Solo, the UK, and back to France with a new camera.
Page may contain affiliate links & we may recieve a percentage of any qualifying purchases.
Again, apologies, we were home in the U.K. last weekend so I never finished that week’s blog. So strap in for two weeks worth of meandering around the south of France!
So, last time I said how the plan was to have a quiet drink in a sleepy mountain village to the north of Nice. Well, it just so happens that we arrived in Tourette Levens as the village was setting up for an event of some kind. I mean, it’s May in France, there’s always something going on, how silly of us not to realise right?!
Turned out this quiet village was hosting a Medieval festival complete with medieval martial arts (fully costumed knights waling on each other with various swords etc) and entertainers in keeping with the period. Needless to say our quiet night became quite rowdy and we found ourselves rather drunk clapping along to a live rendition of the Skyrim theme at 11pm whilst a guy breathed fire across the small children on the front row.
Just another Spring Saturday in France eh?
The next morning nursing a slight hangover I drove Ellen down to Nice airport and annoyed everyone by dropping her on the approach road as we were too tall to actually get through to departures.
Then I headed west on the toll roads and stopped at a services to figure out my next move.
I settled on getting water, dumping grey and emptying bins etc at this autoroute service’s and then headed on to a great little park up on the side of a quiet mountain pass and overlooking the hills and the Mediterranean Sea to the south east with an old Cork Oak tree framing it all perfectly. Beautiful!
It was so good in fact that after a day of lounging in the sun and getting some day-skipper theory course revision done, I decided I would stay just one more night. The next day I desperately needed to replace the Camping Gaz bottles we have retrofitted in for these first 6 months.
Heading over toward Montpellier I realised that I would arrive at my destination, a “Brico” or DIY shop (hardware store for our US audience) at 1pm. Outside of France, not a problem. But I continually forget, no matter how many years I’ve been coming here, that a lot of the smaller places in France are shut for lunch! When will I learn?!
Subsequently I found myself in 26° heat sitting in a Decathlon car park 10 minutes down the road. They didn’t have any either and I had to decided if I wait till the Brico reopened or just carry on and sort another day.
Decisions, I technically had plenty in the smaller backup/outdoor stove bottle after all.
Ultimately I ended up waiting and arrived at the Brico not long after they reopened. With a bit of smooth (maybe not) French, I managed to sort a replacement bottle for the tatty old one we had acquired in Tarifa.
A quick stop in the Intermarche over the road and my jobs were done. I could now head north west to a little park up nestled amongst the trees along the banks of the Durance River.
After a bit of a hair raising ride along the rough worn track, with its deep ruts from vans trying to pass in heavy rain and mud, I made it to the spot. I did have to wait for an older couple to leave in their car, but no pressure from me and they were on their way shortly after.
This was a gorgeous spot. A fallen tree gave access to the stony river beach and the trees meant I could hang the hammock and relax. Again I ended up spending two nights here with the full day in between spent mostly swimming in the River and doing yet more day skipper theory. Interspersed with some hammock time of course!
Thursday I had to get a shift on though. I had to get all the way to the Aire in Carcassonne, right over the other side of Languedoc Roussillon. But, I’d not even gotten out of Provence! Well, swings and roundabouts. At least I have a toll tag for France that I put in the van. Makes it a lot easier to get places quickly.
Watching the temperature gauge climb up above 30° I made it to the Aire in the south of Carcassonne. Thankfully there were spaces but I got a bit confused by the “72 hours” max payment on the terminal and had a minor freak out. I needed to leave the van here for at least 4, maybe even 5 days! Eventually, after much deliberation and slowly watching more people take up the few remaining spots, I decided to risk it and get in for as long as I could.
Once set up, I gave the number on the terminal a call and after coming out to chat with me, the staff said that we could just settled any outstanding before leaving. The only issue was it would cost a few euros more. I could cope with that for a bit of peace of mind over the weekend. Panic over.
It was now 32° outside and I couldn’t bear the idea of sitting in the van or in the Aire on such a nice afternoon. Plus the van was an oven in all honesty. My fault, we have to run air con on max speed with the cab curtain open for 15 mins or so before arriving somewhere. This normally takes the edge off whilst we get the screens in the front at the park up, but I totally forgot to do this!
Anyway, I decided I’d wander into Carcassonne’s old city. I’ve been here plenty of times before so I knew I could just go in and get a drink and an ice cream to cool off a bit.
