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 have something called a Crit’Air sticker for vehicles to show how clean, or otherwise, the exhaust emissions are. The stickers are cheap (about 4€) but can take a while to arrive in a foreign country. You do, however, pretty quickly receive an email with a temporary equivalent that can be printed off and used until the genuine article arrives. There are, I think, six levels of emissions and some towns have restrictions on the levels that are permitted. I hadn’t applied for a sticker ‘cos I thought we wouldn’t venture anywhere near a restricted zone.

However, once in the south, we spotted that there was a Crit’Air zone around Montpellier. (They are prone to change.) To get Francine over to Les Baux de Provence we’d have to cross Montpellier on the autoroute. I couldn’t imagine that the autoroute would be affected by the restrictions but I wasn’t certain and we chickened out. Poor Francine. Once back home I did apply for our car’s Crit’Air sticker which took about a month to arrive.

Now here we are with Frodo, our motorhome. We got him home just a week before setting sail to France but I immediately applied for his Crit’Air sticker. The email duly arrived with the temporary permit which I printed off. On the day before our ferry, we were making final preparations. I was about to put the temporary permit in when, surprise of surprises, our postman turned up with a French letter. 😀 I was amazed, the good ol’ French had managed to deliver it within a week, this time.

Frodo being legal, we made the journey to a campsite we know at Maussane-les-Alpilles, mainly so Francine could visit the Carrières des Lumières. The French love their son et lumière [sound and light] shows, which are usually nighttime shows around old monuments with actors and recorded accompanying sounds. The Carrières des Lumières shows are similar but are held in an old bauxite mine. The mining left huge, almost white, flat surfaces, including the floor, which make great projection surfaces. Each year the creators come up with sequences based on different artworks which they animate and project to accompanying music. This year there are two sequences: the Dutch Masters from Vermeer to Van Gogh, and the much more modern Mondrian.

Our campsite is just 4.5kms from the carrière. Having our bikes with us, we thought we’d cycle to it. The weather had other ideas, though. The campsite plan shows the direction from which the mistral blows; this is to help campers choose appropriate ways of pitching. As we know, the mistral blows down from the north. Sure enough, the mistral began to blow, gusting to 70kph. Our 4.5kms would be all uphill going north, so not only would we be cycling uphill, we’d also have a 70kph mistral in our faces, force feeding our gasping mouths with assorted insect life. Mind you, coming back down could be great fun.

3 miles? We decided to walk instead and set off a bonne heure at about 09:30. As expected, the walk took about an hour. We bought our tickets and enjoyed the show. We had to watch the Van Gogh section a couple of times ‘cos it gets Francine all emotional. It’s quite like the way one used to be able to stay sitting in a cinema and watch the film over again. It is quite unsettling walking on a slightly uneven floor with pictures moving over it. Here’s a few attempts at representative pictures which hopefully show something of the scale of the experience.

As expected the wind-assisted walk back downhill was much more enjoyable. I intentionally hadn’t lugged my camera uphill but we did see several Cleopatras and Scarce Swallowtail butterflies on our return journey but they had to go unsnapped – we just enjoyed them. Cleopatras, incidentally, are like our Brimstones but with a large orange patch on the fore-wing upper side; quite delightful. Afterwards, I did snag a Scarce Swallowtail in the campsite so have that as a consolation prize.

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 it would be on now). However, Francine then spotted a forecast mentioning winds gusting to 90 kph and the possibility of grêle [hail]. We didn’t fancy subjecting ourselves and Frodo to hail stones potentially driven by 90 kph wind. So, scratch that idea and put it in for the future, if we ever get anything resembling settled weather patterns again. Plan B would push us further east and we might as well call into our French dairy sheep farm site at Fanjeaux and say hello to old friends.

We duly arrived and chose one of the more level pitches rather than anything right beside the lake – those pitches are quite sloping – to help with getting Frodo on an evenish keel. It also put us further away from other campers and the view isn’t half bad.

