Currently sitting  in McDonalds in Valreas, making use of their free WiFi, cupping a hot chocolate, about to start our journey home.

We have had a good 3 days in Grillon (just down the road) clear blue skies but coupled with biting winds (-9 deg C wind chill), so strong in fact that we needed to lower the roof on the van.

Track to Grillon

Wine country

Chilling – literally

Going to take it easy back up through France and plan to get ferry Saturday night from Calais and get back home in the early hours of Sunday morning to sort ourselves for Xmas.

Drive along Gorges de Verdon

We arrived down on the South Coast on Sunday. We had forgotten how in particular regions of France everything is closed on a Sunday including petrol stations! We left Aups in the morning and decided to take a circuitous route, avoiding tolls, via the north side of the Gorges du Verdon.

Didn’t expect so much snow

Very soon we were up above the snow line and travelling through small villages and towns where we noticed all the petrol stations where closed. No worries we have a quarter of a tank! Half an hour later fuel warning light illuminates, no worries at least enough for 60K! 15K later half reserves used, some worries! Check sat nav – 13K to nearest petrol station on a motorway with potentially only 2K of fuel to spare (but of course we have no way of knowing). Decide to risk it, luckily find a non manned credit card operated station 5K down the road, phew!

We initially stayed at a campsite approx 10K east of Cannes, on the edge of the Esterel. We cycled along the coast road to Cannes and cruised around the various marinas, even found some job opportunities for when we need to start earning some money again!

Posh yachts!

Just need to sort my CV!

bikes & boats – can’t afford the boat yet!

Seafront ride Cannes

Now thats just showing off!

Since Cannes we have made our way east along the south coast of France stopping of wherever we fancy along the way. The weather has been good but remained cold during the night and the Mistral  has been blowing.

By the weekend of the 8^th /9^th we had made it to Six-Fours-Les-Plages  just west of Toulon. Our choice of locations is somewhat dictated by out of season campsites and in particular those that allow use of an ACSI card which guarantees we pay no more than 16 euro a night including hook up.

The campsite owner raved about the enormous market in the town on Saturday morning so we duly walked the 45 minutes into the town centre only to find a ragged and not so large collection of not particularly good stalls feeling a little cheated we traipsed the 45 minutes back and decided a bike ride was called for.

Sanary-Sur-Mer just along from Six-Fours-Les-Plages

We headed down to the seafront where we knew there was a 10k piste cyclable along the coast. Although the weather was fine it was blowing a gale with the wind coming off the sea and initially slightly behind us. So we quickly tore up the first 10k with spray hitting us coming of the sea and a view of wind and kite surfers making the most of the conditions.  We decided not to head back into the wind! Lets face it we had seen the sea view and had spotted a cycle route heading off in land. Whilst most of this was on quiet roads we did come across a little forested area with a few tracks and played in there for ½ hr or so. Once we got back into town we decided to tackle the large hill with a fort on to the north (220m to the top with a starting point just about at sea level). The climb up on a paved road was surprisingly easy and the descent on a variety of forest tracks and footpaths was a good reward for the climb. It’s good to do a non planned ride from time to time and just see what turns up.

Further walking and cycling Sunday and Monday culminating in the 1 ½ hour bike climb up to Notre-Dame Du Mai in the Massif Du Cap Sicie in what was at times a force ten gale, to be rewarded by a vertigo inducing view out to sea.

At top of Notre Dame du Mai

The weather down here has been great with clear blue skies albeit very chilly in the shade and at night.

Today (Tuesday) we start to head back up north and plan to stay 3 nights near Grillon – inland and closer to the mountains. The latest weather information we have shows highs of 1 deg C and lows of -5 deg C, I think we will be glad to get home to central heating at the end of this trip!

After returning from Scotland and the Lakes we have a month prior to Xmas to occupy ourselves. We were fairly open about what to do with this and would have been content heading across to Wales to hit the mountain bike trails over there. Whilst we have been regular visitors to Coed Y Brenin recently we haven’t managed to get to the likes of Nant Y Arian, Penmancho, Betwys Y Coed,  Afan and Cwm Carn for a couple of years . However we decided that the weather didn’t look good and decided another plan was required.

