We say au revoir to La France

Our last night in France for the time being, was in one of the best sites we have stayed at in France from a site positioning viewpoint. We stayed at Playa camping between St Jean de Luz and Guethary along the coast from Bayonne, France. The camping site was on the terraced side of a cliff above a private beach on the Atlantic coast. There were approx. six camping grounds in the area on the cliff top. We fell asleep to the sounds of the Atlantic waves breaking on the beach below us.

Photo 0063, our private beach on the Atlantic!

We say good bye (temporarily) to France after four or so weeks of touring in our campervan (camping car in French terminology) wandering the French countryside. We have now crossed into Spain on the Atlantic coast and visited Bilbao. It is a large city and an interesting mixture of old and new, with many motorways and tollways ringing the city but yet a preserved old town centre. The main tourist attractions are the Guggenheim museum on the riverfront and the old town.

Photo 0087, one of the streets of Bilbao

 Dorothy visited the Guggenheim museum in the afternoon.   Whilst Gary walked the new and old towns, photographing the many buses, trams and trains.

Photo 2177, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao with its striking architeture

We found a camping site/ camping car rest area in the hills above Bilbao with views of the city and valley to die for:

Photo 106, view from the campsite at Bilbao

After our evening meal we caught the local bus into Bilbao, a journey of about 40minutes.  It was interesting to watch the locals came and go.  Bilbo bus is operated by Vieola Transport, the parent company of Connex (those in Melbourne and Sydney will recognize those company names). We then walked the narrow atmospheric streets of the old town. All the shops were closing up at 20:00 but all the restaurants and bars were just opening up for the evening meal etc. We found a bakery with some delicious desserts which we just had to try and they certainly tasted as lovely as they looked. Then it was time to catch our bus back to the camp site, really a tour of the suburbs of Bilbao for the princely sum of 1 euro 20 cents per person, each way. 

Photo 99 of Bus in narrow street, Bilbao

Now from our campervan window we can enjoy seeing all the city lights of Bilbao.  We are sharing this camping site with 1 other campervan, there are 80 other empty spaces so we guess (hope) things get busier in the July/August high season months.

Since composing this post we have moved on and are now in Porto, Portugal. But more of that in the next post, WIFI willing to be found!

Pilgrimage to Mont Saint Michel, Normandy, France

We arrived at the famous UNESCO listed Mont Saint Michel Wednesday afternoon, it comes into view suddenly as you are driving along the winding road towards the mount. Its quite impressive from a distance. In the evening we walked out towards the Mount on the access road, it was quite windy and chilly but still impressive.

Thursday saw Dorothy and Gary make the pilgrimage to Mont Saint Michel, as pilgrims have done for centuries past.  We availed ourselves of some modern conveniences though, parking our camper van in a camping ground near the Mont and walking the last two kilometres along the causeway!

Then there are the three hundred steps to climb to get to the abbey

Some of the toursits (oops pilgrims) on the way back from the mount

Others do not make the same sacrifices, getting a bus, car or bike to the bottom of the steps as can be seen in this photo.

The Mont is quite spectacular, rising from the salt marshes and estuary since the sanctuary was first constructed on this site about 708 AD. The Mont has variously been a sanctuary, an abbey, impregnable stronghold during the hundred year’s war, a prison and since 1874 it has been a tourist drawcard.

Outside of Paris it is one of the top tourist destinations in France, as an example there were 41 tourist coaches there today and it’s not high season yet!

The mont itself is quite small, there is really only one steep and narrow street full of tourist shops on the way up to the abbey.The abbey dominates the island of course.

We took the guided tour through the Abbey, which unusually is included in the entrance price and was in English. We were quite impressed with the almonry where the guided tour finished.

Day Trip out to St Helier, Jersey, UK

As we were meandering our way around the Normandy coast we saw brochures for ferry services from Normandy, France  to the Channel Isles, UK. There are services from a number of French ports to various channel islands eg to Jersey or Guernsey or  Alderney or Sark. We decided we would try and do a day trip to one of the Channel islands, which are UK territory.