We arrived on a beautifully sunny day. Since then, as can be the case, the weather has become “changeable”, as we Brits are fond of saying – we’ve had cloud and showers with occasional bright spells. On one of our walks Francine nearly trod on a snake curled up in the grass beside a bench. Happily she spotted it before she stepped on it. [I haven’t identified it.]

Monitoring this lake’s odonata population became something of a hobby over the many years we’ve been coming here. I’ll summarize a now well worn story.

The lake used to support a thriving population of dragonfly and damselfly species; I think I got to 18 or more species and in good numbers. There used to be clouds of damselflies ovipositing on the floating vegetation in the lake. The sides of the lake were alive with hunting and mating dragonflies and this despite the hundreds of frogs trying to predate them.

A fish farmer breeding Koi Carp was let in to use the lake and that spelled disaster. Koi are voracious and will consume most things including odonata eggs and larvae. Grass Carp were introduced and the floating vegetation was eradicated. The odonata population collapsed dramatically.

Quite a few years ago the Koi breeder [bleeder?] left. I was hopeful that the lake would recover in that the odonata population might build up again. My monitoring was interrupted for several years due both to owning a house in Spain [now sold] and the Covid-19 pandemic curtailing travel but now we are back.

The picture is very depressing and my hopes for recovery are dashed. This is June, pretty much the height of odonata season and I have seen but five species and those, in very low numbers. Our first return visit after the hiatus was last year in September which was depressing but now the picture is even worse. One of the later arrivals is one of the few still clinging on, the Violet Dropwing (Trithemis annulata).

I know what is going on. The Koi breeder has been gone for several years but his legacy lives on. Inevitably some smaller Koi were left in the lake – you can’t catch ‘em all – and those have now grown. The lake is now full of large Koi measuring in excess of 30cms. There are still Grass Carp and still no floating vegetation. Given the collective appetite of the lake’s fish population, there really is no way for the odonata population to recover.

The lake serves as irrigation for farmer Luc and the lack of vegetation helps with his pumping water to his fields. I can’t help to be sad at the demise of what used to be a wildlife haven, though.

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 we thought it would be a jolly wheeze to check it out and try to get some for the BBQ. Francine found what sounded like a pleasant rural campsite just outside Bazas within walking distance, just a couple of kilometres or so from the centre.

We duly arrived and it it did look like just our kind of habitat, which is to say a rural environment with little to distract from the serenity. To check in we were met by a very pleasant owner who, on hearing that we were here to try some beef, proceeded to educate us by giving us a brief lesson. Apparently, “il y a trois races”, he began. I’m pretty sure that, at that time, he mentioned Charolaise, Limousine and Bazadaise. He impressed upon us that Bazadaise was king and the one to go for. We went to get set up.

Once settled, armed with our new beef knowledge, we walked into town in search of suitable beef for our portable Weber. The central square of Bazas is dominated by a cathedral opposite which we found what looked like a very traditional butcher. We entered somewhat nervously and attempted to explain to the butcher what we were after. Everything went well. He made straight for what looked like a thick piece of sirloin steak. It was actually thick enough to have been cut into two decently sized individual steaks but we thought we’d leave it whole – it should cook better that way. M. Boucher stroked the meat lovingly and we received our second lesson of the day, “bien assaisonner”, he said, “c’est très important”. Well, quite, I’m all for a bit of good seasoning.

The beef was very good. Having previously bought beef in France only from supermarkets, it has been very disappointing but this showed there was very good beef to be had.

Fast forward to 2023. We’d enjoyed getting reacquainted with our friends in Arçais but it was now time to move on. Francine’s initial plan was to revisit a centre of oyster production near Les Mathes hopefully to enjoy a plateau de fruits de mer. Meteo France, however, had other ideas; storms were due to batter that part of the west coast. We needed a plan B.