We thought about heading down to Granada in Spain, where we had had good reports re mountain biking, however we considered it a bit too far and also hope to do Spain properly sometime next year.

After a bit of research we decided on the Var region of Southern France – there appeared to be some good mountain biking and supposedly it is the sunniest region of France with the most days of sun per year? (not sure who verifies this data!).

So after a week at home we headed off to Dover and hacked down through France.  I don’t think either of us expected brilliant sunshine, however we certainly hadn’t reckoned on torrential rain, snow and swollen white water rivers and flood alerts.

The Drome in flood

We came for sun not snow!

We eventually arrived in Aups our chosen starting point and by Thursday morning the rain had cleared. The big event of the day in Aups was the first truffle market of the season so we strolled down to take a look. It seemed to be quite a big event (for Aups anyway). The Mairie opened the market and spent 15 minutes or so on his opening speech and the local TV station had sent a cameraman and sound man.

The deal is done

Expensive fungi

Truffles don’t come cheap at 600 euro a kilo! So we passed on impulse purchases. At those sort of prices it almost seems worth buying a pig and heading out into the woods, how hard can it be!

Aups is in the foothills of the Alps at 500 m above sea level so we shouldn’t have been surprised that with clear skies the night time temperature dropped well zero both outside and inside the van, necessitating the need to deploy both sleeping bags and duvet to fend off the cold.
The walking and bike riding round Aups whilst not particularly demanding is good  and the trails drain well, which given the excessive rain earlier in the week is good. It great to come back from a ride not covered in mud with an hours worth of cleaning to be done, instead it’s just chuck the bike in the back of the van and enjoy a cup of tea in the sun!

Tea in the sun

Tomorrow we are going to head down to the South Coast and spend a couple of weeks there before returning home for Chrimbo.

Well, our trip has finally started – we left Dover on Bank Holiday Monday and arrived an hour and a half later in Calais to commence  our first leg down through France.

Leaving Dover

We planned to stop at around Troyes (halfway down-ish on the right) but hadn’t booked any campsite – partly because that is our new laissez-faire, go with the flow attitude, and partly because it’s the end of the holidays and all the campsites will be empty……. or not, as the case may be.  We arrived in Mesnil St Pere to find it heaving with people all enjoying the late summer heatwave of 28 degrees and lounging on the lakeside beach and staying in the lakeside campsite. Luckily they had 3 spaces left so we chose one of those and enjoyed our first night with a BBQ and a bottle of champagne.

Today we decided to go for a bike ride,  having seen on the map a cycle path all the way to Troyes.

Wondering why I’ve agreed to a 80km return trip….

When we asked at reception how to get to the path she told us that it involved riding on the main N16 road which was very dangerous and the only other way was to go a round about route which meant it was 40km each way.  So we set off for a local ride instead, yet somehow kept going and still ended up riding all the way to Troyes! We were glad we did as it’s a beautiful town with loads of ancient timbered houses leaning in all directions.

Troyes centre ville

After lunch and some wandering around we set off back on our 40km return trip, only for Paul to have a puncture shortly afterwards. He mended this, but because it was on the inner side of the tube it stated to leak after a few minutes. Anyway, long story short, after several puncture repair patches and some duct tape the puncture was fixed but the valve on the tube came loose and wouldn’t hold the air. And we didn’t have the right spanner to get the wheel off the bike to replace it.

The 20 remaining km of our return trip looked like it was going to be a very long walk, so we left the cycleway and started to walk along the (very dangerous) main road. Which is where the lovely Olivier came in, as he stopped his car to offer us a lift, and then refused to drop us at the next village to catch the bus but insisted on driving us all the way back to the campsite.  He asked why we hadn’t just thumbed a lift and said that he always stops if he sees someone. I think he also liked the chance to practice his English as he had lived in in the UK in Ledbury for a few months when his wife worked there.

If he hadn’t rescued us I think we’d still be walking back now, so thank you Olivier!