Adventures in Spain and France 2022 - Heading North

 

Sunday

Up fairly early and I walk along the beach while Geoff is recording the Little Terns. Back to the van for breakfast then we leave the Mediterranean coast for Ribaute. It is a small village about 40 km inland, with a lovely river for swimming and when we were last there you could camp by the river if you went to the local Mayors house and asked permission. Well, not surprisingly it has changed somewhat – the river is still as lovely but there’s lots and lots and lots of people. It is a Sunday and it is hot but we are quite surprised how many people there are. It’s probably featured in the guide to ‘The top 10 wild river swimming spots in France’ or something similar.

Nevertheless, the swim was lovely. As we leave the river, I try to recreate a photo taken in 1985 of Geoff sitting on the bridge. After a bit off faffing and strange looks from the local youth, I take a couple of photos but when we compare them to the one we are trying to recreate, we realise it is the wrong bridge.

Head a little way up the road to the beautiful medieval town of Lagrasse and find a campsite in a fantastic spot, on a hill overlooking the town. It’s very nice and very quiet. We FaceTime a friend in the UK from the van and as it is very warm and humid we get hotter and hotter, our faces get redder and redder and our hair is plastered to our heads.

 

Lagrasse from the campsite

Monday

Decide to stay here another night as it’s lovely, the forecast is for it to be hot again and we want to go for an explore of Lagrasse.

We do just that and go for a walk around. It is a beautiful town, with an abbey that was first established in the 7^th century and is open to visitors. Decide to visit the abbey later in the day, but first of all we recreate the photo on the bridge from 1985 that we attempted yesterday as, when we see the bridge, we realise the photo was taken in Lagrasse, not Ribaute. Have a chat with a family from Germany who ask us to take a photo of them all together and we show them our then and now photos.

Drive out of the town, down some back roads for a look around, some shade and some lunch. The butterflies are incredible and out of the blue we see the king/queen of butterflies, the Two-tailed Pasha. It’s enormous and we have a few good looks at it as it flies past us. What a magnificent sight.

After a while we decide to go back to Ribaute for a swim, which is still surprisingly busy but not as bad as yesterday and then return to Lagrasse for a visit to the abbey which is rather impressive and is still the home of a community of clergy - the Canons Regular.

Lagrasse abbey

Tuesday

As we are packing up the van to leave the site, amazingly not one but two Two-tailed Pashas fly around and land in a tree in front of us and Geoff manages to get a photo.

two Two-tailed Pashas photo by Geoff

We have really enjoyed revisiting this area after so long, even if (unsurprisingly) some things have changed.

Drive for a while along the Canal du Midi and onto the autoroute north to the Causse de Blandas which is a fairly high plateau with very deep gorges. We get up to the plateau on a steep, winding road with sheer drops to the side which you’d think I would be used to by now but I’m not.

the road to the plateau

Geoff has been to this area before but he can’t get over how dried out everything looks and also the vegetation is decimated – it’s as if there has been a fire. We park up at the Cirque de Navacelles and have a look – it is pretty incredible. There’s an information centre nearby and we go in to ask whether there had been fires.  We were told that the vegetation had been decimated by a small white moth - the Box-tree Moth as the larvae feed on the vegetation.

Arrive at the campsite we are planning to stay at to find it is closed so find a shaded spot nearby to park up for the night.

 

Wednesday

Spend the morning having an explore around the Causse – see 6 very large Hares thundering along, hear a Wryneck calling and see 2 Short-toed Eagles. We then move on, making our way towards the Dordogne. We go via Milau and the Milau viaduct which is the tallest bridge in the world and considered one of the greatest modern engineering achievements. We decide not to go over it (thank goodness – it’s so high) but go along the valley beneath it so get a good look at how spectacular it is.

We turn off the road towards a campsite we like the look of and on route, we pass the visitor attraction Micropolis Cite des Insectes which is an insect museum inspired by the film Microcosmos. We rather like insects and in different weather conditions we would have had a look but it is hot and we are making for a campsite by a lake with a pool so keep driving.

 We get there and it’s a haven from the heat. Shaded places to park, a lovely lake and there’s a pool – WITH WATER IN! – not only lovely clean, cool water but water slides too. Have a good few swims and a go down the slide.

