Travellers'tales
07 March 2016
• Nantes, France
by Cold but clear
Our journey north began with a shortish drive up the coast to Vila Nova de Milfontes. It was a small site, full of what looked like permanently pitched frame tents, with no-one in them, and the occasional motorhome and campervan. We left Jack safely in the van, sleeping in his crate, while we foraged for some food. We found a small restaurant near the brightly illuminated football stadium, and had a very nice dinner of pork. The Portuguese love pork, with the universal bifana the lunch of preference for us, a slab of grilled pork on a soft roll. With mustard. Gorgeous!
We stayed for one night only, but we were glad to be back on the road, in our own van, and on the homeward journey. The next day we headed north again on a longer journey, which involved getting past Lisbon, using a bridge far upriver from the city, and taking us to a campsite near the sea at Figueira da Foz. The woman at reception was remarkably unfazed by our approach, considering the entire campsite was empty of visitors. The sanitary block was huge, and it was clear that this site was full to overflowing in the summer. It had permanently pitched frame tents also, and intriguing holiday homes to let looking like toy houses, painted in bright colours and arranged in a small higgledy-piggledy village.
We chose a pitch, and the reception lady came over with us to unlock the electricity box. We duly plugged ourselves in, and settled in for a two-day stay. We were within hearing distance of the beach, with loud surf pounding away all the time. In the evening we went for quite a long walk to find the one small cafe that was open in the town, and had dinner there. The one man band running it took our order, cooked the food, and took the money at the end. It was OK but not wonderful.
The next morning we went for a walk with Jack to let him romp along a beautiful beach, with huge waves breaking all the time on clean sand. Where are all the surfers, I thought. Too early in the season for them, perhaps. We had the long beach mostly to ourselves, glimpsing another distant walker with a dog, miles away along the sand. A huge dune system separated the town from the sea, and a network of boardwalks crossed them, went along parallel to the sea, and from time to time led to staircases down to the beach. It was magnificent, the mighty Atlantic powering in to the shore, all the way from America.
Once off th beach we combed the town for a shop of some kind, for supplies. Everything was shut, closed, or gone away. Finally we spotted a Spar sign, on a building with an estate agent's for sale sign on it. Without much optimism we approached, only to find it was not only open, but well stocked an run by an older man and younger woman. We bought our necessities, including a carton of longlife milk from the Azores.
Returning to the van, we noticed the campsite was noisily occupied by its workmen, using a JCB to dig holes and put in posts round a play area. Apart from that we were still the only live denizens of the site. Not too keen to go back to the cafe, we made tortilla for dinner, which went down quite well.
Our original plan for the journey home was to do the whole coast, but a combination of long drives on strictly speed restricted roads meant more driver fatigue than either of us was happy with. So in short we decided to head inland and go back via Salamanca, where we knew there was an excellent campsite. Part of the route was on what turned out to be an electronic toll motorway, which we decided to chance. It is extremely difficult as a foreign driver with foreign plates to find out how this system works, especially while in transit, so with good intentions to find out about it later, we ploughed on. It was a long day, but we arrived and checked in in good time to bask in a warm afternoon sun.
A dinner of the excellent fish soup and chicken wrapped round cheese and bacon followed, and there were about six campervans and motorhomes in the site this time.
Then on along a pay as you go toll motorway all the way to Zarautz, just short of San Sebastian on the north coast. Our campsite was very high up, over the sea, with a great view down to the rocky coastline. Unfortunately though it got much colder and rained very heavily. There was a restaurant on site where we had a rather tired looking seafood platter, serenaded by light classical music. Very nice too.
The next morning we set off again, in very heavy rain, along the tortuous toll motorway up and down hills, through tunnels, almost aquaplaning on the sheets of water not draining off the carriageway, until suddenly, at one of the toll stops, I noticed that the instructions were in French. It was the border.
Very soon after that the road flattened out, and we were heading for Bordeaux. While in Lagos we met a couple one evening in the Marina Bar and got chatting to them about Antarctica. They were kind enough to invite us to stay with them on the journey north as they had a house near Saintes, close to La Rochelle.
So we programmed the destination into Jim, the onboard GPS which has kept us right all the time, and found that it wanted us to do an impossible route involving the two long sides of a triangle, rather than the straight route to the destination. No amount of persuasion on our part would make it change its mind, and all along the direct road it kept trying to take us off to the right. We overruled Jim as we knew from the map he was wrong, so we ended up in the correct small village down by the river Charente, two streets from the address, still saying we were 64 mils from it. Nevertheless the usual little chequered flag on his map showed us where we should go, and we found Malcolm and Nadine's historic house with no trouble.
They made us very welcome, and we had a very pleasant evening with them, with good food and wine and conversation. We were shown into a huge bedroom with en suite bathroom, and were very comfortable. They had bought the property nine years ago and done a huge amount of renovation and redecoration. It is an amazing house, was once for one night a prison, then a town hall, then a school, now a house again. Built with a sloping ground floor so that when the Charente flooded it, the water would drain out again!
We waved our hosts goodbye the next morning, and headed for Nantes, which I had always wanted to visit, and where there was what seems to be a rarity in France, a campsite which is open at this time of year.
That's the story so far, so that's it for now
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