As with our odd way of life, we agreed that when we cross the border we would switch from speaking French to each other to speaking in Spanish. Keith’s brain is much faster than mine and has been trying to switch for the last few days … using an increasing number of Spanish words mixed in with the French, but to switch back to using Spanish which should be the stronger of the two languages comes with its own complications 🙂

As we drove across the border – let’s not beat about the bush, there wasn’t a border, there was a Spanish police car parked at the side of the road with two policeman hanging around next to it, I thought they were just doing a routine check…. no signs, nothing. I am showing my age now aren’t I? – anyway, as we drove across the border I switched the sat nav from French to Spanish and we started speaking in a new language which has been named ‘Sprench’ …. I am sure it will get better over the next few days, but it is odd how the mistakes that we both make are now using a French word by mistake rather than a Spanish one, whereas 6 months ago it was the other way round.

We headed towards a campsite just outside San Sebastian at the top of a hill called Camping Igueldo (16.50 euros without electricity). As we drove up the hill we were both thinking the same….. do we walk into San Sebastian or Cycle? Either way it is going to be hard coming back up. The campsite said it was 4.5km into San Sebastian, it was actually nearly 7km… and nearly 300m up. We have been to San Sebastian before about 7 years ago whilst we were living in Barcelona and whilst here we did actually walk to the castle that sits on top (not as on top as the campsite, but most of the way up) of the hill… if nothing else we get good views!

After a good nights’ sleep we decided to cycle down into town (very quickly) and have a walk around. The old town is really lovely and is pretty much made up of pincho bars and cafes. For those of you who don’t know what Pinchos are, they are small tapas/finger food of about two bites. Most Pinchos come in the form of a slice of bread/roll with something on top … perhaps stuffed pepper, tortilla, prawns or jamon but generally they are quite tasty. North of Spain is known for its Pinchos (also spelt with an ‘x’) and people will eat a couple mid-morning to tie them over until lunch (at 3pm), lunch on them, or eat them in the evening in a bar with friends.

After a coffee and a good look around we returned to the bikes for the ride home…… it was a long hard hill but it was aided by the beautiful views of mountains on one side and sea stretching out on the other, but we got there …. me slightly slower than Keith, but still, cycling all the way :). I am not sure if the hard work up the hill had anything to do with it, but the showers on the campsite were the best we have found yet – clean, lots of hot water, spacious, lots of space to hang your clothes up without getting them wet ….simple things eh?

Just in case you haven’t seen it (and if you are interested), I have added another page to our blog called ‘Wine’. It contains a list of some of the more ‘choice’ wine that we have found so far and a brief description. We will be updating it as we find new wines either in Vineyards or Supermarkets – the idea being that if we put them on there we liked them enough that we will be trying to get hold of them when we get back, so we thought we would share our research with you 🙂

After leaving Bordeaux we travelled south to a small village called Maslacq which is situated on the ‘Sentier de Saint Compestello’ – the pilgrimage that travels through France and down into Spain, ending in Santiago de Compestello. It is approximately 1500 km and there are thousands of people who walk it (or part of it) every year. The place we selected to stay recently opened their doors to accept walkers as a ‘Chambre d’hôte and Table d’hôte’ whilst also joining the France Passion book for ‘Camping Cars’. They have 40 hectares of land and are a farm producing Corn, Yellow Kiwis and Duck produce, unfortunately they have had a run of bad luck over the last few years with both their corn and Kiwi’s not growing so they thought they would diversify and try tourism….. The new business is going very well but their roots are still in farming, so last year they also planted a hectare of ‘baby kiwi’ which will hopefully start producing fruit in 2016 …. A bit of a way off. We had never heard of baby kiwi’s before, but apparently they are the new ‘trend’ – they are about the size of baby plum tomatoes and sweeter than the normal kiwi.

The evening meal was relaxed and spent with the family starting with some homemade duck and spicy pepper pâté and rillet with an enormous salad, sausages and rice for main and pears, ice cream and chocolate sauce for dessert – apart from the starters it wasn’t what we would have ordered in a restaurant – but it was all local farm produce (apart from the rice) and delicious and including wine cost us 13 euros a head – really can’t complain. The conversation was enjoyable and we met some interesting people, both the owners of the Chambre d’ hôte as well as the pilgrims.

We popped in to buy some pate as we said our goodbyes and set off to our next stop ….. cheese farm … ok sheep and cows, but they make Thom (of sheep or cow variety), which is a round hard cheese which is delicious. The setting of the farm (once we found it…. Don’t you love sat nav?) was fantastic – with the hills rolling for miles around us. Despite the rain we set off to explore, coming back to wine, cheese, meats and bread …. What more you could want 🙂

There is something about this area of France / Spain – ‘The Basque Country’, apart from the fact that all the names of the towns and villages start to contain more consonants than vowels and lots of X’s, Ch’s and Z’s – the houses / farms are all white with a rust red edging and shutters – it is very pretty.

Biarritz – 10/10 – 12/10

We arrived into Biarritz late morning and headed to the post office to pick up the Spanish equivalent of ‘France Passion’ which we had asked to be sent to the Poste Restante in Biarritz. A service that I remember using years ago when I travelled through South East Asia to stay in contact with people as internet wasn’t as readily available back then … how things have progressed .… although you now have to pay to receive items at a poste restante whereas I am sure they used to be free.

We parked up on an ‘Aire’ which is 2.5km south of the centre of Biarritz on the coast. They aren’t very pretty places (this one felt like it was in the middle of a roundabout, but was actually just one road away from the beach), have minimal facilities if any, but they suit the purpose, you can normally only stay for 24 or 48 hours and are generally reasonably cheap (this one was 12 euros a night).

The sea was exactly how we like it ….. rough and a little bit wild 🙂 – I know probably sounds odd to most of you, but there is something incredibly relaxing about waves crashing over rocks ….

My morning runs were fantastic – despite the hills, the fresh sea air and stunning views of waves crashing down in front of the mountains was almost perfect. The town itself was a bit of a mix between bond street and Newquay…some very chique boutiques and restaurants ….. and a few kiss me quick hats :). Unfortunately, the coastal views were slightly spoilt as it is quite built up with a fair number of apartment blocks and hotels on the seafront – we aren’t sure if we would come back, but it was definitely worth stopping for a couple of nights and I am sure if you were a surfer it would be one of the places on your list.

We left Biarritz after the obligatory Sunday morning pancakes on the bar b q with the sun shining and a clear view of the mountains which we hadn’t been able to see for the last few days and say ‘Goodbye’ to France for now … we will be back in 2015 when we travel through southern France to get to Italy.

Following a lovely evening enjoying red wine and chocolate with Bill and Angela who have also recently set out for an unknown period of time travelling in their motorhome, we headed to Saint Emilion for our next wine tasting experience….

As we were approaching the Saint Emilion we found ourselves in familiar landscape again with vinyards spreading across the horizon. We parked the motorhome just outside the town and walked up (restricted by a 2 meter width barrier …. we weren’t going to get through there, even on a good day Mikas’ hips are larger than that).  St Emilion is a walled town built on the side of a hill, which was recently made a UNESCO site – it is beautiful.

After exploring the town we decided to take one of their suggested walks through the vinyards. Now, I am not sure if the directions were lost in translation (my translation that was) or their signposting was a little under par, but there were definitely parts where a lack of detail helped explain why 11km were going to take us 3 hours 😦  That said, when we worked out where we were going (and increased my French vocabulary) it was a lovely walk.

Evidently you are no-one (and definitely not a reputable wine producer) if you don’t have a chateau in Saint Emilion…. I have to be honest that I was a little disappointed when some of the so called ‘Chateaux’ turned out to be large steel framed warehouses (albeit in the middle of a vineyard) …… I would be suing the estate agent for miss-representation if I were them…

We were staying the night in the grounds of Chateau de Rol – which unfortunately isn’t a Chateau, but a bit more of a farmhouse – however when it came to the wine and hospitality we weren’t disappointed. We were taken in to the big farmhouse kitchen by granny and gramps and told that we would be trying four different wines – little did we realise that once we started talking we would also get an excellent conversation class in French focussing on grape 🙂

I was curious to understand why the wine in Saint Emilion is so much more expensive than the Bordeaux (which they also produce) and they explained that Saint Emilion is now fully developed as a region and as the wine is popular world-wide the price will only go up as they can’t produce any more than they already have. Bordeaux however is an enormous region and many new vinyards have appeared over the last 10 years or so, flooding the market with wine (what a great thought …) therefore Supply > Demand …. thus reducing the price…. obvious really – although I was expecting him to tell us that the grape/process is far superior – apparently not the case.

Granny and Gramps were mid to late 80’s and the vinyards were passed to them through the generations and they have now passed them on to their son and daughter …. however the grandchildren aren’t interested in continuing the family line. They have 30 Hectares of vineyard most of which is Saint Emilion vine …. each hectare is currently worth in excess of 1 million euros…. I told them not to worry too much about the grand children and to take a nice holiday and enjoy it …they were a lovely couple and I think they liked us as they let us taste this years’ wine which hasn’t yet been pressed (interesting in itself) and he gave us an extra bottle of wine 🙂

After a good nights’ sleep we left the vineyard with our wine stock full and headed on to Bordeaux.

We picked Village du Lac Campsite (16 euros inclusive of electricity) which is about 8km’s (on a cycle path) outside Bordeaux and guess what …. on a lake. It is a large site, but nicely arranged so it feels quite woody and tranquil, although by late afternoon/early evening it was full.

As the weather has been predicted to be a bit random over the next couple of days with showers forecasted, we decided to try and make the most of the dry patch we had after lunch and headed in to Bordeaux on the bikes to have a look round.

As with any large city over the years the surrounding villages/smaller towns join together to extend the main town further…. Bordeaux pretty much extends out to the lake and campsite where we are staying – but there is something about Bordeaux that makes it feel like a (very) large friendly village. We only spent a couple of hours walking around on Monday afternoon as it started to rain, but headed back in on Tuesday to walk around the rest and once again (sorry to be a bit dull), it has a lovely relaxed feel to it. We quickly managed to leave the central commercial areas and enter ‘student ville’, and then as quickly we arrived in ‘North Africa’ and several other continents soon after – A multi-cultural city that to us certainly seems to fit together seamlessly (where some in France definitely don’t) with some beautiful architecture … and a lot of ‘Portes’ 🙂

Just in case you wondered… 7 weeks in, distance travelled so far by walking / cycling 1055.1 km

What is it about the French (or perhaps the ‘Dordognese’) and their driving – I apreciate that we aren’t the smallest vehicle and in some cases, when we are driving along some of the small country lanes we take up the majority of the road, but to pull out of a side road / farm when we are 20 foot away an to drive towards us in my mind is just odd….  the driver was 80+ and I did question whether he actually saw us coming … but then didn’t want to think about the answer ….. I wouldn’t mind but it isn’t the only time it happened in the last few days ….. it is an interesting style of driving 🙂

Anyway…..Bergerac is a beautiful old town sitting on the Dordogne river. Architecturally it is very similar to Sarlat, but I would almost say slightly nicer, although that could be due to the fact that it was slightly less touristy and it felt a little more like a ‘real’ town.  A large part is pedestrianised to protect the buildings and streets and it is picture postcard.

We found a Muncipal campsite ten minutes walk from town which was ‘heavily shaded’ (14.66 euros inclusive), which as long as you avoided the acorn trees (and the goose poo) was really nice.

Being a little bit of a ‘towny’ I hadn’t ever seen walnuts on a tree…. or at least maybe I had, but I didn’t know what they were – however, whilst we were walking just outside Sarlat we found some sweet chestnuts and walnuts which had fallen from trees and on Friday night we roasted the chestnuts on the bar b q …… yum 🙂

We explored every corner of the town on Friday afternoon and then headed back in on Saturday morning to the local market which was bustling. We then walked along the Dordogne taking in some of the scenery in the afternoon … very tranquil.

After leaving the campsite in Sarlat we stopped off in town to go to the market and bumped into Ted and Lorraine – who we met a few weeks ago in Saumur – so stopped for a coffee and a catch up exchanging details of where each of us has been and where we were going – it is a small world!

