We’ve been making our way down the western side of France using, for us, slightly unconventional stops. We’ve used a couple of CCPs [Camping Car Parks] as opposed to more conventional campsites.
After our somewhat tiring day #1 drive of 400 kms from St. Malo to Taillebourg, we decided to take a rest day to recoup. We really should know better than to tackle such a large chunk after an overnight on a ferry when rest is, shall we say, not of the highest quality.
Taillebourg is on the banks of the Charente river but there appeared to be no footpath beside it. We did, though, manage a walk into the town for a few supplies before rain began in earnest. Given the forecast, we were prepared with umbrellas.
On our return plod the rain did ease off and we found an appealing little bar selling Affligem beer which is always acceptable. Even Francine quaffed two.
We were in what seemed to be rather like April showers weather at home with irritating bouts of rain scattered throughout the afternoon. We amused ourselves podding 1kg of Coco de Paimpol, some of which I used to turn a Coq-au-caravan into a Coq-au-coco. We froze the remaining two portions of beans.
The following day, our next planned stop was originally intended to be St. Jean de Luz but that would be another 350kms stretch and with Bordeaux in the way, to boot. So,Francine decided to break the journey with an overnight stop at Castets, a distance of 260kms.
Our interim stop was our second CCP. This one is just a spit off the A63 autoroute and is a more regular aire de camping car as it is without sanitaire facilities. It proved to be a pleasant location nestling in the widespread pine forests of Les Landes.
Frodo got nicely levelled on a decent pitch, one of 20 all well marked within the pine trees, at a respectable distance from the only other unit that was then on site. We sat under the awning to supplement the shade and to try out our new central awning “rafter”, which should add some stability to the awning in the breeze. At 30°C both the breeze and the beer helped.
The convenience score for this CCP must be quite high; not only is it just 1 km off the autoroute but there is an Intermarché supermarket only about 1km away, which we walked to for some supplementary shopping. It turned out to be a very decent shop, although lugging four litres of beer and three litres of wine back on foot was a bit of a drag.
We were perfectly content with our lot until a Belgian unit with both a trailer and a rugrat in tow, shunned 17 of the remaining 18 empty pitches and set up immediately beside us. The rugrat seemed to have distressingly free rein for the most part as he went to fiddle with the only unit other than us on his little scooty bike thingy. Mother eventually retrieved him, though she was a bit slow off the mark. Then a frisbee was produced.
That was enough, we moved pitches and re-levelled Frodo to put some distance between us and Les Belges.
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