Moved on to the land of the Musketeers

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Geo: 43.8696, 0.259101

Before we knew it we were down to our final week of four at Le Lavandou and David still had a personal cycling challenge to undertake and one that he realised he would be doing solo without a bike buddy. The summit at the tiny chapel of Notre Dame des Anges is 780m (2559'😉 and beyond the village of Pignans in the Maures mountain range so is no mean feat when pedalling from sea level. Indeed the whole expedition, including a couple of refreshment breaks, took him the best part of six hours and was therefore exhausted on his return. En route I received several texts giving his whereabouts so that I could let his cycling fans back at the site know how he was getting on. Quite an achievement for a 66 year old grandad!

On our final Friday Chris and Gordana treated us to an excellent lunch at L'Hemingway, the beach side restaurant at La Londe where we were introduced to some, for us anyway, unusual flavours since the menu has a French/Oriental feel. My sea bream with fennel in a sesame and ginger sauce was truly delicious; the seasoning was just right and so subtle. I finished off with my favourite French dessert - Floating Islands - mounds of soft poached meringue on a sea of creamy cold custard. All this in good company with a view to die for.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end and at 8am on Sunday morning after our goodbyes we pulled out of the site heading due west towards our overnight stop beside the fascinating Canal du Midi at Villeneuve-Les-Beziers. We had thought the roads would be quieter travelling the motorways on a Sunday when there is virtually no commercial traffic, but this was made up for with the number of cars, and of course, caravans/motor homes. There had been the Ascension Day public holiday on Thursday and I suspect many were making a long weekend of it.

Unusually we encountered a few holdups when we briefly came to a halt but arrived at Camping Les Berges du Canal early afternoon giving us time to go for a stroll. The Italian restaurant with a canal side terrace was doing a good lunchtime trade and the menu appealed so we booked a table for later on, which turned out to be an enjoyable evening. Once again the place was buzzing with activity to add to the atmosphere, with a table of Americans on one side who were travelling the Canal in three motor cruisers, and a group of five from Stoke-on-Trent (30 minutes up the road from us back home) on an unusual but admirable crusade for three of them to travel the cycle paths from Barcelona to Athens in one month supported by the other two in a motorhome to set up camp along the way. We wished them well in their quest and assured them we would be following their progress on Facebook. A good evening was had by all and the pizzas were very tasty too.

The onward journey the following day was less busy, particularly once we had left the A9 motorway behind. After turning off the Toulouse ring road towards Auch, the scenery became more rural including the characteristic rolling hills of Gascony, sometimes suggested as the Tuscany of France, and a popular if little-known settling place for ex-pats.

We made good time and were so keen to get to our second long stay home-away-from-home stop that we arrived at Camping Le Brouquere just outside Gondrin earlier than we should. Despite this, we were warmly welcomed by Walter and Sonia with the customary Dutch three kisses on the cheek. While Walter mowed and prepared our pitch, we checked in and chatted with Sonia over a glass of wine - how civilised!

One of the attractions of returning to sites you have used before and love is that you know the lie of the land, where the facilities are, where to shop and the like, so we were soon set up and meeting fellow campers including Pete and Verity who were here on our last stay. The number of repeat bookings says a great deal about the hospitality and facilities. Needless to say, few changes, but the new toilet block is under construction, with all but a few stages undertaken by Walter and Sonia themselves. David had a guided tour and was impressed with the standard of the construction done to-date.

The weather here so far has been mixed with some showers, mainly failing through the night, but these last few days have brought lots of sunshine and warmth, though the sky does have some interesting cloud formations, probably due to the proximity of the Pyrenees. How different to the clear, bright blue skies of Provence.

This evening we and fellow campers are dining on the terrace for one of Sonia's excellent table d'hote meals, with everyone, including our hosts, sat around one long table.

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