Blogs from Midi-Pyrénées, France, Europe - page 17

Talk about being lost in France – the experience of being on the Peripheric on a Monday morning will linger long in the imagination. Another one of those things that you laugh at when you realise what you have done. Part of that rich tapestry of life on the road in a motorhome. Most of the time things go well but then you have a moment . It’s those moments that you remember long after the holiday is over. We wake early. For us not the long lingering mornings in bed, not getting up until lunchtime or beyond. Perhaps it’s being older. You feel like you need less sleep. As soon as a bit of daybreak shows and the birds start to sing we wake. Today was only going to be a short hop to Pezenas ... read more

Exactly as forecast it rained in the night, most of the night in fact, but all dried up by the time we woke. The mountain tops had all disappeared in the cloud and it was quite chilly until midday so we stayed in the Tandy having a lazy morning. By noon the sun had broken through and was burning the cloud away so the scooter came out of the garage and we headed down to the town, Luz-st-Sauveur, at the foot of the hill. Being lunchtime on a Sunday it was no surprise to find almost all the shops closed. It was a surprise to find nowhere to get a drink and a snack. One bar and one hotel and that was it. Very few people about and very few cars. I suggested we scooter up ... read more

A truly amazing drive today across the mountains of the Hautes-Pyrénées. We concluded at the end of it that we had been most fortunate in the weather. Rain had been forecast but we didn’t see any, only low cloud (very) as we approached the summit of the Col de Tournalet from the East and otherwise glorious blue sky and sunshine. What could be better for a scenic drive across, over, up, down and round mountains. I remembered as we were driving along taking in the wonderful views just why I had asked Bob to include the Pyrénées on this trip. The first half of the drive didn’t include any mountain passes but we drove through lovely countryside in the Ariège region and some really pretty villages. The first village which we admired, Bordes sur Lez, was ... read more

Not too far to drive today. We stopped in Tarrascon-sur-Ariege where in 2003 we stayed on a lovely site by the river (well remembered as Bob spent the afternoon putting the scooter back together after it fell off the rack as we were driving through the Pyrenees in Spain). We fed the Tandy some fuel and then carried on to Foix. This looked a lovely place to visit but definitely not today, in a motorhome. There was a big market right through the centre of town and a traffic jam. Vehicles parked everywhere and certainly nowhere for us so we had to carry on through. A very pretty drive but by this point a bit damp as we drove through some very low cloud which the windscreen wipers declared to be rain. We are ... read more

Toulouse to Bayonne and the Pyrennees in southern France 12 to 13 August 2013 We had 30 kms north to drive to Toulouse in southern France. Toulouse is the 4th largest city in France with 400K people. Its fame is based on its aerospace industry: Concord, Airbus, and the Ariane space rocket originated here. Our visit was mainly focused around the Cite de l’Espace (the space museum) which was massive. We could have spent a whole day there. It was a mixture of the Canberra Questacon (everything was very interactive for the kids and educational on space issues) and the Washington Aeronautical Museum with its big range of space ships/rockets/robots etc. and a whole lot of information on space exploration. It was definitely well worth the visit at 25 Euros each. We also visited the very ... read more