Campervan Adventures - Week 1

Europe » France
August 29th 2013

Published: August 31st 2013

It has been a week in the campervan and Steve and I are still here to tell the tail, by this I mean we have not killed each other by living in the small confined space of the campervan or due to women not being able to read a map. Saying this I am getting better with the map reading and we both felt that we are very lucky with Stan Right (our van) who is bigger and better than what we thought we might end up travelling with.

In this week we have taken our time slowly to drive down through France from Calais to the south west. Here is a little story of our week.

Day 1 21^st August 2013

Dover England – Amiens France

We had spent the night at our friend Owens in London, we had a few little last things to do in the morning but it all went smoothly. On leaving London to travel down to Dover it was a very lovely day the sun was out and the sky was blue. It was such a clear day you could see France which was very exciting. We were early for our Ferry but lucky we were let on to an early one. We got Stan on with no problems and we spent the time on the Ferry planning what we would do once we landed in France. Yes maybe we should have planned this a little before but it was fine, we decided we would travel down to Amiens and while I still had internet I did an online search of places to free camp.

Amiens (French pronunciation: 😉 is a city and commune in northern France, 120 km (75 mi) north of Paris and 100 km (62 mi) south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme department in Picardy. The city had a population of 136,105 according to the 2006 census.

Once getting off the Ferry we had a smooth ride down to Amiens and found the campsites that I had found on the internet, unfortunately the campsites were just parking places in the city which had no toilets, therefore we did not stay there. It was a shame really as the city looked very nice. Our next plan was to go back onto the motorway and find a truck stop to spend the night in. This plan worked well and not far out the town we found one. We parked up and I cooked us a lovely stir fry dinner and then we had 10 hours sleep.

Day 222^nd August 2013

France: Amiens, Paris, Chartres, Chatellerault

Our plan for this day was to get up drive to Paris and spend the day sightseeing in Paris. As Paris is one of my favourite cities in the world and I was hoping that I could share this with Steve as they say Paris is the city of love. However no Love was made with Steve and Paris. We didn’t really think about the fact that we are driving a big f**k off van through a major city and we might not be able to find parking that the van would fit into. This was the case, after spending an hour driving around and not being able to find parking we decided that we would leave Paris and head to the Bordeaux region which was our next plan. I was sadly disappointed about not seeing the sites of Paris with Steve but this would teach me to do our research. During this time we also worked out that we didn’t need to travel on the motorways all the time and pay tolls so we started driving on the A roads which was much nicer.

Once leaving Paris we drove down to Chartres

Chartres (French pronunciation: 😉 is a commune and capital of the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France. It is located 96 km (60 mi) southwest of Paris.

This was a very pretty little place where we took a bike ride and explored the town. Soon the pain of Paris was forgot. We set off again in Stan on our way down to Bordeux. That night we slept in a Picnic area, between the towns of Chatellerault and Naitree. The picnic spot was very nice with a lake and also the fast train rail line however once tucked up in bed this did not bother us and we had another great night sleep.

Day 3 23^rd August 2013

Chatellerault – Bordeaux

Bordeaux (French pronunciation: ; Gascon: Bordèu; Basque: Bordele😉 is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France. The city of Bordeaux, with a population of 239,157 inhabitants in 2010, is the ninth largest city in France; its metropolitan area (aire urbaine) is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 1,127,776. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture of the Gironde department. Its inhabitants are called "Bordelais" (for men) or "Bordelaises" (women). Bordeaux is the world's major wine industry capital.

We had a nice smooth ride into Bordeaux, however once again we had not done our research and did not realise how big the area was, we thought that the wineries would be not far out the city along with the coast. No no this is not the case, it is LARGE. We spent a little time walking around the beautiful city which is on the river front and lined with traditional roman buildings and then we decided that we were going to head to the coast and go to a caravan park for a few nights. We had a very basic map and it was not so easy to find the way to the coast (partly due to my map reading) which ended up resulting in a little detour. I did not think was much of a problem but Steve did as he had said before leaving the city that he should got some fuel and now there was no petrol stations around or anything else for that matter just little villages with very large chateau and vineyards, I did not find it a problem I was enjoying the sites but Steve was very stressed and his stress levels continued to rise till we found a petrol station to fill up. After this little drama I had worked out on the map where we were and we were soon at the coast town of Carcan. We decided rather than driving around looking for a camp sites that we would go to the tourist information centre and see what was available. This is when we hit another problem. Due to it being peak season a lot of the places did not have availability. Two places were suggested to us, so we went to check them out but they were just like bush camps with showers and toilets. After me saying I did not want to spend my money on the site we decided that we would do one more night of free camping and then we found a “car camping” spot. This is the name that the French call camping for campervan and caravans and the spot offered the basics, it was not free but it was cheap. We stayed there the night, it was in the forest and not too far from the beach. That night we were excited that the next day we would be going to the beach and we had a plan for the next few days – once again we were reminded that the 7 P’s are important. (The 7 P’s are – preparation prior to planning presents piss poor performance)

Day 4 24^th August 2013

The plan was to get up and go for a bike ride to the beach and then head to the tourist information centre to find a campsite that we could spend a few nights at, the reason for us visiting the tourist centre again was that we had done some research of campsites and wanted to check availability. Yay for us for doing some planning.

The morning started off nicely we got up had a nice breakfast and then headed off on a bike ride. I was really enjoying the ride me and my new bike (Vic – named after Victoria Pendleton, as it’s her brand) were getting on nicely and then Steve got a puncture and had no repair kit with him (this was ironic as the night before we were trying to be organised and he got it all ready and said that he should not go out without it, but it had been forgotten). After a little panic partly due to not knowing where we were on the map, but we thought we had worked it out and it was decided that Steve would ride my bike back to the van while I sat in the forest and waited for him. I was a little concerned that I may be left in the forest forever, I took some photos while I waited and then started to get the camera ready to do a video diary. The reason I was going to do this was to say goodbye to everyone if he didn’t return and I died. Just as I was about to start the filming, he came steaming down the road in the van. I was glad to see him, even though it had only been 20 minutes.

We decided that was the end of the bike road and drove the next 2k to the beach. It was not a very sunny day and the beach looked a little like a West Wales beach, so we decided that we would head into town to find a camp site. We arrived at the tourist information centre to find that it wasn’t open on a Saturday. At this point Steve and I were both starting to think that this campervan lifestyle was not for us. Steve made a comment that maybe we should just give up and go home, at this point I had to remind him that we have no home.

It was decided that we would take a chance and drive to one of the campsites we had picked from our research and we were in luck. It looked nice, it was in our price range and it had vacancies. Our luck was starting to change. We booked in for three nights and went and set up camp. Once that job was done we had another job to do, we had to get some food. We had seen an Aldi the day before so we went there. We are trying to be good and budget, and Aldi really helped with this we were able to buy good food and good wine for cheap. We ended up with lots of cheese and salami. The rest of the day/evening was spent chilling out at the camp site.

Day 5 25^th August 2013

Cancan Village – La Paradise Campsite

As Steve and I are worried about getting or being fat, we woke up and went for a run. We had nothing else planned for the day we just wanted to chill really, and due to the weather deciding that it was going to rain heavy for most of the day we did not have much choice to do anything else but sit and drink wine and eat cheese. When the rain did clear up we took advantage of the facilities at the camp site and played mini golf. Steve then fixed his bike as we thought it would be nice to go for a little evening ride. The ride did start off nice but then Steve’s tyre that he had fixed the day before decided to have a severe blow out. He was not very happy about this as he was not able to fix the tyre and he had to carry his bike back. At this point we decided that maybe we are just meant to spend life eating good food and drinking good cheap wine from Aldi and that is how we spent the rest of the day.