We could head down towards our favourite dairy sheep farm near Carcassonne calling in at Bazas en route for another sampling of their beef. The campsite seemed to be still in the book but the entry rang alarm bells; there was mention of a water park on site. Hmmm.

The journey went well and, on entering Bazas, we began following the old campsite signs. Nothing looked familiar. We were confronted by large “CapFun” signs and what looked like a new entrance road which took us up towards huge water slides and land covered in wooden cabins. We couldn’t actually see any area for camping, neither was there an obvious reception office but we parked and eventually found it.

CapFun is a chain, a little like Center Parcs. All the staff wear bright red T-shirts emblazoned with “CapFun” and point to it every time they refer to it – brand awareness, I suppose. It is, of course, a magnet for the breeding majority and I’m sure fulfils a useful purpose but it is far from our usual habitat. On our 2019 excursion into former East Germany our first night stop in Belgium had been on a CapFun and that had been little short of a nightmare – we had to beg to move pitches. However, there was no alternative campsite in the near vicinity so needs must and we checked in for the night.

Hidden by what must have been about 200+ wooden cabins, there was a small area for 15 or so travelling campers which we were directed to. The pitches were actually a good size and we found an appealing one with some shade then deployed our shop blind awning for more. We have a feeling that this area may have been a part of the original (pleasant) campsite. Time to wander in to get some Bazadaise for our new Cadac gas grill.

We found what was, I’m sure, the same butcher opposite the imposing front of the cathedral and waited while two ladies were served [don’t take that the wrong way]. My turn. Disaster, the man had no Bazadaise. In fact,  he had hardly anything that wasn’t large enough to serve King Henry VIII as a banquet rib roast. I suppose it was a bit late in the day, being the afternoon opening session. There really was only one piece suitable, from which he cut two modest steaks. This time the breed was Blonde d’Aquitaine which is a new one on me. Still, so be it.

Our beef was tasty enough but little to write home about. So, pleasant campsite with informative man gone and no Bazadaise. Our overnight stay was actually quite reasonable, unlike the Belgian equivalent but it can’t be said to have been a successful visit.

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 no fewer than five words for canal, depending for the most part , I think, on size: rigole; bief; canal; conche; fossé.

We’ve had a couple of bicycle rides around the excellently marked tracks marked from and around Arçais and what we’ve found, or rather what we haven’t found, has been a little depressing. Don’t get me wrong, there are dragonflies and damselflies but they appear to be in reduced numbers compared to years previous. June is the height of the season and in my view they should be here in good numbers. The campsite has a couple of water ways literally just outside its main gate and I have seen good numbers of Orange Featherlegs (Platycnemis acutipennis) on these but now there we found hardly anything. I did see these together with a handful of Blue Featherlegs (Platycnemis pennipes) and a Blue Chaser (Libellula fulva) beside the canal below our friends’ road but again, not in the numbers I’d expect. One of the lakes we knew also seemed to have a reduced population.

Our second cycle route took us through the Marais to the Sèvre Niortaise and we rode along its northern bank back down to Damvix, which is where we used to stay before the campsite owner there went en retraite [retired] and before discovering the site at Arçais – we saw just a handful of Blue Featherlegs at one particular bridge, though I admit the weather was not at its brightest.

There is a small pond in the centre of our campsite on which, at first attempt, we found a very few damselflies only. On our second visit, in brighter conditions, we did find one, and only one, dragonfly but oh what a find it was. This was only my second ever encounter with an Orange-spotted Emerald (Oxygastra curtisii) so, though it was alone, I was thrilled. It flew tirelessly, though and didn’t settle so I had to try to capture it in flight. This is a particularly interesting species for me and Britain. It used to occur in the UK at two rivers in Devon and at one site in Dorset. However, it became locally extinct in 1963, contributory causes being thought to be increased sewage pollution in the rivers and the particularly severe winter of ‘62/’63. With sewage and rivers a currently high profile issue, will we never learn?

