Days on the Cote d’Azur 20-21 September
You know the weather has changed when you can feel rain on your face when you are in bed, but you are not sleeping under the stars!
It had been raining softly most of the night, but not enough to wake us up! All the roof vents were open but they are angled so water doesn’t pour directly into the motorhome, however as the breeze got up and the rain got heavier, it was coming in. So a mad scramble at 3 am to shut vents and mop up.
The morning did not dawn bright, on the contrary, it was grey with a hint of threatening black. By studying the weather radar we reckoned on a small window of fine weather so we decided to have a quick trip up the coast on the scooter with a proviso of heading back at the first drop of rain.
So our window of opportunity lasted approx 30 mins and we arrived back at 10.30 am just as the rain set in again. So we had a late breakfast, courtesy of a bakery stop on the dash back. Sad to say we worked for a couple of hours until the next break in the weather.
We needed a swim so walked over to the beach where the sea was strangely calm and clear considering the stormy skies. Needless to say we had the beach to ourselves, the sensible folk were sat under cover at the beachside restaurants!
As you can see from the photo the break in the weather didn’t last long, so it was swimming in the rain! The rest of the day was spent lazing about as the rain continued.
In the evening we went for dinner at a local restaurant, where we had some lovely fish, but all in all it was a bit of a dull day all round!
The rain continued softly all night when at about 5 am the tempo changed, the sea was roaring and basically the sky fell in, the storm that the weather apps had been warning about for 2 days arrived. You certainly couldn’t sleep through it, it was like trying to sleep in a car wash, where someone had thrown in some marbles, just to see what would happen. Learning from the night before’s mistake, all roof vents were closed. The monsoon downpour continued until gone 7 in the morning.
By 10 am the weather had calmed and we had another window of opportunity to explore further afield. We decided to head for Bormes-les-Mimosas, a medieval hill village known for its quaint streets filled with flowers.
Bormes-les-Mimosas was beautiful, a little rainswept and we had missed the best of the flowering season. Many of houses are covered with bougainvillea, which only a couple of weeks ago would still have been in magnificent bloom, but was now going over, but the rain had refreshed everything and there was the lovely smell of gardens after summer rain.
One advantage of going at the end of the season is that, although there are still many visitors, as you can see the tiny medieval streets were not crowded, I can imagine in the heat of high season, this little town would be packed and it would difficult to enjoy a stroll through ‘The Trail of the Empty Handed’ (where hunters who came home empty-handed snuck back into town), Isle of Love Square, Break-Your-Butt Street, Fig Tree Square, Lovers’ Alley or gaze into The Well of Love. All street names translated on the Tourist Office map!
A late breakfast of coffee and a really delicious fig tart and as we could hear thunder in the distance, we made our way back home.
In case you are wondering why we are trying to avoid getting wet, it’s because it’s really hard to dry stuff with limited space, by the time you have hung up beach towels and swimwear, and if the air is damp and the sun isn’t blazing, everything takes ages to dry.
As the thunder stayed in the hills we went for a swim. After last night’s deluge, deep channels had been carved into the beach, where the rainwater had swept down from the hills immediately behind us, through our campsite, across the road and down onto the beach into the sea.
We went shopping for a broom as we really needed to sweep our ground sheet and would you believe the local Spar shop stocked brooms!
We had a late lunch of figs, melon, tomatoes, ham and cheese some of which we had purchased at a roadside farm stall. The melon and figs were absolutely delicious and again a lazy afternoon of reading and working as the weather did what weather does, which is never what you want it to do!
Apparently, according to Madame who runs the site, next week wall to wall sunshine -it had better be like that in Toulouse which is where we will be heading!
RoundandAbout 