WEEK 2: Luant, France to Empuriabrava, Spain – 483 miles
Saturday 30th March 2019 – Luant to Martel. 142 miles
Short on diesel and drinking water, we find a supermarket and re-stock, but while there we pick up a 1kg pot of potato salad. It’s very nice indeed. It’s quite a slog this getting south thing, but we are doing well. In about 3 or 4 days we should be in Spain! It’s mostly free motorway to our next stop. Today we are stopping at the medieval town of Martel, “The town of seven towers“, is a beautiful place.
The tiny local campsite is closed so we park in the aire across from the church and just outside of the town. We manage to bag a nice spot on the the green, it’s lovely here, very nice. We sit about and just laze about in the sun in our shorts. We will explore the town later when we go for dinner.
Dinner at the local restaurant was ok. We are a little early in the season as a lot of the places are still empty. We eat dinner at the Le Sans Lys. Hayley has duck, Del has steak. We finished with a very poor cheese board, unusual we thought. The French are supposed to be good at this cheese thing.
We have a nice evening walk around the town and end up in a bar that has some live music on. We have a couple of drinks and Hayley gets kissed by a rather tipsy Frenchman who is going around the bar kissing everyone! Just like the French that…
A nice walk back to Jess and a quiet night. Too much to drink though. And kissing…!
Sunday 31st March 2019 – Martel to Capdenac. 189 miles
Its a cooler morning today, but it’s bright and sunny. We need water desperately and we need to change the toilet! We set of towards the A75 and we try 4 aires. One is blocked by a visiting circus. Two have the water turned off! and the 4th has a rather steep and narrow entrance. We arrive in Capdenac which has a campsite that has a barrier and a card machine that requires membership. We pay the fee, but we can’t get in. A quick call to the management company and the barrier goes up and we are in.
It’s rather nice here, next to the river, with a main road running next to us but it’s not too noisy. The site is run by Camping Car Park. You pay a fee for a card that you swipe to get into the site. They run quite a few sites throughout France and part of Spain, so it might come in handy another time on the trip. We manage to do a full service on the van and we are facing the river. Nice.
We decide to get some exercise and drop the bikes from the back of the van and set off and head towards Capdenac le haut which is a winding road upwards that goes through a tunnel and pops out in the town of Capdenac on high. It’s supposed to be one of the prettiest villages in France however we are scuppered as the road up is very steep.
We are not fit enough for this so we give up and free wheel back done to Jess and have a lovely paella outside. All very, very nice.
Monday 1st April 2019 – Capdenac to St. Pierre La Mar. 165 miles
Not a great sleep last night, no idea why. We finally get up at 9 am. We need to service Jess again. We find a place where we can get diesel, water, air for the tyres and they have a vacuum cleaner here so we give Jess a bit of a clean up inside. We take the tight, winding road up to one the prettiest French towns, Capdenac. It was worth it. There was a place to park up there and we had a good walk around the town. We are now setting off for Millau and the famous viaduct!
The route to the Millau Viaduct is very twisty but pretty and finally the viaduct comes into sight.
It’s quite impressive, and spectacular as it spans the valley. Quite something. Del drives us over the bridge while Hayley takes pictures and just sits in awe at the construction of the bridge.
There is an exhibition here which is brilliant that tells the story of the viaduct, why and how it was constructed. Time to move on. We are heading to another aire in the town of Fleuny. Once near it’s a 5km drive on very iffy roads. It better be worth it, it better be open. It’s closed…!
We decide to drive on towards St. Pierre La Mar, on the coast. Again the roads around here are very bad, full of potholes, bits missing, twisting and traffic. We arrive at St. Pierre La Mar, which is full of camper vans, we can now see the Med. We have been driving for 6 days from home to the Med in Jess, which we have really enjoyed. We have seen some lovely places.
St. Pierre La Mar is a strange place. We walk into the town, it’s the beginning of April, spring, but the town is deserted, it feels very strange to walk around. A few restaurants are open but it just feels weird. We decide to go back and to eat dinner on Jess after we walk on the beach and look out to the Med. We are quite proud to get here. This is the area that we used to sail our boat Stargazer around and now we are here in Jess, our land yacht.
Tuesday 2nd April 2019 – St. Pierre La Mar, France to Port Vendres, Spain. 75 miles
After a quick service at the St. Pierre La Mar aire, we set off to find diesel and GPL (heating and cooking gas).
We find a station but it involves a lot of reversing and forwarding and reversing and soon it’s very busy. There is also a van wash here, Jess is due a good bath again, so for 12 euros she gets a good wash and once again she looks very respectable on the road as we zoom down the A9 motorway to make for the border town of Port Vendres. We stayed there many time on Stargazer, so we are looking forward to getting there.
We arrive at the town of Port Vendres and we are parked just at the side of the port in a nice little overnight parking spot. The police come in the morning to collect the payment! We set off for a walk to the town which was just as we remember it. A small fishing town/harbour with lots of restaurants around the perimeter of the harbour.
Its very nice, so nice we have a nice lunch out of crispy pork/salmon mousse and steak, all helped along with a red wine from the nearby town of Collioure. Lovely.
We spend the late afternoon back at Jess. It starts to rain, heavy rain but once it stops in the early evening we go for a walk along the harbour wall to the red light that we passed many times on our boat.
The sea is flat calm. It’s a lovely night. Tomorrow we will be in Spain.
Wednesday 3rd April 2019 – Port Vendres to Roses. 52 miles
At 8:15 a very polite French policeman turns up to collect the 6 euros for the overnight stay. Today we will cross the border into Spain and head for the seaside town of Roses, another place that we stopped on Stargazer.