The walk in along the canal was new to me though, yet it was very pleasant and after a couple of beers in the city, I wandered back to have a bit of food and pack for my flight early the next morning.
Up bright and early I was in a cab, chatting in French to the driver (sort of) and then on a flight back to the U.K. and touched down in the grey midlands just after 10AM.
Finally Ellen and I were reunited for the first time in 5 days when she picked me up from the airport she dropped me straight at the barbers to get my mop of hair sorted out!
The weekend consisted of seeing family and celebrating some family birthdays before Ellen headed back to Carcassonne on the Monday. I followed closely behind on Tuesday morning after a long drive down to Stansted through rush hour.
We were finally back as a trio, Ellen, Noodle (the van) and Myself and back in France to continue the journey!
I was shattered however, having dropped Ellen at the airport at 4am the day before and then the long day I’d had. So Ellen went to do the shopping whilst I napped and then she drove us to our first “France Passion” stopover.
France Passion was fairly cheap for the year and a friend had recommended it for us for free stopovers at vineyards and farms etc. Tonight was at a honey farm about an hour north of Carcassonne where we were alone in a small meadow surrounded by tall trees and the beehives about 100m down the path.
One of the rules of France Passion is that you call to introduce yourselves upon arrival and that you buy some produce. So what that means for us non-French subscribers is that it forces you to speak French with no cop-outs! Which falls mainly on myself as generally my French is better than Ellen’s. Though when she said this to the owners when they came to say hello, I was half asleep on the bed and ready to keel over!
In all fairness, they were extremely lovely people and the beekeeper’s wife was very patient with us and she had Google translate on hand to assist. Needless to say, we got there in the end and came away with some lovely honey and cake. And met their beautiful Border Collie (we discovered from them that it’s the same breed name in French) called “Twist”.
The next morning we set off east with every intention of heading close to Avignon. However, something crossed my mind about 40 minutes in. We were going to be heading past a place neither of us had been to…
Beziers.
Famous for the cathedral in which Simon de Montfort burned the Cathars during his crusade against the perceived “heretics” of the Languedoc. (history suggests these people never really existed as a self proclaimed people. Only that the people of this region worshipped Catholicism in a way that was one or two years out of vogue and thus the pope ordered armies to slaughter them. I’ll leave it at that…)
So, an Aire close to the famous canal du midi was found on google maps and off we went.
We arrived at a decent time around midday and so once set up, we headed up into the city along the canal du midi and up the steep climb along the cliffs toward the cathedral.
Beziers is an extremely photogenic city, and guess what I had just bought myself whilst back home in the U.K… Yes, I was having a field day with my new camera here in Beziers. I also learned a lot of things about aperture, shutter speed, ISO, histograms and much more whilst wandering these ancient and beautiful streets. A quick shout out to my long suffering brother David at davidbuckingham.co.uk for putting up with my constant questions. He and my Grandfather are the real photographers in the family, I’m just an idiot with a phone who’s become an idiot with a fancy camera!
Anyway, we wandered up toward the city centre, down narrow streets and out onto the main boulevard. Stopping for drinks and snack as we went. Eventually, after a drink stop near the Halles (French covered market building) we found ourselves back at the cathedral and wandered in to look at the famous site.
We’ve seen a lot of cathedrals on this trip so far. Some half finished because it was looking a bit too extravagant, like Bologna. Some ridiculously extravagant, like Salamanca or Sagrada Familla… but this place carried the most weight due to the reasons mentioned before. Also, with a voluntary donation, you can climb up into the balconies to look down upon the central nave. This is something we’ve never experienced before and applied a new perspective to the building. Then continuing further up you find yourselves outside at the top of the bell tower! Which was a bit of a shock when it struck 5pm right next to our heads!
The views from up here were exceptional! I just only hope that I got the settings and editing good enough on the camera to do it justice for you all to see! (I do have to compress them on here though, or they'd never load 😅)
Heading back to the van, we took a stroll across the old bridge for some spectacular shots across the river of the bridge and cathedral upon the cliffside. Then wandered back along the river and rejoined the canal du midi before making it back to the van.
The next morning we decided that we would stay another night. I’d enjoyed the slower pace on my own the week before and we agreed that now we only had half of France to see that we could slow down a bit. Also, we’ll be back in France plenty of times, so if taking it slow means we miss a couple of things, it’s not a huge deal.