Watch a few people learning to paddle board on the lake. I tried it on the Northumberland coast last summer and loved it – here though people are out in bikinis whereas in Northumberland we were kitted out in full wetsuit regalia and still got a bit chilly.

 

Thursday

Have a walk along the lake and another pool swim before making our way to an area of the Dordogne we have visited before, very near the stunning (but very touristy) Rocamadour.

The campsite we are making for is in the lovely small village of Creysse and it’s in a great spot. There’s lots of shade, it’s on the side of the Dordogne river and it has a pool. All of which are very welcome as the temperature is forecast to get even warmer – predicted 40 degrees over the next couple of days which is pretty warm, even for a heat lover like me.

 

Friday

We walk around the village but the temperature is rising, so we return to the site and swim in the pool then the river then the pool then the river then later go to the small campsite bar for cold drinks and food which is very good.

We were planning to stay out tomorrow night on the Causse de Gramat for Geoff to get out early but because of the forecasted temperatures decide to stay put for another couple of days where we have shade and swimming options.

 

newly hatched dragon fly finds my laptop cable

Saturday

Go into the nearby village of Martel for provisions before it gets too hot, although we are a bit slow in getting things together so it’s rather warm by the time we get there. It’s a very pretty village and today is market day. I do love a French market and this one has wonderful food and a great atmosphere – although we are limited with what we can get as the van fridge is small and we have limited cooking facilities. 

Madame Fanny's sausage stall

Go back to the campsite, sort out our purchases then straight into the pool. Have lunch and although the van is fully shaded, we are warm very quickly so go to the river for a swim. It’s quite breezy but when the wind blows, it’s like being in front of a fan heater turned to maximum.

Later on I go back to the pool while Geoff stays outside the van playing his guitar. There’s only me and a youngster in the pool so it’s quiet and as we swim, Swallows skim over the surface of pool then come down to drink.

In the evening we go for a walk around the village – the campsite owner told us about a little village festival taking place with a bonfire (we all smiled at the thought of a bonfire when it’s been 40 degrees) so we go for a look. It’s quite a small, intimate gathering and the bonfire remained unlit so we stay a little while before going back.

The temperature in the van is 35 degrees at 9.30pm – unfortunately we don’t have anything as fancy as air con.

 

Creysse

 

Sunday

Potter around the site, alternating between swimming in the pool and river. Later on we go to the campsite shop for essential items – a bottle of wine and new river swimming shoes for Geoff and he has worn his out with so much swimming and snorkelling activity.

We are leaving the site tomorrow so spend time planning the next part of our journey.

 

Monday

We are planning to stay out on the Causse de Gramat tonight, but before we do we decide to call in on a friend of Geoff’s, whose cottage we stayed in 15 years ago. We don’t know if he’ll be in but we will give it a try. Lovely to see his cottage and yes, he was in – a bit surprised to see us on his doorstep but we had a great catch up.

Drive up onto the Causse and park up for the night. Geoff gets organised for recording early tomorrow morning, hoping to hear Stone Curlew.

 

Tuesday

Geoff is up early and did hear Stone Curlew but also quite a lot of thunder too. Before we leave, we go for a walk around and see a fabulous green lizard – an Ocellated Lizard then drive down into the river valley for a lovely river walk where there are masses of dragonflies flying around our feet.

Ocellated lizard photo by Geoff

Continue our journey north and go for a campsite in an area we haven’t visited before, on the side of a lake. It has a nice pool – the lake is nice too but has been completely taken over by sporting activities including wakeboarding and water skiing. There are huge contraptions across the lake, like extensive zip wires that pull you along instead of going behind a boat. It all feels rather industrial although I’m sure it is fun.

Have an expensive beer in the bar as we research our ferry back to the UK.  We are planning a ferry for Sunday morning. We were going to stay a few days longer but the weather forecast isn’t good – cool and showery so decide on Sunday.

 

Wednesday

The day starts with a major thunderstorm but the local Blackbird continues singing throughout. Blackbirds have been a constant presence throughout our trip and have been pretty wonderful wherever we have been.

