Once You Are In

I don't have vast experience of traveling overland on the continent of Europe. Most of my trips have been made via the gift of air travel. This means that when I travel from the UK to other countries, I'll have to go through immigration and customs each and every time. This trip was a little different as we were making the journey by car.

We weren't stopped by French immigration when coming into Calais and during our holiday, we crossed over into Spain a couple of times. One day we made a day trip to The Principality of Andorra. Although we had our passports on our person, they were not needed for any of these trips across country borders.Here is the now redundant border crossing between France and Spain. Henry and I were thinking wars that had been fought between France and Spain and how fiercely these now open borders had been fortified. Now we don't even have to slow down. Amazing! We just ran around taking photos and it was a non-event. No guards, no guns or offical stamps, just a lot of sun and wind and happy holiday makers. With the introduction of the Euro, this Bureau de Change is no longer needed. Its a shame because it has a great view!

This is the big public beach in Llansa, Spain. We preferred the quieter, rocky beach. Tucking into the picnic!
There was a nice view point on the rocks above the beach. We could see these knucklehead kids jumping off the rocks into the sea. It made my stomach lurch every time they jumped. In the end, I just stopped watching.

Here he is looking out to sea!

This water is the reason that we just don't ever travel without our snorkeling gear when we're on holiday. I don't want to be stuck looking at warm clear water like that and not be able to get in it with a mask and snorkel!

Torreilles Plage where we were staying sort of marks the end of the long golden sandy beach area of France. The coast becomes much rockier as it approaches the Pyrenees. It doesn't mean that there are no beaches, it is just that the beaches that are on this bit of the coast are smaller, pebbled and much more intimate.

It was on these smaller beaches that I collected all my sea glass. I just love those bits of broken bottles that have been made safe and opaque by the action of the sand and sea. In addition to the very common green glass, I found some amber glass and a small bit of the very excellent cobalt glass! I turned it into a fish on our caravan's kitchen table. I have all these bits of smoothed glass in a plastic container with the best of the shells and other seaside treasures in the kitchen here at the house. I always think I'll do something creative with these things when I get home. Sadly when I get home, I never have the time.

This is a placemat from a day when we didn't pack a picnic and had lunch under umbrellas.
I think it is one of the most joyful works Picasso made.
On our way home from one of our days on a Spanish beach and back over the twisty roads where there is NO overtaking, we were stuck behind this motorcylist and his girlfriend. I don't know if she had an ipod stuck in her ears or if her helmet was wired for sound but this lovely creature was dancing on the back of this bike, waving her arms about, jabbing the sky with an index finger and obviously enjoying the day. She mirrored my mood, but I was driving and couldn't dance.

The Bread!

One of my favourite things about France is the boulangerie. From the ordinary local baker up to the grand artisinal boulangerie, they are all wonderful. There were two near our campsite to choose from while we were there. The closest one was only open during the tourist season. It was a satellite shop. The bakers bought in frozen dough and baked it there on site. They will be referred to as Bakery 1. The baker that was a few steps further and across the road, made their own dough. They will be referred to as Bakery 2.

Products from both place were very good and the baguettes were light, crispy, the perfect French baguette! There was nothing really wrong from the baguettes from Bakery 1 and the bread actually kept a little bit longer but the baguette just wasn't as flavourful and it was a little denser. If you were going to eat the bread straight away, then it had to be obtained from Bakery 2. The baguette was superior, having that wonderul open texture you only get in real French boulangeries. If you were going to use the bread for sandwiches that weren't going to be consumed for a couple of hours, then baguettes from Bakery 1 were used. Both boulangeries had equally gorgeous croissants, pain au chocolate and pain au raisin (a personal favourite). I'm sure that if given time, I would have been able to get to the level where I could identify the oven of origin for these products as well.

We used to send the kids off to get the breakfast bread, but we actually prefer the walk ourselves these days. A typical breakfast order for us was; four croissant, four pain au chocolate and two baguettes. Occasionally Henry and I would order an extra croissant each to fortify us on the walk back to our caravan. This usually occurred when the products were still warm from the oven. I defy anybody to not pull apart a croissant and devour it when it is fresh from the oven and you haven't had your breakfast yet. It didn't need butter or confiture, it just needed to be in my mouth!

