move quickly only to find that the shopper ahead of you didn’t realise they had to pay for their groceries and all this after they have taken an age to pack their items.

Back on the road the real problem of the day started.

Toulon is very similar to Auckland in one major way. It has just one main route from one side to the other and it gets gridlocked.

It was of course late afternoon on a Bank holiday weekend Friday so traffic was going to be heavy but the snail pace we moved at was hopeless. We did get to see a lot of mid city apartment buildings though.

Part of the problem was the merging of 2 lanes to 1 which made no sense at all other than slowing the traffic even further.

A mid city tunnel did speed up the flow as the lanes increased back to 2 again for some unexplainable reason but everything slowed again on the other side when there were more on ramps and drivers coming on weren’t obeying the traffic light controlled entrance. Perhaps they like us just wanted by now to get to their destination.

All this had put us well behind schedule but at least we hadn’t contacted Didier who was going to give us the keys for the mobile home we are staying in.

Half an hour out on the GPS we made the call to him thinking that it would now be a breeze to make it in time as the traffic once we cleared Toulon was travelling OK.

But more slow traffic was ahead as the road became more twisty and hilly and our progress reduced again putting our time of arrival out.

The road was scenic however with forest and for the passenger it made a pleasant view to look out on while the driver had to contend with the slow traffic.

We emerged from the hills and the Gulf of St-Tropez was before us. And even on a partly sunny early evening the waters sparkled. It was easy to see why people love coming here to live and for holidays.

We had struggled to find a place in our budget here but came with an AirBnB deal for a mobile home which in the description looked like it was located on the owner’s piece of land and they lived in a house on 30 hectares of cork and other tree forest.

Sounded idyllic.

But what it turned out to be was that the mobile home was actually located in a mobile home park, part of which was private and part for rent by holidaymakers.

The one we had was privately owned by a man called Dominique who had arranged for his friend Didier to meet us.

Not realising where it was actually located other than the name of the road proved a challenge and that was made worse by the road being seemingly in two parts.

Eventually we found Parc Montana (no this is France and not the USA) and met Didier who had been waiting patiently for the extra hour it had taken us. We had texted him to tell him of our increasing delay.

So this is what the 30 hectares of cork and other trees was. Old D didn’t even own the place as such just his plot to park the mobile home. A bit misleading in the web page that you book from and we will need to let AirBnB know as the end result might not be someone’s cup of tea.

To us we didn’t mind and we followed Didier in his car up the hill turning left, then right, then left etc etc and we were there almost at the top of the park but not the hill which went for some further distance.

The location was great with very nice views out over the valley that brings you into Gassin just short of St-Tropez. More of views of that sparkling sea would have to wait until tomorrow when we plan to visit St-Tropez town.

The mobile is bigger than the two we have had already on the BBA V3 and there will be more room to scatter ourselves around over the next 3 days.

Didier didn’t know anything about how the Wi-Fi worked and neither did D when we sent him a text. We then discovered unlike all the other places we have been the internet was going to cost here and we delayed paying until tomorrow as we were too exhausted after the long drive to do anything more than check emails anyway. That can wait until Saturday.

The cold beer with a salad dinner was great and it wasn’t long before it was time for bed to bring the long day to a close.

PS :don't forget to change the word San Jose for St-Tropez when you are reading the blog and singing along with the song from YouTube

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