Ellen went out for a walk in the morning sun along the canal du midi and came across the 9 locks. These deal with a major drop in elevation on the city outskirts and are somewhat akin to the locks at Foxton in the U.K.
Meanwhile I had a meeting in the morning and then more day skipper work to do now that I had all my charts and books and fun stuff to get through.
The next morning we got up bright and early to walk up into town through the gardens and into the main boulevard. The reason being, Ellen had overheard that Fridays in Beziers hosted “The largest flower market in France” from a local tour guide.
We walked through a beautiful park to get there and I took way too many photos. However arriving at the boulevard we soon realised that this tour guide was greatly exaggerating. There were flower stalls sure, but maybe only 6 or 7 taking up a quarter of the length of this avenue.
We were a bit disappointed but we had a coffee at a cafe and I may have indulged in a torsade de chocolat before setting off back to the van.
Today we would definitely make it over to the park up near Château neuf du pape, close to Avignon!
An hour in we found ourselves driving through the Picpoul de Pinet wine region, huge tidal lakes to our right with Oyster farms as far as the eye can see. Obviously we stopped to pick up a few bottles of the popular white wine (but they can keep the oysters, we aren’t fans). Heading on we were soon driving along narrows spits of land between the Mediterranean on our right and more lakes on our left. Eventually we found somewhere that had an AdBlue pump, something we were getting desperate for and had been keeping an eye out for.
All sorted we now headed inland more as I took the wheel. Back on the main roads and “oh wait!” I declared “isn’t the pont du Gard near where we’re going?!” I’d driven past the signs for it twice at this point, first on the way to Italy and then on my solo drive back the week prior. It had been on our list for months too.
So much for making it to that park up then! That was another 40 minutes further from Pont du Gard. We rerouted and headed to the famous UNESCO Roman viaduct.
We pulled into the car park and narrowly avoiding running over a huge bright green lizard we parked up and headed toward the visitors centre and the bridge.
It was hot! Very hot! But the bridge was amazing and so well preserved. I can only imagine seeing it for the first time in the more primitive world of 2000 years ago (although, I suppose one could argue that it was a more civilised time. I shan’t get into that though!)
The other thing that we hadn’t known, was that you could swim in the river underneath the bridge! We debated going back to get changed but ultimately decided it was getting too late and so we would check into an Aire in the nearby town and hike back in the morning.
That evening we opened one of our bottles of the Cappanna 2022 Montalcino we had bought in Tuscany and the huge Italian olives we had bought in Bologna and headed to bed hoping it would cool down a bit.
The next morning we got up, packed our swimming gear this time, and hit the trail up the hill and across to Pont du Gard one last time. The hike took longer than expected due to the age old AllTrails problem of non-existent paths, but it was a nice walk all the same.
So by the time we arrived back down by the bridge it was half 11 and nearly lunchtime. After much deliberation, given the growing crowds, this being a Saturday, we decided to wait and have lunch at the nice restaurant on the terraces. After, we then got changed and headed down to the rocky banks of the river and found a little spot to spend the next couple of hours in and out of the water.
One particular highlight was a dragonfly nymph that had crawled up near us to emerge. I saw it start to wiggle and bulge and managed to get the camera trained on it to try get a Timelapse. Unfortunately I couldn’t figure out the setting quick enough, nor get the camera on the tripod fast enough. So I had to do it manually by bracing the camera against my knees. People with exposure to the armed forces would probably recognise my “flawless” seated rifle positioning as I sat, eye to viewfinder for 20 minutes taking photos as this dragonfly emerged from its juvenile body.
What a privilege to witness, and to protect, Ellen had spotted another that had been stepped on not far from this little guy. So we felt like we had done our small part to protect this little piece of nature from marauding children.
After a few hours swimming, sunning and saving the wildlife, we headed back up to the terraces to get changed and have a couple of drinks. Then headed back along the shorter road route back to the Aire as the rains finally started.
Then as Sod’s Law would have it, they stopped as we got back to the van. At least we can spend this evening sat outside finishing off the Montalcino though eh?
Well, maybe we will get to château neuf de pape tomorrow, or more likely, we’ll get stuck as it’s Sunday AND bank holiday weekend. But we’ll all have to wait and see how that plays out next week!