One morning The Man of the Place and I were determined to go to a local market. We were told there was one at Canet en Roussillon, a little village near us. We must have come late because there were only three stalls, two vegetable stalls (we didn't need any that morning) and a stall selling big ladies underpants. Though the market was a let down we did discover two things. There was going to be a Bastille Day Commemoration Ceremony on the 13th of July with speaches and awards to local services and there is a great boulangerie in the centre of the village! Actually there were TWO really fab-o boulangeries in the village.

We went a bit nuts in the boulangerie next to the Mairie (town hall). We bought a normal baguette, two or three somethinglovely au pomme that was all puff pastry and apples, a pain au raisin for me and a sarmentine for The Man of the Place. This odd shaped loaf was described by Gordon as looking like a conjoined rabbit. Henry declared it to be the best bread he has ever had in his entire life. At the end of our holiday we had to make a special trip to Canet village to this bakery to get the wierd bread for the homeward journey picnic.Here is George tucking into his treat.

Then on the 13th of July (more about the ceremony later) we found ourselves walking back to our car from the cemetery when we were lured into another fabulous bakery. This guy was so pleasant. We went in originally to buy ice cream and ended up making an impulse purchase of bread with figs in it.Henry took a bite and made retching noises. He said that he didn't want to spit it out because spitting is forbidden in France. He wouldn't let the rest of us have any to protect us from the horror of this fig bread. We weren't fooled for a minute! None of that loaf made it back to the car. It was exquisite!

So, in Canet village there are two great artisan boulangeries. One is in Square St Jacques across from the church and the other is on the road just down from the cemetery. Go to both!

Off to the shops

As a family we have used this holiday company, Matthews Holidays a number of times over the years. The price of renting the caravan in some rural part of France includes the cost of the ferry crossing. In September, the prices really drop and that is when we used to go.

For a number of years I wasn't working because George was small and the budget for anything was pretty tight. It was our philosophy that two weeks in another country where the kids had to use another language and experience another culture was just as valuable as a fortnight in formal education. It also true that with only Henry's salary coming in we really needed to take advantage of the prices that were so much better in September. With George in the big school actually being in class is much more important and we keep our family holidays strictly to times when school is not in session. I've been working for a couple of years now and we can afford the peak season holiday a bit better.

The caravans are big enough (approximately 300 square feet of space). They are always clean and kitted out well enough. There are duvets and pillows on the beds but no sheets, so you have to bring those.

Sometimes self-catering holidays aren't really self-catering at all. You are faced with a dormitory sized refrigerator and a hotplate. The kitchen in these caravans is an area where you can prepare a real meal. There is a fully functioning kitchen stove, a refrigerator, sometimes a microwave oven and a sink.

There is cutlery, a couple of knives and kitchen utensils, including that all important corkscrew! There are plenty of nice plates, coffee cups and glasses as well.

Sadly the washing up liquid is not next to the sink. You have to go get some from the French supermarket. It is silly things like salt, pepper, dish soap and toilet roll that are missing. I knew about this beforehand and packed them along but I didn't pack coffee and milk.

We got to our site pretty late and didn't go to the supermarket before we arrived. I don't think we would have had the space in the car for even a small amount of shopping even if we had. So first thing to do after saying hello to the sea was to get to the shops."Boys, do you want to go with me and Henry to the shops?"

"Ung. We're still asleep."

Notice the sunshine streaming through the window.

We left them there.

I love going to buy food in France. I just don't understand why the rest of the world doesn't follow their excellent example. They grow the food right there. We went past fields of vegetables all the time. Artichokes, onions, garlic, cauliflower, it was all grown right there. The best thing about a July holiday is that the peaches and apricots were ripe. There was kilometer after kilometer of fruit trees, branches cracking under the weight of ripe fruit.Up here in the sun-free north, fruit doesn't grow like this. The folks down south have to pick it green so that it won't rot on the way and move it by truck up to us. I had never had a ripe fig until we went on holiday to France. Because the produce has been picked before the flavour gets good, we have become accustomed to things that are just okay. Well down here, the fruit doesn't have to move nearly so far. The fruit can stay in the tree until it's ripe. I swear some of the peaches were still warm from the sun. They were much less expensive and a thousand times better. Some of the white peaches needed to be eaten with a plate under the eater's chin, they were that juicy. There was also no way you could eat these peaches quietly so we stopped trying. There were three different varieties of peach on offer. The yellow peaches, the white peaches and these oddly shaped peaches that looked as though they'd been stepped on while being formed. They were all delicious!The melons were numerous and delicious as well. See? The sign says very good!
It also asks you not to press the melons. There really is no need to test for ripeness or even to see if they are over ripe.

