Advertisement
Published: October 5th 2017
Edit Blog Post
Hi Dot
OK, when I last wrote I was fretting about the damp in the caravan and trade-in prices etc and in brief it all worked out OK. The caravan repairers decided to match the trade in price, so it went in for repair and never came back, we just delivered the carpets and curtains and no worry about the caravan condition as they have had it for numerous repairs, sometimes it felt as if we had shared ownership.
We collected Otto, our new, to us, motorhome, the next week. Over the next few weeks we took off for a few UK trips including near Ruthin in North Wales, Belper in Derbyshire, Newport in Gloucestershire to visit Jack (grandson) and of course his parents, Forest of Dean and Herefordshire to catch up with family and finally to Anglesey for Jane’s birthday. For those of you who know them, during our travels we managed to visit Sue and Geoff (Belper), Michelle and Gary (Whitecroft) and Chris (Moelfre) but not Neil who was away in Ireland, and had a wonderfully warm welcome and hospitality from them all.
So having nearly doubled Otto’s millage, he had only travelled 1,600 miles in
the previous five years, we set off for France at the end of the first week in September. If you don’t already know, unfortunately we are now travelling without Pippin who became terminally ill in August. Very sad, as this time last year we were travelling with both dogs but we keep reminding ourselves that we can now visit places which were not on our list because of the dogs.
Our first stop was Winchester, which I realise is technically not France but a good stop to catch the Portsmouth ferry a couple of days later. We stayed at Colden Common a few miles outside Winchester and scooted in for a good look around. If you’ve not been to Winchester it is well worth a visit. We did one of a few walking tours around the city centre and would return to do some more.
The next day we were planning to find somewhere to park up in Portsmouth and visit some of the tourist attractions, but woke up to find the water pump had given up and a shelf had collapsed onto the boiler. Fortunately we were close to a caravan dealership and could buy the necessary
bits to do the repairs but there went our chance to do see anything of interest in Portsmouth. These repairs always take longer than they should, especially if you mistake a non-return valve for part of the faulty pump and as such remove it, very frustrating to find that everytime I turned the tap off the water boiler emptied back into the cold water tank, but finally got it all sorted and caught the overnight ferry to La Havre. Apart from that and once we mastered stopping Scoot moving around on its trailer, both Otto and Scoot are proving a great success.
This summer we bought a satnav that allows us to put in Otto’s vital statistics to stop any repeat of l’incident (see about eight blogs ago). Being economical we tell it to avoid the tolls and take us to Blois and off we go. About 40 minutes out of La Havre it takes us through an industrial estate then stops us at a quayside and tells us to take the ferry across the Seine! Woops should have told it to avoid ferries! Off we set again on an interesting and pretty route along and then over the
Seine and onto a short strip of a free motorway. Now Dot, I think you should remember that the French still practice the noble art of protesting, think of the English lamb and air traffic controllers etc. We had just got onto the motorway when we stopped, for the first time, we had managed to be caught up in a lorry driver’s protest. We covered ten miles in the next six hours! So much for getting as far as Blois, instead we spent the night at an aires (free or very cheap stop over place for motorhomes) at the Mairie at Nanacourt and very good it was too, our first night on an aires in a beautiful setting, free water, waste disposal and if we had arrived earlier free electric.
Day two in France saw us arrive at Blois on a site on the river (ACSI site Le Val de Blois, great site within easy walking distance of Blois) and gave consideration to which Loire valley chateaux we should visit, with over sixty odd to choose from, panic not Dot we only visited a couple. The chateau at Blois was a royal palace for many years and each wing
was built at separate times, in different styles so you can stand in the court yard and depending on which way you face you could look at a completely different building, great place to visit with a lot of different parts open to the public. Blois also has an impressive cathedral and old town which we wandered around in the wet and wind!
Next we moved a few miles down the road to an aires in a chateau car park at Amboise and visited the main chateau. Another royal chateau, very impressive position and views but less to see as much of it has been destroyed, but the thing that sticks in my mind was the turrets, with ramps instead of steps, which were wide enough to take a carriage up.
As the weather was looking better further south we decided to spare you any more chateaux and head for Bordeaux and then the Arcachon Basin. Having stopped one night on the way at Nersac Poitou (another aires outside another Mairie) we arrived at a site in Creon about 15 miles south east of Bordeaux with a bus stop right outside and for the grand price of €4.20
we caught a return bus into Bordeaux, less than the cost of a coffee in Bordeaux! Having visited the tourist office and asked “what should we see if we have about six hours?” we set off with our map on a walking tour. We saw the outside of many interesting buildings, but being a Monday most were closed, still it was well worth the visit, our only previous knowledge being of a city we drove around heading north or south and complained about the heavy traffic! The weather took a change for the better, probably nothing to do with the city but seeing the sun certainly makes you look favourably on a place.
Next stop was on the coast, at Arcachon Basin behind Europe’s largest sand dune (Pyla) which is still growing up to 13 feet a year. We could walk from the site, over the sand dune and down to the beach and did so every day, very good for the calves! We also scooted into Arcachon on a couple of days, once to look around the town and once to take a boat trip across the basin to Cap Ferat.
Arcachon is odd, there is an
area of 19
th century luxury villas which are all huge, unique and being on a hill, enjoy great views and then there is an area right on the coast where they have allowed the building of the some really awful places in the 20
th century.
The boat trip across to Cap Ferat included a 90 minute trip around the basin to see the oyster beds, stilted house and the fabulous summer residences on the northern shores. Cap Ferat in on the northern coast of the basin, but being a narrow peninsular you can walk across the peninsular to the Atlantic coast with its miles of sandy beaches and huge surfing waves. It was a good trip helped along with moules and frites for lunch.
Another day we scooted to a local market with the intention of buy some fruit and veg to find everything far more expensive than the supermarkets, what’s that all about?
Having found some good weather and topped up our tans we headed off for the Dordogne and so until next time take care Dot.
Terry and Jane (long suffering editor)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.249s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0416s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb