After a pretty disastrous trip down to Cornwall in early July – torrential rain and a leaking Frodo -we are now taking Frodo back to France, which has proved to be a happier hunting ground. Once again we booked an overnight ferry from Portsmouth to Caen [actually Ouistreham] on the night of 31^st August. We got bored waiting at home so set off very early [16:00] just in case any of the silly British road works delayed us. They didn’t. Having topped up the tank, we joined the check-in queue, the first of three, at about 19:00 for a 22:45 ferry.

Oddly, the bar at the Portsmouth ferry port sells some decent beer: Speckled Hen and Tanglefoot. I’m a fan of Tanglefoot and downed a couple while we were waiting. We had some brief entertainment when a mouse was spotted in the lounge area and a man tried to catch it. The mouse won.

After a couple more queues we were eventually one of the last vehicles loaded, sometime beyond sailing time. We found our cabin, dumped our bags and went in search of dinner. Brittany Ferries food is actually very reasonable but really it was a bit late to be eating. We finally bedded down sometime after midnight and I struggled to get to sleep.

After a few hours sleep the Brittany Ferries alarm ditty bonged joyously at 05:00 to rouse us to prepare for disembarkation. I felt as if I’d been hit by a truck. This approach may need rethinking. We drove off and joined yet another slow-moving queue for passport control. [Shoot all the bastard Brexiteers.]

Finally we were on the road and thinking of stopping at La Falaise, where there is an excellent camper van parking area, to get some coffee.

The coffee worked only briefly and my lack of sleep soon had me wandering in the lane a little – well, OK, quite a lot, enough for Frodo’s lane departure control to bleat and warn of driver fatigue. No shit! We pulled into a rest area for more coffee.

Frodo has an intelligent fridge … or, at least, a technical fridge. The fridge is capable of running on gas, 12 volt and 240v electricity supplies. It has an auto setting which switches intelligently between the power supplies. When driving, it chooses 12 volt electricity; when hooked up to mains, 240v electricity; when stopped, gas kicks in. Or rather, gas should kick in. Having stopped for coffee, gas did not kick in and the fridge flashed irritatingly indicating that it was now more of a cupboard with some fancy controls.

Francine consulted the almighty Google. I went to remove a cover and see if any contacts were grubby. They weren’t. Suddenly I heard the fridge fire up on gas. Francine had turned it off and back on – she had rebooted it and all now seemed well. What a ridiculously complex, prone-to-failure world we have created. Fridges now need rebooting. Must be a Windows fridge. 😀

We had one more glitch. As we were nearing Amboise, when I desperately needed the satnav to guide me in, having been faultless all day the damn thing now froze, and I do mean froze – not a single touch-insensitive button worked. Not a single button, that is, but the physical off/on button which I really didn’t expect to work. The satnav unit rebooted and eventually came back to life complete with the original destination. Weird. I got my directions and we arrived at Amboise camping municipal shortly after midday.

This place is huge; there are almost 450 pitches and the area we were directed to looked like camper van city. Interestingly, I could find only one vidoir for the chemical toilets and that was at the motor van service area.

I noticed a missed phone call which had left a voicemail message. It was the Sargent Tracker monitoring company which had received an alert from Frodo. I phoned them to assure them all was well. The satnav/radio/tracker devices are in a single integral unit. Doubtless, the freezing and rebooting of the satnav had caused an alarm to be raised.

There are times when I’d like to reboot life.

Falaise is famous for two things, although prior to our visit en route to our Ouistreham ferry, I was aware of only one of them.

A while after D-Day in the battle for Normandy, allied forces surrounded an estimated 50,000 German troops, eventually completely encircling them, in what became known as the Falaise Pocket. It began as a pocket but British forces (in the north) and American forces ( in the south) eventually linked up east of Falaise and sealed the pocket. This really became a killing ground and the Germans suffered enormous losses. It’s one of the few WWII episodes I remember my father, who crossed over as a Morse code operator a few days after D-Day, talking about.

Beside the main square in Falaise is what I think is a WWII Sherman tank, though I couldn’t find an information board confirming my suspicions. There is, however, an information board about Jef Aérosol, the French graffiti artist who decorated said tank. [I have dreadful trouble not mangling that name. 😀 ]

What I didn’t know was that Falaise was the birthplace and home of Guillaume le Conquérant, as he is known in France – William the Conqueror. The remains of his castle are there. At the foot of the castle is a free parking area, which allows camper vans (to stay overnight if necessary) and which is largely why we went to have a look.

