Our stance, on 1 month in France
Its been a blast, a few stressed moments but living in the van for a month has been amazing. We've had cities, beaches, memorials, the sea and mountains. I've worked in France a few times and since then had always believe the 'French arrogance' was a bit of a misconception, everyone we've met has been lovely, friendly and always happy to help.
So far we have travelled to, Dieppe, le Havre, Juno beach, Gold Beach, Mont St-Michel, Le conquet, Vannes, La Rochelle, The Pyrenees, BACK to La Rochelle (bloody UPS), Mont le Dore (central Massif), Grenoble (Central alps) and now we are sat enjoying a wine in Le Houches just outside Chamonix.
We have completed over 3000km of our journey so far and we are 5 weeks in, but had to change our plans slightly to go pick up our UPS parcel. This meant we missed out on a visit to Andorra, the South of France and Verdon Gorge. But, on the other hand, we have made trips to Central Massif, Central Alps and Chamonix which we didn't expect to this side of the journey. Part of the fun (or stress) is how you take changes (which I don't take well) and learning to go with the flow a little bit. I am gutted about Andorra but I will hopefully be able to make a trip there on the way to Portugal when we arrive back in to the Schengen counties after our 90s days in Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia.
Following my last post, where we completed a tough hike on a VERY hot day up Pic du Trois Seigneurs, We left Le Pyrennes Ariege and headed for Pyrenees Catalanes. Each of the Pyrenees National parks feel very different and entering Pyreenees Catalanes, it felt very Spanish. We headed up another mountain pass towards the Andorran border for some Lunch and to make a plan up, we hadn't intended to drive that far that day and we just kind of ended up there.
We arrived at The Pyrenees Catalanes and tried a spot we found on park4night by a lake/dam, it said the last 50m of the track were hard going, but in typical 'George Taylor' fashion I went for it...It didn't go well. We ended up stuck and I had to reverse about 0.5km back out of the track, so a quick scan on Park4night again, we found another spot on the other side of the lake. We drove around and found a nice car park, we decided we would give UPS one more try, to try and get our parcel...they were useless!
In this moment I decided to call a few shops where the parcel be, we struck gold, WE FOUND IT! Although, it was 600km away in La Rochelle. The man I spoke to was great, however he did mention he couldn't scan the barcode and it seemed like it didn't exist. To us it sounds like UPS were pretending to have lost the parcel. So a impulsive decision later, whist knowing we were on a tight schedule to reach Italy for week commencing the 11th July, we decided to split the driving, Ellies first proper stint of driving in Europe! We hit the road, back to the opposite side of the country where we didn't want to be.
We said I would drive the stint to the toll road then swap over and I would take back over after Ellie had driven for a couple of hours.
The drive to the toll wasn't as simple as I first thought. Google maps had taken us up a NARROW mountain pass and I had missed the sign that said height restrictions of 2.7m. We came up to a couple of cars coming the opposite way and one guy stopped and told us 'Your not getting through there' ...Oh shit! This road was so narrow, there were literally no places to turn around and a huge sheer drop to the right of us. We had no choice so we went forward, maybe we will come up to a place we can turn around, we reached the 'height restriction', a tunnel carved out of the side of the mountain that was overhanging the mountain road.
One thing I forgot to do when we left was measure the height of the van. We had 2 choices, slowly head through hoping we make it, or reverse 3km down the tightest mountain pass. That pass was like something you see on the TV in Nepal. I made the call I'm heading through it, slowly inching forward hoping I don't open the top of the van up like a tin of sardines. There were 2 tunnels and we made it through both of them... PHEW! (We were so scared that we didn't even get a picture of this road, and I can't find anything on google about it :( I also measured the van when we got down and its 2.6m very lucky!)
Again we were lucky the shop who had our parcel was open until 1am, so a 7 hour drive later we reached La Rochelle for 12.30am and we had the parcel!
Now I know what you're thinking; was the parcel really worth it?? It cost us aprox. 200euro to get back up to La Rochelle with fuel and toll roads, but inside that parcel was the van's logbook. Technically speaking, we weren't really supposed to be driving in France with out the logbook, but the DVLA provided us with a temporary ownership certificate and we had the finance documents to prove we owned the vehicle. However, I don't believe this will cut it in Croatia, so we needed the log book for our onward journey and it was now or never to get the parcel as we were heading east from the Pyrenees.