As most of these French ports are tidal the sailing times and days vary quite abit. We decided on the small French port of Carteret which had a sailing enabling a day return to Jersey. The sailing time was only one hour. Interestingly Carteret was used for supply of the allied armies during the post D Day liberation of France. It was only used for about a week after liberation, mostly due to the issues with the tidal nature of the port and its small capacity. The tidal range is quite high and the port can today only be used for the ferries from mid to high tide.

St Helier town and Albert Pier aand yacht basin (photo 2028)

The passage to St Helier, the main port for Jersey went well for Dorothy and Gary but not for a little French girl who was sitting next to Gary, she was quite sick during the voyage. We were welcomed to the UK by an English lass who wanted to know how long we intended to stay in the UK and why we were entering the UK. Once those questions had been satisfactorily answered we were “given leave to enter the UK” for six months.

St Helier is quite a mix of new construction along the promenade with a Victorian era pier and wharf. We visited the tourist bureau and decided to take a walking tour of some of the WWII German defences. This involved taking a bus to Portelet and meeting the guide there. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, so we embarked on a bus ride on Jersey “My Bus” operated by Connex. As in Melbourne, the Connex service was late but we still made the start of the tour, especially as we were the only ones to turn up! The weather was not to kind to us either, it rained heavily for about 15 minutes whilst we were walking to the German command bunker.  Once inside the guide was full of details about the daily routine of the German troops.  The bunker only survived intact because it was filled in with earth after the war, volunteers began restoration in the 70's.

Parish church of St Helier (Photo2027)

Afterward we visited the village of St Aubin where we had a very nice café lunch out of the rain. St Aubin is still basically a 19^th century British village and much more what we expected than St Helier.

St Helier re-opened central town police station (Photo2020)

Our day out to Jersey was quite pleasant, it was nice to hear English being spoken by the great majority of the people in the streets! Our return trip was uneventful, Gary even managed to catch up on some missing sleep time.

Medieval town of Pont Audemer, France

Wednesday we stayed at Pont Audemer, on the Siene canal and in a loop of the Seine river not far from Caen and Le Harve.

We picked this camping ground from our book as it had three stars and WIFI for internet access. Seemed as good a reason as any! The camping ground was not well signposted and the directions in the book did not help. However we managed to find it eventually, quite a nice municipal camping ground and the staff spoken enough English to get us booked in.

The camp is on the shores of a lake (as many seem to be). During our walk around the lake before dinner, Dorothy discovered a railway line. See what hanging around with Gary for 30 years does to you!!!

We decided to stay an extra night here and go into the town on Wednesday afternoon.

 The camping ground had a walking tour pamphlet of the town in English. We took the self guided tour.  It was a surprise gem of a medieval town mixed with 1960s onwards reconstruction to replace bomb damage from WWI.

There were many original houses with half timbered fronts and quite narrow lanes. These lanes were as they were in the medieval period, excepting that the houses now had electric light and sewer connected.

We found the town enchanting and completely unexpected from what we had seen from the main road around the town that we had taken to get to the camping ground.

1066 and all that

Hello all you followers of our blog, heres a somewhat tongue in cheek blog for today

Last week we visited the French sea side town of St Valery sur Mer. Now we all know of the rivalry over centuries between the pomms and the frogs (English and French).

 In the sleepy little sea side town of St Valery in the depressed province of Picardie, France  there is a quite new marker stone to commerate William the Conquerer.

However did the jpoint English/French projects of the Concorde and the Channel Tunnel get to happen????

Should we be worried in June when we travel on Eurostar!

Apparently William departed from the very port of St Valery to conquer the English in 1066. This is all in French of course but quite legible. Underneath on white stone is a longer text in English which has been allowed to deteriorate by the weather to the point that we could not read it!

We thought that the French may have got over Trafalgar. Well it appears that things go further back, much further as we found as we enjoyed the "promenade" along the waterfront in St Valery.