These red onions were very large, about the size of softballs.

This man is organising the pesky tomatoes. There were about seven separate varieties of tomato. A tomato for every occasion!

I have a bouquet of salad.
This euro kept leaping out of my pocket.
The bargain corner. Each little bucket or "plat" cost one euro and contained misshaped or very ripe produce that needed to be used immediately. I love the huge oddly shaped tomatoes.

Next stop the boulangerie!

The First Morning

I am an early riser. Even if I've been up really late or had an entire day of sharing the driving on a mad road trip, I will still be up at my normal early time. It was no different on that first morning there.

I woke up with the sun just starting to come up. It was warm! I could see out a window from my spot on the bed and there were no clouds! This is the best bit. I got out of bed and made my way to the door of the caravan and opened. I looked to my left and saw a boat going by not too far away! We were about 150 yards from the edge of the sea! It was about 200 Peggy sized steps from water's edge to the door of the caravan.Rock on!

I got dressed quietly, grabbed the camera and made my way throught the gate surrounding the campground and onto the dunes. Here are the dunes complete with picturesque fence. There were lots of little grasshoppers in this sparse growth.

(You can see the Pyrenees in the distance)

It turns out that this particular bit of beach gets combed by a small tractor every morning to keep the bulk of the litter and flotsam of the sea off the golden sand. So the first set of human foot prints were mine. Well, mine and some gulls.

Sometimes sunrises are much prettier than sun sets. It is just that fewer people see them.

I was lucky this first morning. There was no wind and the Mediterranean was like a mirror. It wasn't always this calm. This part of France has a lot of wind and most days it was quite breezy. The nice thing about the wind was that it never felt too hot and we could listen to the waves as we sat in our little campsite and sipped wine.

After taking the first photos of the day, I went back to our caravan to see about some coffee.

The First Day of Our Holiday

It was 30 C degrees when we left on Tuesday. It was 22 C in and around the M25 (London ring road) yesterday and a whopping 15 C today here in rainy Dumfries & Galloway. *sigh*

I have rapidly fading freckles under my fleece and jeans. We had a spectacular holiday in France.
Now it's back to laundry, mowing the lawn and getting back to normal non-holiday life.

While the washing machine is running, I'm going to go into memory mode . . .
We left Whitelees early in the morning. George and Gordon slept a lot on the way down. Being a passenger is tiring! The boys had a small cooler between them. It made a good neutral zone at some points in the journey.
The Port of Dover - The docks used for the ferries are HUGE! It isn't easy to get the scale of this place, but it does make one feel small.Now the ferry has arrived and we're getting ready to drive onto our ferry. The route that I had printed off was helpful in telling us that as we cross the Channel, we leave Great Britain and enter France.

I took a photo of the boys as we leave our shores.Farewell!

We spend the first night of our holiday in a nice little hotel in Calais.We got on the road again early again. Although the boys could have happily stayed in their beds for hours, they were really good about getting up, showered, dressed and in the car. They did it very quietly too.
We had breakfast on the autoroute between Calais and Paris.

After we had negotiated our way around the Paris ring road, I really enjoyed the drive south.
The magical thing about this drive is that the further south one drives, the warmer the weather becomes.It started to get a bit too warm for Gordon. George didn't like the heat either. Grumpiness started to sneak in.Ice cream always helps!See? Spirits have lifted!

Toward the end of our journey south - we crossed this magnificent bridge! It is the Milau Viaduct. It was so spectacular that we pulled off and viewed the bridge from a popular rest area/viewing point to get some good photos of it.

I've seen this bridge on tv once or twice. I remember being struck by its beauty then.

"Henry, the next time we go on holiday in France, we should go across that bridge!"!

"Do you realize how far south it is? It would take us two days of solid driving!"

Mr. That-Bridge-is-too-far-south-for-the-likes-of-us didn't realize that we were going to go over this very bridge until we were almost there. As he is a big fan of spectacular works of engineering it was his idea to stop to have a good look at it. I have just discovered that it is the highest road bridge in the world. Cool

It wasn't so cool for Gordon. He doesn't like going over bridges in cars. He hid his head until we were across.

It wasn't long after crossing that bridge that we had reached our destination, Torreilles Plage. It is a small place that is mostly made up of camp sites and supporting shops. We were tired. We unloaded the car, made up the beds and got into them