The last dregs of summer, 8 October 2022

It rained in the night, and it was much more autumnal this morning. I hope we haven't said "Goodbye" to summer, even down here in the South of France. We said goodbye to our France Passion host, and our first port of call was a supermarket (naturally) where I bought our Saturday sausages and helped the Swan Whisperer buy a new cube of gas. He also topped up our diesel, as there is a severe, and growing worse, shortage of both diesel and, primarily, petrol, due to an ongoing refinery strike. 

We are hoping we can get diesel, at least until we get to Hauts-de-France, which is the area worst affected, as is the Paris area. But when we tried to come off the motorway to a service area to have lunch there was a huge, huge queue even to get off the motorway. So we came away. 

We basically drove down to Toulon and back up, but didn't see much because the main road through the city was all underground. But there were some lovely roads, although some awful hairpin bends - but only a couple at a time, not the unending array of them there was a few days ago. 

We arrived at this Camping-Car park in the village of Le Val, and after a cup of tea we set off to explore the place, which was lovely.

More photos on Facebook. And now back at the WoMo, hoping tomorrow won't be too wet, but the forecast isn't good! 

The last dregs of summer, 7 October 2022

A bit of a "nothing" day, really. I was tired, for some reason, and went back to sleep after breakfast, dreaming about a rather nice binman called Gordon (no, I don't know any binmen, and certainly not one called Gordon!) giving us a lift from Streatham in his bin lorry!

Anyway, when I came awake it was time to move on if we were not to have to pay an excess charge. So we went over to empty the grey and the black - we didn't need water, having filled the tank right up the previous evening - but when we got to the exit, my card didn't work. Again. Oh dear. However, I quickly discovered that the SW still had my card from turning on the water to empty the loo, and it was not too surprising that my Carrefour card didn't work! Once I had the correct card, no problem.

We drove through Martigues, stopping at the most enormous Carrefour you ever did see as I really fancied fish in parsley sauce for supper. Honestly, it was so huge it made the one in Cité Europe look like a convenience store in comparison.

We had decided to stop at a France Passion place between Marseilles and Salon de Provence, but when we got there, they were horribly vague about where to park, and we couldn't find the place at all, so we ate our lunch in the overflow car park and moved on to the one a few hundred metres down the road, where we were warmly welcomed, with a clear explanation of where to go, and the pitches are clearly marked, too. A lovely view of the hills (don't know why I can't move the picture!), and of the old house.

And little Thelwell girls

riding on Thelwell ponies. 

The last dregs of summer, 6 October 2022

There was such a lovely sunrise this morning! I actually got up before the Swan Whisperer, so it was my turn to make breakfast. After which, we called in at the farm shop where we had spent the night and bought some wine and one or two other bits. Including citronella essential oil to try to discourage the mosquitos that have been eating me alive just lately. I don't know how they get in - we are scrupulous about keeping the windows covered with mosquito netting at all times, but but... 

Once we set off, we made for Aigues-Mortes, a fortified town which we have been to before.

 We first called in at a Super U about a kilometre out of the town. Years ago, we spent a couple of nights at a motel in the same roundabout, and knew it was there. Then we moved on to the town proper. The motorhome parking was very near one of the entrance gates, and we enjoyed walking through the town to the main drag where every shop is a restaurant! We picked one at random to have lunch in, and I for one thoroughly enjoyed my open sandwich with onions, burger, egg and salad. Followed by ice cream. The SW chose coffee; I should have liked nougat, but they were out, so I had a scoop of "Fougasse d'Aigues-Mortes",. I am still not quite sure what it was, other than delicious! 

After lunch, we wandered back to the WoMo and set off again, this time round the Camargue to the town of Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhone, crossing the river on the ferry we have used several times before.

We are in a Camping-Car park here, just by the canal, and we have seen several boats go up and down, including a naval vessel and the longest barge you ever did see - and so long I thought it was a train at first! The SW has gone for a walk, but has just come back as I type! 

The last dregs of summer, 5 October 2022

This morning, for some reason, I fell asleep again after taking my tablet and didn't wake up until well gone 09:00. I really had trouble getting out of bed and showering, too! However, once I had, I was fairly all right, and we spent the first hour after breakfast doing necessary chores like boiling the washing-up cloths to sterilise them, and changing the tea-towel, while the Swan Whisperer washed the outside windows and windscreens. 

When we were ready to move on, though, and we had a bit of a fright, as when I pressed my card to the exit barrier, nothing happened! I realised there were no lights on the barrier, and the Swan Whisperer said it was the same on the entry barrier. So I rang them up, and first the woman I spoke to - who didn't speak nearly as good English as the one I spoke to the other night - asked me to try a code, but of course that didn't work, and then she said we could lift the barrier manually. So we did that. Unfortunately, the power cut, or whatever it was, also applied to the services - which were outside the actual enclosure - so we had to come away without using them. 

Our first port of call was Arles. We thought at first it would be impossible to park, since all the ar parks we could see were full, but just as we were going sadly away, we came across an absolutely enormous, empty car park that was so new the entrance barriers and card readers, etc, hadn't been set up yet. So parking was free. There were two other, older, car parks on the site which were now locked out of use, whether permanently or just in the low season I couldn't say. 

