3 August 2014
I’m lying in our comfortable tent listening to the rain fall in the medieval town of Richelieu. Lauren has cycled up to the tourism office to see where we can find the brandy (The name of the town happens to have the same name as our brandy of choice in SA – whether it originates from here, we are still to find out) and also buy a French loaf for lunch. The breads, croissants, pain au chocolat etc is all so good and fresh in this country.
A recap at what has happened since we last updated blog before we left….
WE left London at 10h30 on Thursday morning, said a few farewells on the way, and headed on our way to Dover. We dropped some excess bags that we won’t need on the trip in Tunbridge Wells (Thanks Peta and Dave - La’s cousins house) and got to our campsite mid afternoon. Our campsite was situated on top of ‘the white cliffs of Dover’ with a view overlooking the sea towards France. We had a swim in the sea and Lauren went for a long walk along the pebble beach. We had a good campfire that night with a braai complimented by clear skies to bid farewell to UK.
We woke up nice and early on Friday to catch the ferry to Calais, France. Excitement was at an all time high as the cliffs of Dover got smaller and France got bigger. With not much passport control, none actually, we were in France with no idea what to expect. We made our way along the coastal roads all the way to a small beach town of Quiberville. Our campsite was packed with motorhomes everywhere (satellite dishes and tv’s included) when we realized that we were camping at one of the closest beaches to Paris. We had a good swim in the sea, caught a bit of sun and took a small stroll in the town. That evening, with the sun due to set over the sea, we took a walk along the beach. The tide had gone out completely and I noticed a fisherman sorting his nets out for his fishing. As much as I am against these nets being used to catch fish, this old fisherman seemed more than happy to try answer my questions that I was throwing at him in made up sign language, with a French accent while speaking English. He had caught a ‘tweet’ and a baby sole (sad part when using a net that any fish you not actually trying to catch just gets thrown away). He kindly offered us his catch but regrettably declined – my view was that this is his only form of income. He was just a really nice guy who had the time to try and communicate with us as Lauren took some pictures.
Back at the campsite we made a mushroom pasta for dinner and got caught out by a sudden downpour. We realized that as nice as the beaches are in France, SA beaches will always be the best and are so keen to explore the wine regions that we only spent one night on the coast. I did get to see some old war monuments and structures, as I wanted and also saw a world war graveyard. One of those where we should have stopped to take a picture because the amount of identical tombstones in just one small town from the war gives a slight indication to the enormity of the wars. On the beach in Quiberville there was a huge concrete structure that had collapsed off the cliff (as the chalk cliffs get eroded back, the concrete stayed behind). This was massive and the amount of similar structures along that coastal region has definitely made me want to rekindle some of my Std 6&7 history from Mr Coetzee’s class.
Saturday morning, waking up in Quiberville, we went down to the beach for an early morning swim. We then went to the campsite bakery and bought croissants for breakfast before plotting our days travels. We ended up being on the road for almost 8 hours (about 370km) but we didn’t go on a single motorway, didn’t come past a single toll road, and spent a great deal of the day driving on small rural roads through farming communities. This was the best days driving that I have ever experienced (other than my Ferrari and Lamborghini day….). The only mishap happened as I left the campsite at Quiberville and forgot that I had to be on the right side of the road – I did cause a bit of havoc in the small town of Quiberville.
We were expecting to see vineyards everywhere on the drive, but instead were greeted by miles and miles of mielies. This really made me miss home and was very tempted to stop and steal a few. There are no fences around the farms, only where there are animals, so helping myself would have been easy but I’m too much of a nice guy. We also saw lots of sunflower farms. The more south we went, the more orchids of fruit trees started appearing (mainly apples, but also some peaches) until we reached the Loire Valley. Here we were greeted with vineyards that stretch for decades. Our original planned stop in Chenon was a bit tourist trapped so we went 20km further to Richlieu, a quiet town with a quiet campsite where we are now.
The rain has now stopped, and Lauren is back from the tourist bureau….The news – no brandy but she has got us a map of cycle routes of the area so that is what we will be doing for the next 2 or so days…