Despite not really supporting the process of Foie gras we decided that we should stop off at a farm and learn more.  We headed to Le Gros Chene which was in a tiny hamlet called Saint Antoine D’Auberoche where they ‘fed’ the geese for 15 days before culling and turning into pretty much every product you could possibly think of – pate, rillettes, foie gras, smoked, cassoulet… the list goes on.  They also produce 12 pigs a year and a lot of duck (foie gras, pate, etc).  They currently had 120 ducklings in a barn basking in 30 degrees getting fatter.  Despite being impressed with the set up we didn’t buy any foie gras, but we did purchase some ‘canard seche’ – which is duck breast which tastes like a very rich intense serrano ham – absolutely delicious!

After a peaceful night with minimal disturbance from the neighbours we set off to Perigueux to have a look round before we headed over to meet an old university friend of Keiths’.  Perigueux is another beautiful old town which is mostly pedestrianised in the old part and it has an enormous mosque like cathederal which looks down over the river.

Before leaving the UK Keith had made contact with Rich Saunders who he used to play hockey with and he said if we were passing we should pop by …. little was he to know the size of the motorhome.  Rich, Laurent and Amaya live in what can only be described as ‘rural’ – it is a beautiful setting with rolling hills and incredibly tranquil .. just lots of windy roads 🙂

After several attempts with apparently one wheel off the ground (I am glad I was driving and not watching from outside) we made it up the driveway and left Mika looking at the beautiful sunset whilst we enjoyed a glass of wine round an open fire on the terrace!  Who would have thought having not seen each over for 15 or so years that the rendez vous would be in such a lovely place – Thank you!  ….. and coming off the drive was much easier than getting on – gravity gave a lending hand.

Well we have to thank Jonah for having had a spare couple of hours whilst on a business trip for finding this one. Sarlat la Caneda is right on the edge of the Dordogne region and it is a beautiful old walled city which has been ‘preserved’ impeccably – even down to the last tumbling building… it tumbles with a certain style. Obviously this does unfortunately mean that there are a reasonable number of tourists, but occasionally even we make sacrifices!

The campsite (Camping Les Acacias – 12 euros per night inclusive) is about 5km outside the town centre in a village called ‘La Caneda’. The campsite is a family run friendly place with really good facilities and ignoring the odd squall from the ducks and geese – we are in Foie Fras country, so I have a feeling that may have something to do with it – it is very tranquil. Unfortunately it shuts on the 1^st October, so we are staying as long as they will let us before we get kicked out.

Despite all the lovely weather we have been having, I am sure you will be pleased to hear that it is obviously the end of the summer in France …. It rained heavily all night Sunday into mid-morning and then from about 8pm on Monday night and carried on until mid afternoon today…. luckily we aren’t too close to the dordogne river….

24/9

After leaving Lyon we headed into the countryside to find another vineyard as wine stocks were getting low. We travelled back into the Loire, but instead of staying by the river, we headed into the hills close to a small medieval town called Ambierle.   The farmer had 3.5 hectares of vine (2.5 red and 1 between white and rose), in addition to rearing about 60 pigs a year. They produced three different types of red and we opted for the slightly fuller bodied at 6 euros a bottle called ‘Côte Roannaise – Cuvée Tradion 2012’ I am not sure if it is available in the UK, but it definitely got my stamp of approval. Unfortunately the farmer was preparing the pig the following day so we weren’t able to purchase any charcuterie but he did point us in the direction of a local flour mill which he uses to make bread.

25/9

After a quick stroll up the side of the vineyard (and a slide back down again…) to see the pigs we set off to have a look at Ambierle which is perched on top of a hill with a huge priory and a church with a beautiful multi-coloured tiled roof. The farmer had mentioned that there was a ’Maison du Pais’ which sold the flour, but they only had a 1kg bag of the cereal flour, so map in hand we set out to find the mill (and the flour) which was just off of our route to Vichy down a very windy road.

We stopped for lunch in Vichy which is an elegant spa town with beautiful buildings and lots of green spaces on the side of the river before heading through Clermont Ferrand (The home to Michelin Tyres) and up into the hills to our campsite (Indigo Royat 16 euros inclusive) looking over Royat (spa town) and Clermont Ferrand (very industrial).