On the opposite side of the square from the Sherman tank is the église de la trinité de Falaise which dates from 1240-ish in its current form, though there was, I believe, a church there from the 9th century. In the middle of the square, waving a spear menacingly at the church, is a statue of Guillaume le Conquérant doing his best to imitate the Lone Ranger’s Hi-yo Silver pose.

We found a pleasant though windy bar to quaff a few beers whilst passing the time until we could reasonably turn up for the ferry.

Here endeth Frodo’s first foreign trip.

We’d had an entertaining stay at our camping aire naturelle between Marseillan and Mèze with plenty of wildlife and seafood but it was time to think about getting back north for our return ferry. We have done it in two days towing a caravan but they are long days requiring another holiday to recover so we decided to give ourselves three days to make for less stressful travelling.

The natural route from our current location would take us up the A75 autoroute, La Méridienne, towards the Auvergne, which would make a reasonable first leg and where we knew some interesting habitat. It’s a very picturesque ride, too, crossing the magnificent Millau viaduct and entering some stunning scenery as you rise into the Massif Central, though some of the climbs can get a bit heavy on diesel consumption.

We’ve crossed the Millau viaduct a few times now but with the tallest supporting tower exceeding the height of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it never fails to impress. Frankly, the building of it defies belief.

We crossed the viaduct again, eventually went through the toll plaza on the northern side, and then called in to the first rest area for, well, a rest. [Oh, OK, a comfort break.] I’m very glad we did.

Once comfortable again, Francine went off to look at a few flowery grass areas beyond the parking zone. I followed and was soon watching insects zooming about.

Wait a moment: zooming, insect … could it be an Ascalaphid? Bugger me, it was! I rushed back for my camera.

I should explain. In 2014 Francine and I had been camping in Millau and had gone up to the hills above looking for orchids and anything else that looked interesting. We stumbled across a flowery meadow with many fast-flying insects that would, if you were lucky, settle cooperatively. They tended to settle with wings open for a short while, then shut them. I’d never seen or heard of the like before but it was love at first sight. These were a species of Ascalaphid, Libelloides coccajus. I’ve since found a 2nd very similar species in Spain.

It took a while but eventually one of these autoroute rest area characters settled advantageously and I managed a picture. This looked quite different, though. Happily I had Brock’s Southern Mediterranean insect volume with me and I could identify this one as LIbelloides longicornis. Brilliant, another species for the collection. I was surprised it was different given that both these were in striking distance of Millau.

We weren’t done yet. There were blue and black striped damselflies moving through the grass. I made sure of a shot or two before looking harder to identify them. Strewth, these looked like Dainty Damselflies/Dainty Bluets (Coenagrion scitulum) but there’s a terrible twin that’s hard to separate and which I’ve yet to see, the Mediterranean Bluet (Coenagrion caerulescens).Sadly I’m still yet to see it, these were, indeed, Dainty Bluets.

Dainty Bluets are very scarce in the UK. Having been thought to be locally extinct, a colony was rediscovered in Kent and there are now, I think, three known locations. They also used to be on Farmer Luc’s irrigation lake at Fanjeaux until the fish farming activity wiped them out along with several other species, so it was good to see them again in an unlikely looking setting. I was pleased to get both sexes here.

Still not done. A Bee-fly was feeding and that, too, looked different. In the UK we’re mostly used to the Dark-edged Bee-fly (Bombylius major) with dark leading edges to its wings. We also have the Dotted Bee-fly (Bombylius discolor), with dotted wings, though I’ve not met one yet. This specimen appeared to have no markings on its wings, even if they were a blur. It took a while but I believe it to be the Heath Bee-fly (Bombylius minor) which does have a limited distribution in the UK, too.

I’ll never look at autoroute rest areas in quite the same way again.

In 2017 we had visited Francine’s brother who lives in Australia. Whilst there we met another couple who had a wonderful house in the same settlement of Stanley in Victoria. I was stunned to discover that they also owned a holiday home … wait for it … in southern France, in Marseillan, to be precise. Just imagine having a a holiday home 12,000 miles away on the opposite side of the planet giving you more or less 24hrs flying both ways. That’s some commitment.