Day 6 26^th August 2013

Cancan Village – La Paradise Campsite

The day started again with Steve and I going for a run and then we came back to camp and went for a swim in the pool. While out running I had seen a bike shop so once we had breakfast and got organised we headed into town to try and buy Steve a new tyre. This day we found out that France has a siesta and everything between 12 and 2 closes, and we had arrived at the shop at around 1:15. Rather than walking back to the campsite we thought we would sit in the town square and people watch and also be able to know what the time was with the church clock tower as neither of us wear a watch anymore. We sat there till 1:50 and then walked back up the street to the shop, where it was still not open. We sat on a park bench across the road waiting, still nothing. We checked the sign again, yes it should open at 2pm, it was now past 2pm but I think it says that it does not open on Monday. After reading other shop signs and the bus timetable we could confirm that it does not open on Mondays and decided that we would come back the next day. The afternoon was spent relaxing by the pool at the campsite (getting the most out of our money) and then drinking cheap French wine and beer that evening.

Day 7 27^th August 2013

Cavcan Ville via Andernos-les-Bains to Bordeaux to Branne

It was time to say goodbye to our first campsite, we packed up with little problems and headed to buy Steve a new bike tyre, which we were able to get without any problems. We then headed down to the coast to a small little fisherman town (Andernos-les-Bains) where once Steve had fixed his bike we went for a ride to explore. We came across a market selling local produce. Steve thought this would be his opportunity to do his Rick Stein(English Chief) style cooking with some fresh seafood, however we had fallen into being unorganised again and we had no money to buy the seafood. We rushed off to find a cash machine however buy the time we came back, the market had closed up. We were devastated that we were not going to get our Rick Stein opportunity and would be eating cheese and bread for lunch and not fresh seafood. We continued our cycle and headed down to the fishing port where our luck changed. There was a fisherman down there selling moules (mussels) and oysters, (a lot of the places where shut due to it being between 12 and 2) but we found one very friendly man that sold us a kilo of moules for 3€. We were so excited we cycled back to Stan as fast as possible to cook up the mussels. I cooked them in white wine with onion and garlic, they were delicious. While sitting eating our mussels a police van came along to make sure we were not sleeping where we had parked, I was a little scared they were going to be nasty but they were very friendly. Once finishing our lunch we headed into Bordeaux where we wandered around the city, it really is a beautiful city. After leaving Bordeaux we headed across to the wine region, we drove for a while till we found a nice little free camping spot by the river in the town of Branne. We chose to stay here as it is very close to St Emilion as we planned to go explore and taste some wine the following day.

Day 8 28^th August 2013

As planned this morning we got up and went to St Emilion as it was early when we arrived very few people where there. St Emilion is a very beautiful town, we spent a lot of time trying to capture its beauty by taking photos. Steve and I just wandered around the town exploring the hilly little streets and the old building. There were lots of shops selling wine and some offering tastings but they were not very inviting to customers, so sadly we did not taste any wine in the shops. There was a French man and lady that had a market stall selling white wine and foie gras which they gave us a taste testers of. Later Steve and I joked that even on our travel budget we were able to have foie gras and wine in St Emilion. After a few hours of exploring the town we got back into Stan to find Pomerol, which sadly we did not find as it is not a town as more of a region that we were driving around. While driving around we took a stop and had our lunch (cheese and baguette) just outside of one of the vineyards, the view was very nice. During this time I also built up the courage to drive Stan, the first time ever, on the wrong side (right side of the road) in a right hand vehicle, I was so nervous and I only drove about 10k but I did it and am still here to tell the tale. I gave Steve the role of driving back, and I continued to struggle with the role of map reader. Which I would like to say I am getting much better at. We decided that we had enough of the Bordeaux region and it was time to head to our next destination – Biarritz.

1st September 2013

marksims
Mark Sims

First read
Very good and very amusing. Mum and I can just imagine Steve getting stressed - you describe it to a tee! (geddit?!) Keep running! Why Stan Right? Stan the van? Right handed drive?

19th September 2013

Tee and Steve Sims
Tanya Sims

First Read
Glad you found it amusing - week 1 was very interesting, hope you enjoy the next lot of entries and I will try and not make it so long between entries next time. :) x

Campervan Adventures - Week 1

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