Our friend Mike thinks there’s nothing wrong here in Arçais. He, however, has been living here every year and if there has been a gradual decline, he may have become accustomed to it as it happened. With two separate snapshots eight years apart, to us things look a little different and the change seems quite marked.

The water in the marais has been cleaned up with no sewage now being dumped into it. We certainly saw no evidence of any duckweed whereas in the past we’ve seen water courses literally covered with the stuff. This is why it is known as the Venice Verte. So, I do not think it’s water quality that may be an issue. I honestly don’t know what’s going on; apparently the fish population has increased so perhaps there is more fish predation?

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, most supermarkets have large car parks which are rarely full and one can take two contiguous spaces front to back, for a vehicle that is slightly longer than normal. That would often not be easy in the UK and I’m yet to be convinced that Spain would be much better; the few Spanish supermarket car parks with which I’m familiar certainly wouldn’t facilitate it.

Having arrived in France with an essentially empty fridge, Frodo needed to brave a shopping trip. We left our Arçais campsite and went to the Super-U at Coulon where we manage easily to find a double length parking space to hit the food aisles. We were under a roofed, shaded parking area.

As well as making provision for camping cars, onto another stroke of French genius. There is a mandate that, by 2028, all car parks from between 80 – 400 car capacity must be covered by solar panel roofs. As well as generating large amounts of renewable power, this shields both cars and pedestrians from potentially harmful solar radiation. It turns an already brown field site into a generator. Brilliant! Car parks exceeding 400 capacity must get it done by 2026.

Our home town in the UK is “suffering” massive expansion with multiple green field sites being covered by new houses – the town has more or less doubled in population since we moved in in 1997, with absolutely NO increase in supporting infrastructure – and not one of those newly built houses has a roof equipped with solar panels. Instead we are grabbing prime agricultural land to make solar farms. It’s utterly stupid and little short of criminal.

If I had to choose between the approach of the French government and our own, I know which way my vote would go.

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 en retraite [in retirement] in Portugal. The new gardien is a very pleasant man called Dom, which I assume is short for Dominic. All the signs posted around the campsite are signed “Dom”.

Dom works hard to keep the campsite well kempt and tidy, mowing the pitches and using something like a gas powered flame-thrower to incinerate unwanted weeds. At least this avoids using nasty chemicals on them, which could well leach into the surrounding canal system. There’s a large, dead tree in the middle of our field whose surrounding grass got the something like a flame-thrower treatment. It appeared that the lower trunk of the tree also got a bit too much something like a flame-thrower treatment and kept smouldering. Dom went of to fetch water to dowse it down.

Dom has a modest collection of chickens on site. At night they are kept in a pen but during the day he lets some of them out to range freely around the campsite. There are three hens out regularly: one grey, one white and one looking particularly attractive in black with bronze highlights. The latter was decidedly my favourite. The hens range about the campsite pitches pecking what they can find and more or less completely ignoring the campers, unless food might be on offer, though Dom dissuades people from feeding them. They made themselves completely at home in our pitch beside Frodo to perform their ablutions. We don’t want untidy looking hens, after all.

We were relaxing under our awning when Dom wandered into the field with something like a landing net slung across his shoulder. The something like a landing net contained a bundle of something white which we couldn’t quite make out. Dom set the bundle of something white down on the ground and it unwound itself into something like a white chicken, but “not as we know it, Jim”. The feathers on this chicken went all the way down its legs and covered its feet, too. There was a curious knobbly purple boss perched on the front of its head above the beak. It had spurs on its legs; this was a cockerel, ever so slightly smaller than the more conventional looking hens. Tagged variously as Fancy Pants or Flouncy Trousers, once he recovered his composure having been transported in something like a landing net, he look quite amusing  as he raced on his knock-kneed legs to join the ladies. Being a cockerel, he soon started crowing to make his presence known.