Anyway, in 2018 our caravan trip to France with good ol’ Guillaume, and this couple’s trip to France coincided and we arranged to meet them in Marseillan, which happens to be one of our favourite haunts, too. We all love seafood and they introduced us to a local establishment called Chez Titin.

Fast forward five years to 2023 and here we are again, this time armed with Frodo and bicycles. We had had positioned ourselves midway between Mèze and Marseillan and had originally intended to visit both but, given the prevailing wind and the hills that we knew about, we chose to skip Mèze and cycled twice into Marseillan instead. It’s about 8 kms each way and our out of practice legs (and bums) were still getting accustomed to cycling again.

To sate our seafood craving, I managed to make a lunch reservation at Chez Titin and we duly pitched up to claim our table. Madame had been at pains to point out that we’d have to eat inside, the veranda being already fully booked. That’s fine, I thought, there’d be no need to keep my sun hat on. We perused the menu. This is not somewhere for those who dislike coquillages, it’s oysters and/or mussels and that’s it, though you can have them either raw or cooked depending on your preference. Neither can you “adjust” the menu. Excellent, live with it.

It is rare that I come across a dish with which I’m unfamiliar but here was one: Brazucade. One of my menu rules is to pick something new, so this looked interesting. We would certainly share a dozen raw oysters as an appetizer but this looked as if it might be a good option to round things off. It turns out that Brazucade is a pot of mussels (1.5kg, in this case) cooked over a wood fire, a bit like a pizza oven. That’ll definitely do for us. There were three optional sauces to choose from and we chose the saffron and cream to go over the mussels. This was all washed down with a very respectable bottle of Picpoul.

There is a decent VTT [Vélo Tout Terrain = all terrain bike, a much more appropriate phrase IMHO than our Mountain Bike] route running between Marseillan and Mèze, though as it approaches Mèze you do end up on roads, which is rather a shame. After our feast we embarked upon our return 8km journey half way along the VTT route back to Frodo. Happily the stomachs didn’t seem to be too full to make it any less comfortable than the outbound journey.

In checking my entry of our 2018 meeting with the Aussies, I discover that my memory is playing me false and that we apparently tried Brazucade with them. It must’ve been too many bottles of Picpoul ago. 😀

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 the ground, you see the numerous holes left after the nymphs have surfaced. It’s a wonder the ground doesn’t subside, really.

The glut of Cicadas was making a very welcome feast for various birds around the site. At points where they were undisturbed by humans, we saw gaggles of Starlings swooping down and flying off with what would make a decent sized lunch. Similarly, we occasionally see a Sparrow drop down and grab a meal.

I did get a picture of one of the more unusual birds on the campsite. This is a Kestrel but no ordinary Kestrel; this is a Lesser Kestrel (Falco naumanni). It has a less densely spotted breast than the Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) and the breast has a buff coloration. I’m not sure whether this raptor would take a Cicada but I do know Hobbies prey on dragonflies.

The great majority of the Cicada emergences go well but just once in a while something goes wrong. In this case, the first Cicada had emerged and was hanging inflating its wings and body, and drying out. In this state it was unable to fly and a second Cicada nymph climbed up and chose to sit on top of the first to complete its own emergence. The second adult has successfully emerged and flown but the first is stuck and now doomed; with both right wings distorted it would never be able to fly. The best thing to be hoped is that it would make a good meal for one of those birds. Nature is tough.

One of the avenues in Camping Villemarin is called Avenue des Libellules [Dragonfly Avenue]. Well, red rag to a bull, I just had to go and investigate.

I saw little at first but followed signs to a water course. The water course was, in fact, bone dry but beside it I was entertained for some time by a magnificent Blue-eyed Hawker (Aeshna affinis), what most in the UK refer to as a Southern Migrant Hawker. In the evening, above us, we saw a swarm of a dozen or more Blue-eyed Hawkers zooming about, frantically feeding rather in the way that Bats do. It was mesmerizing to watch.

While I’d been hunting dragonflies, Francine had been sitting relaxing and had spotted another visitor which was again benefiting from Cicada activity. A bee was flying towards her with something green and disappearing underground in one of the holes left by a Cicada nymph. At home I’ve watched a wasp that preys on shieldbug nymphs that can be green, and I wondered if this might be what was happening here. Not quite; a couple of photographs showed that this was a leaf-cutter bee which kept returning with newly cut rolls of leaf. This enterprising bee was using the Cicada nymph hole to build a nest. Leaf-cutters make cells lined with leaf material, each cell containing and egg/grub.