26/9

Wanting to get away from the industrial noise we headed back into the countryside on a slight detour to a tiny little village called Fridefront which is right at the bottom of Cantal (part of Massif Central)… although if you have looked at the map of our travels so far it is fairly normal for us to zigzag a little so possibly it was planned …. The area is miles and miles of rolling hills with an enormous lake stretching out across it – ideal walking.

We selected ‘Ferme des deaux vallees’ to try out some local cooking and weren’t disappointed. We went on a short walk when we arrived to help build up an appetite and played some cards whilst taking in the sunset.

Dinner was served for 15 of us around a long table and included a spinach, chestnut and wild mushroom sponge for the entrée, Roast Beef (as rare as it could be and delicious with it) served with a local speciality which is a puree of mash potato and cheese ….. so stringy she had to cut it with scissors when she served it, a large plate of cheese all finished off with a large slice of either pear or plum tart – delicious!

27/9

We woke to the sound of cockerels and cow bells and a view that demonstrated how high we were and why it was so cold 🙂

After a lovely walk through the forest and down to a reservoir we set off on our trek through the mountains towards Sarlat, taking in some beautiful scenery including a lunch stop in one of Frances’ most beautiful villages called Estaing for lunch.

We finally stopped for the night at another farm for the night en route in a place called Saint Sulpice. This farm had a mixture of goats, pigs, horses, chickens and ducks amongst other things and we stocked up on the local speciality ‘Rocamadur’ which is a part dry goats cheese – Delicious !

Allee Camping International – 16 Euros all inclusive

As much as we are trying to avoid big cities we felt that we had to stop in Lyon as we have heard so much about it. The campsite is about 9 km outside Lyon and well connected in so far as buses and metro, but we were advised that the roads are a little busy to risk cycling into the centre.

The campsite is fairly large and well equipped but it is in an industrial area so traffic noise starts quite early, however it suited the purpose for a couple of nights enabling us to see the city.

Lyon is a large but beautiful city with the Rhone and the Saone rivers running through the middle segmenting the city into fairly well defined areas – Old City, The ‘Almost Island’ (as it feels like an island in the middle of the rivers, but isn’t), and the Red Cross ( or The working Hill as it used to be known).  We hadn’t really expected it to be quite so hilly, but we were quite glad that we hadn’t cycled in at the end of the day having walked 29 kilometers to cover the city!

There is an impressive Basilica that sits on top of the hill and looks down over the city and lots of lovely streets full of boutiques and restaurants and one of the most impressive indoor food markets that we have walked around – all in all an interesting city.

Just in case you haven’t seen it, we have added a new page to the blog which links to a map to show the journey so far.

Just scroll to the top of the page and ‘Our route so far‘ is now between ‘Home‘ and ‘What are we up to‘

We will update it each time we are online (and move to a new place) but it won’t send you a notification …. so if you are interested you will need to remember to click on the link to have a look.

Enjoy 🙂

We thought we would try and find a goat farm to stay on as we have got a bit of a taste for goats cheese since we have been in France and there are so many varieties.   After leaving Annecy we went from blue skies to torrential rain, to hail and then back to blue skies again – looking on the positive side Mika got a bit of a wash which we had been promising her for a week or so… .

The farm was situated in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain – I guess if I had thought about it that would have been where we would look for goats – and they had approximately 100 females and three lucky males 🙂

The farm is part of the ‘France Passion’ so in exchange for staying on their land we felt that it was only fair to sample some of the produce ….. Saucisson a la chevre (that is charcuterie sausage to the english), Goats Cheese Brick (Demi Sec), Honey beer (ok, that had nothing to do with goats but looked interesting) and goats milk yogurt…..this is turning out to be quite an expensive alternative to campsites…. but they were all lovely.

We learnt probably more than the average person wants to know about goats – they lactate for about 8 months of the year producing on average 2 litres of goats milk a day, on average they have about 6 or 7 years of ‘milking’ life and the gestation period is 5 months….. As part of the cheese making process there is a very rich/acidic bi-product which is produced (I guess the equivelant of whey) which rather than wasting, they use to raise a handful of pigs with – so no waste, everything on the farm was efficiently planned and managed.

It was an interesting (and tasty) stop well worth the trip, all we have to do now is find a place that produces blue goats cheese as we have only found it a couple of times but it is lovely.