There’s a wonderful phrase used to describe trying to control the uncontrollable: “it’s like herding cats”. Watching someone trying to round up the chickens to get them back in the safety of their pen having spent a day free ranging on the campsite made me think one could easily swap cats for chickens.

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 inland from La Rochelle and about a 4-hour drive from the port. There was another reason in that we wanted nothing to do with P&O following their disgraceful behaviour with their staff.

Last year with Guillaume in tow, we had witnessed an awful queue disembarking the boat to get through Caen’s passport control. Our wonderful Brexiteers had slowed down the immigration process to France dramatically. Time was not pressing but I was afraid of what we might be confronted with at St. Malo. As luck would have it, we were almost in pole position disembarking and were 2nd in line for one of the passport booths. Frodo was soon getting used to the roads of France which, unsurprisingly are superior to those of England which are more of a pothole slalom. [Incidentally, the French have a wonderful phrase for pothole: nid de poule or chicken’s nest.]

I shepherded Frodo through the streets of St. Malo and we were soon on the open roads; the main roads. 🙂

There’s another stroke of Brexit brilliance in that you are not supposed to bring meat or dairy products into France from the UK. I’d made a veggie chilli (Chilli sans Carne) but we hadn’t got our usual 2 days worth of food in the fridge. Being a Sunday, most of the French shops would be shut. With time to waste, we bravely leapt off the main roads into a small town. There was an aire de camping car at the start of town but through we went to investigate. Francine spotted a boulanger open and, beside it, a boucherie. We found an all-but-empty car park and moored Frodo at a rakish angle so as not to block anything. We sauntered back.

House Martins were swooping in and out of nests fixed to the eaves of a single story building. Wee heeds popped out waiting to be fed. It was an enchanting sight as a dozen or so adults flew around us frenetically.

Back at the shops we found that we had really lucked out. The butcher was superb, offering interesting cheeses as well as meat and patés, etc. We got some rilletes d’oie [potted goose] and some Forme d’Ambert blue cheese, which looked nice and mature. Francine couldn’t resist a little goat cheese crotin [that translates as dung, being the size and shape of … but fear not it is just cheese]. The boulanger didn’t let us down, either, and we came away with a classic baton of beautifully chewy French bread. This is not going to be good for my type 2 diabetes diet, I can tell.

Complete with purchases, the journey progressed and we tested, successfully I might add, my placement of our electronic autoroute toll tag, which makes toll booths much easier. Approaching Arçais, we looked as though we’d be spot on 14:00, which was apparently our earliest entry time to the campsite. Then, following Sally Satnav, we ran into a Route Barée sign which had us winding around to find an alternative approach.

Dom, the campsite guardian, opened the gates and let us in. Though our friends had made a reservation, it seemed to have evaporated into the ether but no matter, there were plenty of pitches available and we chose one with very nice shade and which seemed to suit Frodo.

Dom was a delight and didn’t seem fussed about paperwork until tomorrow so we busied ourselves setting up which, I must say, is a simpler affair than a caravan.

Reunions ensued with our friends, who we had not seen since 2015. Strewth!

As it turns out, we have broken our journey north at exactly half way. We did about 470kms yesterday and Sally Satnav says we have 471kms to go today. So, it should be another 7 hours that would get us into the ferry port at 19:00, four hours ahead of the boat, if we left at midday. Some poor buggers had been stuck waiting for six hours in queues at Calais earlier this month, so extra time is good. Half our population needs a frontal lobotomy.

We spent a leisurely morning packing as slowly as I could, in between bouts of rain, waiting for the camper vans to move off the pitches I thought I needed to manoeuvre out. They duly left. I still couldn’t find a turn that I could make without endangering Guillaume. I ended up on a larger pitch to do a 3-point turn with Guillaume and finally broke free.

