Day 548 – Friday 13th September 2019
A banging hot day. Too hot really. Mid morning we hopped on Zippy and went into La Rochelle for a nose about.
La Rochelle is an old fortified port and nowadays it has a lot of sailing yachts. Unlike down in the Med the French round here actually seem to like taking them out to sea!
These boats are here to take part in a race to Martinique in the West Indies
The fortifications
We paid to go up the Saint Nicolas Tower (the one on the right) for a view of the town.
Tower done we grabbed lunch from a stall but there was so much bread involved in my cheese roll that I couldn’t really move afterwards
well it is a port full of sailors
The day was just too hot, one of those days when you stick to the shady side of the street and if you see you have to go in the sun you look for the quickest way back to the shade.
Back at the campsite I cracked on the aircon then went and had a dip in the site’s pool. Half way down the tube slide I thought I was going to be seriously injured and never have I been so grateful to land in 3ft of cold water! I wonder if I can con Julie into having a go 😀
Day 549 – Saturday 14th September 2019
up early
Not quite as hot as yesterday but still needed the aircon on. Next time I am moaning about being stuck in the UK in July & August I need to remember just how hot it gets in Southern Europe in the summer.
Back down to the pool…
a bigger splash
Cfor loves this site, he loves rolling around in the dust
Day 550 – Sunday 15th September 2019
A beautiful sunny morning. We were fully packed up to move on but Cfor was nowhere to be seen!
He’d gone out about 08:30 as he normally does after breakfast but he only ever wants a quick look see before he settles down to sleep through the day on the dashboard. Today was different, he didn’t come back.
Cfor loves this hedge because…
it leads to under this chalet where I suspect all kinds of interesting feral things go on…
This site is very busy and while I don’t mind him going out at night or having a quick stroll early in the morning it’s not on for him to be out and about between 0930 & noon as people are up and have there chalet doors while they have breakfast and car doors open while they pack up to leave. Curiosity killed the cat and Cfor can be a very curious cat.
Julie and I were more than a little concerned when he hadn’t come back by 10am. We both suspected he was in a locker on some van on his way to Bordeaux and a new life. I went round all the adjacent pitches asking people to check for him.
Thankfully about 11am the little swine strolled back onto our pitch.
I’m back, everyone can relax!
Cfor on board we set off 2 hours late for a place called Bidart about 240 miles further south, nearly in Spain. It was a long hot and sticky journey but that leaves us just 750 miles to Praia da Luz which I intend to cover in 5 or 6 hops.
Of course when we parked up on our new pitch who followed me out of the door…
Day 551 – Monday 16th September 2019
Another very hot & sticky day. After lunch we went into the town of Bidart.
We’re near the Pyrenees, so the buildings look quite Alpine
It’s yet another immaculately kept French town. Everything is perfect and not a fag dimp in sight.
The French work bloody hard to make these towns and villages so immaculate, they put us to shame.
The beach was beautiful too
it was a naturist beach too!
I kept me clothes on
Taxman has told me he owes me £2,369.80 from last year 😀
Day 552 – Tuesday 17th September 2019
A hot but thankfully not a sticky day today. We motored into Biarritz on Zippy.
Biarritz really is a beautiful town. Everything is so fucking well done.
the Grand Plage, still full of sunbathers
the place is very popular with surfers
The Hôtel du Palais, where the recent G7 was held
Hard to imagine Boris Johnson having a street in France named after him 😀
Me flying the flag
The Phare
Day 553 – Wednesday 18th September 2019
An overcast start to the day, perfect for travelling. All aboard we motored down into Spain to a town called Burgos. The campsite is a scruffy little place but it’s very busy as it’s on the quick route south to the Costsa.
Cfor was out of the van before me!
when in Spain
There was a bit of a kerfuffle in the van when Julie spotted than Cfor had caught a mouse and brought in! This is the first time ever he’d brought anything home. Julie bravely trapped it under a pot
I let it go 50m from the van, I doubt it lived but better to die in peace than in Cfor’s mouth
Day 554 – Thursday 19th September 2019
Into Burgos.
Touring round Europe you can get all cathedralled-out and nowadays I generally refuse to look inside them but I made an exception for the Santa Iglesia Catedral Basílica Metropolitana de Santa María de Burgos.
the camera on a Samsung J5 can’t really do it any justice
This cathedral is a magnet for walkers on the very popular French Camino to Santiago de Compostela.
It’s big and it’s very ornate. There is tons of this stuff in dozens of different chapels
Heaven knows how many millions of hours of stone & wood carving and metal beating went in to this place or where they got the dosh to pay for it all
The tomb of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, El Cid to his mates
In Burgois I had terrible trouble getting anything to eat; the Spanish put ham on everything. The waiter suggest I have sandwich no.7 which he said was vegetarian, good job I check cause it had bloody tuna in it. Factor in the run down state of the place and the couldn’t care if it doesn’t work attitude and Spain is my least favourite country in Europe.
Hopefully we will be in Portugal this time next week.