Leave the site to go back to La Brenne, where we stopped briefly on our journey south. Get to the campsite and it’s as lovely as it was in April, just a lot more leaves on the trees. Chat to a French lady as I’m washing up (well ‘chat’ is a bit exaggerated as my knowledge of French has pretty much disappeared from my brain since trying to learn Spanish) but we manage to communicate. She and her husband are keen to visit Scotland in their motorhome so she asked me what it was like and whether I thought they would be OK driving on the left hand side of the road. I told her that Scotland is beautiful and hopefully I was reassuring about the driving situation. I didn’t mention the Scottish single track roads.

 

Thursday

The weather is better than forecast so spend a lovely day walking in the woods alongside the lake, reading and writing notes. Geoff gets excited by a Purple Heron on the lake but every time he goes out to photograph it, it flies away. Hear Turtle Dove nearby but that’s pretty elusive too.

Now we have booked our ferry, on the one hand I’m sad our travels are coming to an end but I’m also looking forward to seeing family and to getting some home cooked food. The meals we have been having in the van are fine but we are getting rather bored now and fancy something different, although I’m not totally sure what – Creamy cauliflower cheese with crispy potatoes? Aubergine, coconut and chick pea curry? Geoff is fancying lamb with mint gravy.

Where to next?

Friday

Leave the site and go for an explore around the area, visiting various lakes and going into the bird hides alongside the lakes. It’s really nice and fairly quiet until we get to one of the hides which is full of photographers with huge camera lenses.  There is a Little Bittern to be seen so people have flocked to it. We would quite like a look ourselves and find an empty place to sit, away from the others. After a little while, the bird is now visible from where we are sitting and the next thing we know we are surrounded by massive photographic lenses and people taking reels of photos which sound like machine guns going off. I’m not at all impressed with the complete disregard and lack of respect for my personal space and some guy is almost leaning (with his big big lens) on my shoulder - so - I make my feelings known (I’m not sure he spoke English, but he would have got the gist of what I was saying!) and left the hide to wait for Geoff.

We walk to another hide which is much quieter and are rewarded with fantastic views of Purple Heron and also quite a few large crayfish walking along the path.  The crayfish are American Signal crayfish and are really big.

Purple Heron photo by Geoff

As the forecast is for heavy rain overnight and all day tomorrow, we decide to leave La Brenne and travel part of the journey north as we need to be near the port of Ouistreham tomorrow night for an early morning ferry to Portsmouth on Sunday.

 

Saturday

It’s raining as we leave our overnight woodland spot and we continue our drive north, stopping a couple of times. Get to Luc sur Mer and find a place to park the van, where we can stay the night. It’s on the side of a road which is pretty busy but hopefully it will quieten down later. Go for a walk along the beach and promenade and it’s a rather nice seaside town with quite a few people out and about. Go back to the van for food and hear car horns being sounded – lots of them too. Look out and there’s a funeral procession going along the street and all the cars following the hearse are sounding horns.

Later in the evening, go back along the promenade for a walk in the evening sun and for a look at what the fishermen are catching off the pier, which to be honest doesn’t seem to be much but they look like they are enjoying themselves anyway.

tide out

tide in

Sunday

Up early, to the port and onto the ferry. It’s a 5+ hour crossing so we catch up on notes, have breakfast (the description made it sound better than it was), have a shower (challenging in a very small shower cubicle with the boat swaying quite dramatically) then sit on deck enjoying the sunshine.

Stop off in Surrey for a few hours to visit Geoff’s mum then onto the M25 (I so hate that road) and to our destination of a Travelodge in Hatfield. It’s perfectly OK – just a bit of a culture shock given where we have been staying for the last few months.

View from our room

Monday

Get onto the A1. Stop at a service station for a coffee and a snack and I go for a Greggs vegan sausage roll. Well, they are tasty and we are heading to The North so it feels rather appropriate.

Hallo!

So, that’s my travels over for now. I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog. I have so enjoyed the trip and I have experienced some fantastic sights and sounds. 

One of the podcasts we listened to whilst travelling was Desert Island Discs with the author Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk. She was talking about experiencing the natural world and how people can feel intimidated by thinking they need to experience it all in the 'right' way - to be able to identify and name things -  but really all we need to do is be curious and pay attention.  I totally agree. I may not have been able to identify a lot of the birds we have seen, or plants or trees but what an experience it has been and hopefully I learned a thing or two along the way.

Here’s to the next trip. xx