We are attempting to to get there via Banyuls and Llanca. The road is over the hills and is very twisty and dangerous but we manage it.
We want to stop in Banyuls but we can’t find a space so we head on to Llanca passing the heavily graffitied border post. We are now in Spain, it’s taken a week. Another new country sticker for Jess.
After a trip many times round the one way system we park up in Llanca. It’s nice here. We used to stop here too so we know where to go. We go to a bar for some Spanish coffee and tortilla, bread and tomato. The Spanish do the best coffee, smooth and very tasty. We have a walk but the skies are getting very dark, but very dark, black in fact. There is a lot of rain on its way and things just don’t look the same in the gloom. It’s still great to be here though.
Time to set off for Roses. Not only did we come to this area by boat but we used to come here on holiday, we would hire a car and drive around the area and now we are driving around in our motorhome. Great. The campsite in Roses is in the middle of the town and is a bit tricky to find, once we get there we find that the campsite is quite tight. The roads inside are small, trees everywhere and the pitches are small.
We have laundry to do today and they have a washing machine and dryers here. You buy your tokens from the office, who are very friendly, but we find the the machine gobbles up the tokens and doesn’t start the machine. It takes ages, but ages to get the staff to give us some replacement tokens. It is lunch time and the Spanish tend to take very long lunch breaks.
We finally get the tokens and get our washing done just in time for the heavy rains to come again, but this time it’s very heavy and very miserable, not what we were hoping for. Grim.
Finally, the weather has changed, the rain has eased and stopped so we take advantage of this break in the weather and take the long walk into the Port of Roses. It’s a good walk. We need stuff for the van. We need a new pan and a mat for the van, if the rain carries on we need something to step in and out of the van without getting soaking wet shoes or boots in the van.
A great dinner tonight on Jess, fajitas, home made in the new frying pan.
Thursday 4th April 2019 – Roses to Empuriabrava. 7 miles
This morning we have lovely bright blue skies. That’s the thing about Spain compared to home. It rains heavy, and it can be really heavy, but then it just goes bright and clear unlike home where it just rains and stays grey, bits of blue sky then more grey and rain… Yuk! We set off for the short drive to Empuriabrava. Before we bought a boat we used to spend hours here sitting on the harbour wall just watching the boats going in and out, we loved it. More than 20 years ago!
The free stop in Empuriabrava is next to a refrigeration plant, but it’s a nice stop. There are other vans here so we have company. Once we get settled we get the bikes down, it’s been a while since we did that, and set of for a bike ride. It’s nice and flat here so we can get some good exercise. We are on our bikes for a good few hours exploring, we really enjoy it, seeing all the places that we used to go to all those years ago.
Now we are hungry but what to eat? Spain is good for a ‘Menu of the day‘ 10 to 12 euros gets you a two or three course lunch which usually can be very nice. We cycle back towards the van at the other end of town keeping an eye open for a restaurant to fit our budget, no joy, however there is a supermarket near where we are parked, they have a menu of the day! A supermarket has an outside restaurant that does a menu of the day, very classy!!
It fits our budget so we get a table and we have a wonderful lunch, we are not kidding, it was just perfect. Pan con tomate, iberico ham and calamares. We sat outside and enjoyed a great lunch in the afternoon sunshine with a glass of cava. Does it get any better?
Not far from here is an airfield that has a very world-famous and popular skydiving centre, so of course after a few drinks and a great lunch, we weave off on our bikes to the airfield. It has undergone some changes since we were last here, with a new building and a flashy cafe. We watch the planes take off full of folk who, 20 minutes later are landing on the nearby grass field. Looks great but not for us!
Near to the airfield is a new shiny aluminium building that does simulated skydiving. You put on a suit and step into this large glass tube, a big fan starts up and you get pushed up, floating about. Takes all sorts. Hayley is interested but not sure.
Back at Jess, Hayley decided that she will give the skydiving machine a go! Takes all sorts! We set off and she pays the fee and is soon dressed in a suit, helmet and some goggles. She steps into the machine with Alex, a very helpful chap from the venue, and within seconds she is pushed up the glass tube. She loves it as the speed is dropped and revved up making her go up and down, giggling and screaming as she is pushed up at high speed then drops like a stone. She has a great time.
There is an offer that allows you to go even higher and spin, it’s a bit extra but who cares, it’s not everyday you can do this kind of thing. She is shot up to 15m at high speed and coached how to spin down by the very able Alex. She comes out with her hair all over the place grinning and red!
After a good scream and a giggle, we go back to Jess. Cheese and biscuits tonight after our heavy lunch. A great day.
Friday 5th April 2019 – Empuriabrava to San Pere Pescador. 8 miles
It’s sunny but cool this morning. The refrigeration machine has been working overtime, it’s covered in ice.
We still don’t know what it does or why, but a tanker appears and does something then disappears half an hour later. Today we are setting off to San Pere Pescador. We have spent so many holidays over so many years there so we are looking forward to it.
We drive to Camping Aquarius. It’s a strange drive. We drove these roads so many times years ago and now we are doing it again in Jess.
We arrive at the campsite which is just wonderful. Nice big pitches, great facilities and near the beach. The staff are very friendly and we get settled in quite quickly.
We get the bikes off again, take a good bike ride to the town of San Pere Pescador and have a cold beer in a bar while trying to rent out our flat in London. We take a good walk and bike ride around the town. It hasn’t changed at all.
We cycle back and get to the campsite just in time for the heavens to open…! It pours down for the rest of the day. Hayley makes us a traditional Spanish stew tonight which is just fantastic…
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