We have embarked on a 6-week road trip where we will be working from our motorhome whilst travelling, we have 4 destinations where we are meeting friends and attending events but in between we are going where the wind blows us, or to be honest, after the winter we have had, where the SUN is!
We left the UK on Monday 6 May and our first port of call was Menton, on the French/Italian border just east of Monaco. We were meeting eight friends who were arriving in Menton on Thursday 9th May for the Monaco Historic Grand Prix – a 3 day extravaganza of historic motorsport which takes place every 2 years.
Our plan was to go South as quickly as possible to escape the awful weather but France has been having awful weather too! We drove 486 miles on day 1 and the weather remained as miserable, grey and rainy as Kent. We arrived in a tiny village, Bois-de-Gand in the Jura region in the early evening.
We travel without much advance planning and pitch up where we can. As we didn’t have an idea of how much progress we would make on day 1, we had not booked a spot anywhere. However, we have joined France Passion, which allows motorhomes to stay at hundreds of farms, vineyards and rural businesses for free, but you are encouraged to purchase local produce from your hosts. We have never been disappointed, sometimes the pitches are amazing and sometimes you are in the farmyard next to a tractor and the pigs but the produce is always delicious and provided many a lovely meal.
On this occasion, the nearest France Passion stop was at a ‘ranch’, down a windy rural road. The listing promised an American style ranch with a restaurant serving roast chicken and chilli next to paddocks full of horses. What’s not to like…? We maneuvered carefully down a narrow, private track to arrive in a farmyard with around 8-9 horses milling in the paddock. We didn’t want to pull onto the grassy area, as we knew from the amount of rain we had driven through, that would not be a good idea.
I jumped out to find the host. I found him carrying logs indoors for his fire (that’s how cold it still is) and I noticed he had limited mobility but he welcomed us and said just park in the yard and that we could plug into the electric, which was a bonus. Charlie parked the motorhome in a small space between a car, a tree and a big log pile and our host then returned in an electric wheelchair to tell us the restaurant was no longer open as he had become extremely ill and disabled and basically had to shut his business, but he was happy for us to stay. Luckily we had food on board and after a quick meal, we turned in, as we had been up since 4 am that morning and it was now getting on for 9pm.
The only sounds during the night were the snuffles of the horses and the hoots of owls. We woke early the next morning and quietly left as our host had not stirred, leaving a generous contribution towards the electricity.
The weather did not improve, driving rain and low cloud dogged our drive south to Annecy. We arrived early afternoon. We located several proper campsites just outside the town, the 3rd campsite had a space for us. This time, the site owner, Gilbert was not worried about his grass and parked us, alongside a couple of other motorhomes,, where we made similar deep ruts in the muddy, soaked field, but Gilbert just shrugged in a Gallic way and said it hadn’t stopped raining for months ,what could he do! We unloaded our scooter and headed the 20 minutes into the town for a well-deserved lunch.
Annecy is beautiful, even in the rain. We joined other lunch goers, sat under cover and under blankets by the picturesque ‘canal’, eating tartiflette – it felt like we were in a ski resort. Even the ducks looked miffed with the weather. We headed back to camp early evening and decided to have a walk along the lake shore, just across the road from our campsite, but rain put an end to more than a ten minute stroll so we had another early night!
Driving around 450km further south, we headed to Saint-Andre-les-Alpes, in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region, and at last we spotted some blue sky. We had driven through Le Verdon Gorge, which has spectacular scenery, windy roads, steep drops into steely blue rivers and lakes. We have driven this way before so made a decision to take the shorter route, which is not as spectacular. We may return to a campsite up in the heart of the Gorge later on in this trip, it just depends on that weather.
Saint-Andre-les-Alpes is a paragliders’ paradise and our campsite, set in pines under the steep hills was mainly populated by adventuring young men, who were either cycling or paragliding. We finally got to sit in the sun which was a relief after the cold and grey. We walked into the village, had a drink in the square that soon filled up, as people queued for oysters at a street vendors or sat in the bars. We had booked a table at a lovely restaurant, just off the square and finally began to relax. It’s amazing what a change in weather can do for your spirits.
Thursday saw the final push to Menton, the road became straighter as we left Le Verdon area behind. There was a huge traffic jam on the motorway that took you inland past Nice, and the city traffic looked smoother. Well, that was a wrong move as everyone had had the same idea. Nice had massive roadworks and diversions in place, but once clear of Nice, we rejoined the motorway, passing Monaco and then dropped into Menton and then took the very tricky drive up the steep, mostly u-bend road to our campsite, on the hill above Menton. We were parking the motorhome until Monday and we were de-camping to a hotel in the town, where our friends were staying. Luckily, Anita and Greg who live in France, were arriving at the same time and offered to come and pick us and our luggage up, saving several trips on the scooter!
By 8 pm that evening, we had a complement of 10, as the others arrived via Nice airport and the weekend could truly begin…
RoundandAbout 