The drive up to Ouistreham went swimmingly. At least, it felt as if we were swimming. There was a corridor of yellow weather warning which matched exactly our route. We were paying for missing out on the rain yesterday. We pulled in to the ferry port, as expected, a little before 19:00. The gates were not yet open and we joined a handful of other vehicles waiting for the three check-in booths to open.

Eventually, shutters went up, lights came on and open they did. We were about the 3rd or 4th vehicle through. We joined the next queue. Boarding a ferry is an exercise in moving from one queue to the next, there being about three. Now things began going south.

While we were waiting in the security line, eventually a douane officer asked to look in Guillaume. Bien sur. I unlocked Guillaume’s door and muttered “attention” while I got the step out for him to step in. He was satisfied, I replaced the step and locked up again. Eventually we were beckoned forward to move to the next line but the lady wanted a ticket from the douane man. We don’t have a ticket.

“Yes we’ve been checked but he didn’t give us a ticket.”

“I can’t let you through without a ticket”, she said.

It was, by the way, raining so folks weren’t terribly happy.

Eventually our lady returned and wanted me to move somewhere near the side fence ‘cos I was now not allowed to proceed but was blocking progress being at the front of the line. I imagine she’d forgotten in all the excitement but unseen by me, madame had stuck a traffic cone in front of our car. I drove forward, over the cone and it ended up between our front wheels. Having been beckoned forward by her, she glowered at me as if it were my fault. She bent down in the rain and retrieved the cone.

Then our wet lady didn’t seem to like where I was going. Look lady, I’m heading for the fence but I can’t make the caravan jump sideways. I opened my door and shouted “where do you want me to go?”. That earned me a “don’t yell at me sir”. Mon Dieu!

I parked as near to the fence as I could get given manoeuvring restrictions. We sat. We continued to sit. Eventually pretty much everyone else had moved on the the next queue, the boarding queue. A collection of douane officers sauntered back towards us and our earlier douane man muttered, “I checked you, you’re fine”. Tell her, not me. “I know”, I said, “but you didn’t give us a ticket”. Gallic shrug; “I didn’t have any left”. [Fume]

Finally we were beckoned through. Another collection of officials seemed to want to examine us again but our posse of douanes overrode them them. Onwards ready for our next piece of entertainment.

Our next piece of Gallic amusement was coming across a hooded young man standing in the rain and holding a long pole towering above him. We paused to let him use his pole, which he positioned beside our car and peered upwards into the rain. We have our bicycles mounted on the roof of the car. He looked down again. I had opened the window.

“Do you know how tall your car is with the bikes?”

“About 2.8m.”

M. Poleman consults a sopping wet piece of paper; “2.8 is on the limit”, he said, “you may have to wait longer to board. Join line 31.”

Well, of course, heaven forbid anything this evening should go smoothly. Guillaume is 2.7m tall but the bikes make the car a tad taller. We wait in line 31 with a few others.

Boarding commences and slowly all the other boarding lines empty. Vehicles in front of us in line 31 board but we get held. We wait yet again. We continue to wait until there is just us and one van left in the boarding area. It’s gone 23:00, still raining and beginning to feel quite lonely. Madame in charge of releasing would-be boarders is on a walkie-talkie. She walkie-talkies off for a few minutes and disappears. This is when you start thinking, “oh bugger, they’re full up”.

Being full up at Calais is not much of an issue; there’s another boat in about 90 minutes. Being full up in Ouistreham would be a very different prospect; the next boat is tomorrow.

Madame Walkie-talkie eventually returns and checks with us our estimation of our height.

“If the bikes are too tall, do you mind dismounting them on board?”

“No, of course not.”

Much relieved, we finally move on up the ramp to meet our loading team who, as I slow to a near standstill, watch our bike handlebars like a hawks as they approach the deck roof. 2.8m is the height limit on this deck. I think the bars would be OK but it’s clearly very tight. We advanced as much as the loading team deems safe and halt. A man wanders up armed with a traffic “stop” sign and stands it in front of our car. Beside us, a Carthago motor van suffers a similar fate with its very own “stop” sign. Curiously, behind us, literally out on deck in the open, is an articulated truck which is considerably taller than either of us.