Very entertaining.

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 so gets busy with deal-seeking Dutch campers.

Instead, we headed for a nearby Camping Aire Naturelle site which we discovered last year. It is pretty much halfway between Marseillan and Mèze, near the Bassin de Thau; we were still after some oysters. Both destinations are cyclable and both provide seafood.

Whilst packing for the 140kms hop, we noticed Frodo had had a baby, presumably early in the morning. A Cicada (species unknown) had chosen to emerge on one of his levelling ramps. The exuvia was quite small so it’s not a species I’m familiar with.

Other than the fact that our Télépéage tag had stopped working – curious/irritating ‘cos I bought it only last year – forcing Francine to resume duties taking tickets and contorting to pay as we exited an autoroute, the journey went smoothly enough. We checked into Camping Villemarin at midday. Camping Aire Naturelle sites generally have larger pitches than regular sites and Frodo had plenty of space and some shade. There weren’t very many pitches taken.

The neighbouring pitch was taken, by a large tent. The large tent had a dozen or more cicada exuviae on it, larger ones this time from a species I knew. Some of the more recently emerged adults were still clinging on, drying off before their maiden flights. This, I think, is Cicada orni.

The following morning Frodo joined in the Cicada party. Outside, we had to be careful not to step on any recently surfaced Cicada nymphs tromping across the ground looking for a suitable support to climb up and metamorphose into an adult.

We had been in this situation way back in 2007 when, camping near Montagnac just a short distance from here, a campsite no longer there, we had been mesmerized by this Cicada spectacle. On that occasion, I was ill equipped with no camera support and an old film camera loaded with slow (50 ASA) slide film. Then we “rescued” a few Cicada nymphs onto our awning guy ropes, rigged up a “table-with-books support”, and managed to capture something of the process.

This time I was better equipped and once again pressed the guy ropes into service. A more natural setting would have been good but perhaps not as clear. The process takes 1-2hrs so the lighting changes but here’s a few parts of the sequence.

Being in the right place at the right time is a wonderful thing. I’d been hoping for years that I’d get to witness this again.

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 of the approach roads, the D27, is a well vegetated canal with accessible raised banks, also well vegetated but with a decent clear path running beside the canal. In a previous year it had proved to be a good odonata hunting spot. With the mistral gone, life was hot, hitting 30+°C which is even within my definition of hot. [I do not hold with Brits whining about a heatwave when the temperature soars to 24° or 25°C. Get a grip, that’s just a decent summer’s day.] Nonetheless, it’s a basically level ride so we thought we’d break out the bikes, get the legs turning and head down to the canal.

The last kilometre and a half is a long, flat, straight road. The end is in sight but seems to take a long time getting any closer; pedaling must be constant with no chance to freewheel. We did finally arrive, with some relief, and found somewhere to lock the bikes.

Relief was short-lived for Francine. The canal banks are raised above the surrounding ground and exposed. Though there is vegetation, none of it is trees so there is absolutely no shade for any respite. We spent 30 minutes or so studying the local wildlife.

At one point I thought I’d found a new addition to my European catalogue but, on closer inspection, it turned out to be a confusing but old friend. I’’ll resist boring non-anoraks with the details, though, ‘cos explanations would get involved and technical. Instead, here’s what really must be one of the most attractive shieldbugs there is, the aptly named Ornate Shieldbug (Eurydema ornata).

By complete contrast on the colourful front was this other beast, which looks like a tortoise shieldbug though which eludes me. It also eludes Google Lens which thinks it’s a clove of garlic. Never trust an app. 😀

With shadeless heat getting the better of us, we returned to the bikes and tackled the constant 5km pedal back along the road to our campsite. There is a slightly cooling breeze generated by the forward motion when cycling so it isn’t quite as hot as one might imagine but it is still hot. How the Tour de France guys do this at their effort levels for 200+ kms in similar temperatures is completely astonishing but then, they are completely astonishing athletes anyway. Just to knock the final nails in our coffins, there was a very slight but noticeable uphill section approaching the campsite. [Sweat, gasp]

Cool water followed by a cold beer in the shade of a tree on our pitch was in order.

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.