My previous post went into some detail about Cicadas, of which there is no shortage at Camping Villemarin. All the tree trunks prove to be very popular sites for emergence as the example on the left shows. Looking closely at…

Having achieved our main goal at Maussane-les-Alpilles, namely seeing the Carrières des Lumières show, it was time for a change of scenery. We’d wondered about returning to a municipal campsite at Loupian. However, that has now become an ACSI campsite…

The mistral can blow for days on end. Happily that which put us off cycling up to the Carrières des Lumières began to abate the following morning and by afternoon had died down. 5kms south of Maussane-les-Alpilles, straight down one…

We were down in the south of France last September towing our caravan, Guillaume. One of Francine’s favourite entertainments is the Carrières des Lumières show at Les Baux de Provence in Les Alpilles. Time for a few explanations. The French…

After Cap [not much] Fun, we wanted to continue our run away from the storms plaguing the west coast. Francine had spotted an interesting sound aire de camping car down near Marciac, which holds an annual jazz festival (not that…

Way back in 2007, we were in France shortly after the eminent Mr. Stein’s French Odyssey programmes. In one episode, he visited a town called Bazas which, he said, was France’s prime beef capital. We’d never heard of it but…

In years past, Arçais, with its interweaving network of variously sized canals together with a few lakes and a larger river, had been one of my favoured locations for hunting odonata (dragonflies and damselflies). The French, by the way, have…

One of the potential problems of travelling without a solo car (towing a caravan) is going shopping when you get where you’re going. Parking a camping car like Frodo isn’t necessarily the easiest of tasks. Mercifully, in France at least,…

The French for free range chicken is poulet élevé en plein air. We have some on our Arçais campsite. When we last stayed here eight years ago, the gardien was a chap called Francois. He, we are told, is now…

After a 12-hour overnight crossing from Portsmouth, Frodo disembarked in St. Malo at 08:00 on Sunday 11th. We’d chosen the route because we wanted to catch up with friends who live at Arçais in the Marais Poitevin, which is just…