A loading supervisor explains that, once the cars in front have disembarked followed by those on the mezzanine deck above us, they will raise the roof creating more headroom for us, the Carhago and the truck behind us to drive forward and off. No need to dismount the bikes.

The boat was not actually full. There’s a taller deck for trucks which is where caravans often end up. I’m curious why they didn’t just stick us with those in the first place, not that we were there in the first place after all queuing shenanigans, it was more like the last place.

With all the stupid Brexit-induced delays getting into a sensible country and then the pain of getting back into a stupid country that’s intent on flushing itself down the toilet, I’m beginning to wonder if travel is yet worth it again.

We have two days to tow Guillaume the 940 kms or so from the south of France to Ouistreham ferry port in Normandy.

We finished loading/packing and were on the road by 09:00. We didn’t have a set goal in mind for today. Our ferry is not until 23:00 tomorrow so, if necessary, we can do a very long day #2. Today we just want to get somewhere near half way to make tomorrow easier.

The weather forecast is not good; we have a day of high winds and the likelihood of rain which makes for a delightful combination. Still, for most of the day we’ll be cocooned in our car anyway, though I’d like the opportunity to set up our interim camp in the dry.

The wind was a bit of a concern. Our route took us up the A75, La Meridienne, which is one of the highest autoroutes in Europe reaching 1120m/3680ft. It also takes us across the engineering marvel that is the Millau Viaduct. That could be a bit blustery. It was heartening to see that all passes were open, though.

The viaduct was actually a breeze, as opposed to a gale, but there was contraflow which somewhat spoiled the view of the crossing. The viaduct is the only toll on the route all the way to Clermont-Ferrand (which we can’t resist calling Clement Freud).

Some of the climbs up to an altitude exceeding that of Snowdon, essentially from sea level, are brutal and you really have to keep vigilant about running into the back of very slow-moving trucks. The French have a wonderfully graphic road sign depicting a car ramming the back of a steeply inclined lorry. I have to say that our car, an automatic, copes very well – stick it in cruise control, lower the speed a bit and let technology take the strain. With a manual car, I used to end up with calves cramping from tensing on the accelerator and being mentally exhausted from the gear changing. I would not go back. For the most part the climbs were made harder by the wind being a headwind but it’s safer; for towing vehicles; a side wind would’ve been considerably worse.

Up from Lodève the temperature went down to 7°C and stopping for a comfort break was a bit chilly. More clothes required.

We had a couple of potential stop-offs in mind. After 15th September, half the French campsites close so it’s necessary to be mindful. Usually those near the autoroutes are a decent bet, though. Progress had been good so we opted for a new site to us, a camping municipal at Saint-Amond-Montrond. Our book said it’s open until 1st October. That’s in 3 days time so let’s hope it’s right.

A delightful lady was checking us in at 16:00. She was mightily amused when I referred to Francine as ma mere instead of ma femme. My, I’ve been away from France too long. The campsite won a few points by having a chiller cabinet containing cold local beers. I bought some to help us set up.

There were only a few motor vans on site when we arrived. We found a nicely hedged pitch but access was tight; ingress and egress would be very tricky if other pitches were occupied. You’d definitely need a mover.

We hadn’t had the suggested rain, just a sprinkle or two and the wind, which here, having dropped down off the massif, was slight.

The usual late afternoon/early evening flood of more motor vans came in. We let them get on with it while they filled all the pitches that I could’ve used to exit. Still, I don’t have to be on the road until midday tomorrow so they will likely be gone by then. If not, I’ve got the mover.

By chance we had all the ingredients required for a tartiflette – potatoes, bacon, shallots, garlic, reblochon cheese, cream (well, OK, yogurt). It should be baked in the oven – sod that – so we did it in a pan with a lid instead.