A shuttle bus ran us into town and, indeed, out the other side to the Roman race-track. We had confused this with the arena and theatre, but there was a good museum there and we enjoyed wandering around seeing the various bits and bobs they used in daily life, although I, for one, was less than enthused by the enormous hunks of stone that formed much of the display. Of more interest was a huge wooden boat that had apparently sunk in the harbour some 2,000 years ago and had been raised. It had been carrying stone, among other cargo. There were also a great many sarcophagi - frankly, if you've seen one Roman sarcophagus, you've seen them all - and I do hope they reburied the original inhabitants with all due reverence. 

When we had finished with the museum, we decided to walk back into town - a lovely path which took us past the Roman-style garden that the museum had created. It was full of schoolchildren and others eating packed lunches, so we didn't go in, but walked up alongside the Rhône,

and then through the mediaeval streets until we got back to the main drag where we had lunch. Then we walked a bit further until we got to the old arena.

I was flagging by then, but nothing a delicious ice-cream

couldn't cure! We tried to get a sight of the Roman theatre, too, but were somehow the wrong side of it. 

We walked back to the main drag through a small but steep (fortunately downhill!) public park, and didn't have to wait too long for a bus back to the car park. 

We then drove on, via a supermarket, to this France Passion farm at Montcalm, in the Camargue, where we were warmly welcomed. The woman in the shop seemed both surprised and pleased that we had bothered to come and say hello - I have to wonder how many people don't bother. Or who stop here without being members of France Passion. Actually, looking at the map, it is possible that the France Passion place is the other side of the road, but this place takes motorhomes to, so.... 

The last dregs of summer, 4 October 2022

It appears to be summer between the hours of 10:00 and 19:00 or thereabouts. Before and after, it can be very cold, and this morning it was very foggy. 

However, after breakfast we set off to the highlight of today, the Cirque de Navacelles, which my brother-in-law said was well worth seeing. The fog had lifted en route, and he was not wrong!

The photos simply don't do it justice. I found I could only look over for a few seconds at a time, or I got very dizzy, and the Swan Whisperer didn't help by practically climbing the retaining wall (he says he was perfectly safe, but then he would say that, wouldn't he?) to see if he could see the others, who had decided to walk down! Sooner them than me, and the SW wasn't able for a long walk today as he had had two in recent days and done his tendon a lot of no good. 

We had a drink in the Café there, but that was a bit of a failure as we ordered the very special home-made lemonade. The SW ordered plain and I ordered lemon/lavender, but honestly, all you could taste was sugar! It was appallingly sweet, quite revolting. At least it meant we weren't hungry, so we decided to drive on towards Bellegarde, where we are spending the night. 

It was awful, the first two hours of the drive. Firstly we drove down and down, hairpin after hairpin, horribly scary and sick-making, and when! we had gone about 20 km, the road turned out to be blocked, so we had to turn round. The Satnav did suggest a fairly sensible-looking diversion but the SW said he didn't like the look of it, so we had to go up a different set of hairpins, horrendously narrow, much worse than the first! I was so terrified I regret to say I screamed most of the way up and was thankful I'd had no lunch! I And as soon as we got to the top, we the SW said should we stop and have lunch?! It was a good 30 minutes before I could even think of eating anything...

However, after that it was a very pleasant drive along the D999 and then past Nîmes to this Camping-car park in Bellegard. Which is by a marina, rather nice! We don't think we'll meet up with the others again but you never know! 

The last dregs of summer, 3 October 2022

This evening finds us still at Nant. We had been going to move on, but it didn't happen!

This morning, the SW and the others went for a walk up to Le Roc de Nant.

Sooner them than me, is all I will say about that! I, meanwhile, had a glorious morning doing absolutely nothing!

When the others got home, it was lunch time and past, so we had our lunch and then sat around chatting and putting the world to rights. It was a lovely summer afternoon - I do wish I'd packed shorts - and by about 16:00, we all decided it was too late, and we were too comfortable, to move! 

I had had no exercise, so the SW kindly accompanied me into the town for a brief wander round the Old Town and then a beer in the old market halls. Tomorrow is market day here and the men were putting up barriers to do people parking in the Square. 

Then back to the WoMo and eventually I cooked a cauliflower cheese which was lovely.  And we will have to move on tomorrow! 

The last dregs of summer, 2 October 2022

It was much milder this morning, and I don't think the heating needed to come on at all. The SW went into the village to buy bread, and after breakfast we used the services before heading on. 

Today's drive was down the A75, such a lovely road, as far as Millau.

We listened to our church service en route which was a bit surreal! At Millau, we came off the motorway and drove cross country through the Gorges de la Tarn and past La Cavalerie - there was a French Foreign Legion barracks and also a military firing range, and like Salisbury Plain - to this little village called Nant, where we met up with the SW's brother and his wife. 

We had lunch sitting outside, because it was so lovely. The SW changed into shorts, but I haven't packed any. After lunch, the others all went for some long, healthy uphill walk to some chapel or other - local beauty spot, anyway - and I went for a potter around the mediaeval old town centre, complete with resident ginger monster! I wonder whether all mediaeval French towns have ginger cats.... 

Back at the WoMo, I read until it was time to get supper, and then fed everybody on chicken and vegetable stew with couscous and Moroccan seasonings. And very good it was, too - a pleasant evening in good company.