Unfortunately due to this saga, we missed out on some great places, Andorra, Llivia, the South of France and Verdon Gorge which we were both looking forward to. However as we are learning, slowly, living van life sometimes you just cant help problems that occur and you really have to overcome them, 'going with the flow'. I have mentioned before I am terrible with going the flow, I hate it! I am a planner but I am starting to relax now and now that we have the parcel in hand, the daily stress of having the phone put down by UPS France was over, and we could move on!
So after the quickest ever visit to La Rochelle, in and out in 5 minutes, we headed 30 mins east of La Rochelle, to a motorhome service station that permitted over night stays. It was situated in a small village called 'Muron'
We didn't reach the village of Muron, until about 1:30am, and after a long drive, late coffee, we reached a village of darkness and we were both on edge. It's a weird feeling arriving somewhere in the pitch black. When I arrive somewhere I like to scope out the area; 'does it seem safe?', but arriving in darkness doesn't give you this opportunity. We laid in bed and the van was making some WEIRD noises, I think its the none stop driving for 7 hours and the van was just settling, but the creaks and knocks had us both CONVINCED someone was doing something to our van outside. I reassured Ellie everything was okay and I just stared out the window in the rear door for an hour on high alert, until I finally nodded off and woke up in the morning safe and sound to a beautiful village! This was a real case of our minds playing tricks on us, but it still felt like a ropey night!
So here we were, back in a place we didn't want to be. Before this trip we briefly discussed going to the mountain range, Massif Central, It was around a 4 hour drive from where we were, but going through Central Massif towards Italy threw in a few other places we could visit, Central Alps and CHAMONIX! The decision was made, not that we had much of a choice. We headed to Massif Central national park to Mont-le-Dore whilst having our weekly visit to our favourite shop 'E'Leclerc' for our food and wine shop!
We arrived in Mont-le-Dore around 7pm that evening, as they have a strict no campervan rule for overnights, we headed up Col de la Croix Saint Robert at around 1451m to spend the night. A spot we found on Park4night, again!
The next day we planned a hike up to the highest point of the area, Le Puy de Sancy 1886m, starting at Mont Le Dore ski centre. The hike was a short 8km with 536m of elevation, I don't want to push my hiking to much before Monte Rosa but just be consistent.
https://www.alltrails.com/trail/france/puy-de-dome/le-puy-de-sancy
You start the hike at the ski lifts, where the cable car can take you up to the restaurant 'Le Sommet'. Quickly after leaving the ski centre, you start ascending up the ski slope. Once at the top of the ski slope, this is where you reach the restaurant, from here the views over Mont le Dore are amazing. Soon after the top of the slope there is a trail to the left which leads you up to the back of the summit where you begin the final approach. We both can feel how much fitter we are getting, we haven't done anything drastic in terms of distance or elevation but just being consistently active is really beginning to pay off. Ellie finished this ascent to the summit with out taking a single break, which we were both happy about, Ellie even said at the summit 'I could do that again, I could', although when I suggested to extend the route she swiftly declined and we headed down.
After we were past the cable car walkers going to the summit, the trail leads left down a bit of a technical trail, which opened magnificent views up to the south of the mountain range. Luckily on the way down we managed to catch a glimpse of another Marmot, unfortunately however this was quickly followed by another heard of cows which we needed to weave our way around.
We got up and down in good time, 3 hours to be exact, which we hadn't predicted, and decided to make a move out of the range and head toward the central alps for the night, just north of Grenoble. Another few hours drive East and we had driven through some beautiful places. Some fantastic mountain passes which didn't change when we reached the central alps, tight passes with tunnels penetrating through the rocks. I love this sort of adventure and the mountains make happy, a therapy of sort!
After a wonderful drive up the awe inspiring mountain passes, we stopped for the night next to a Ski Lift whilst looking over to the mountains and had a great nights sleep! We had done a lot of driving the last few days, we knew we were going to have to put some mileage in at some point, and to be honest we quiet enjoyed the driving, passing through national parks, cities and mountain ranges. From Grenoble we decided to head over to Chamonix, a place I wasn't intending to visit until September when I climb Mont Blanc but this was the easiest possible way to get to Italy - Grebnoble to Chamonix, Mont Blanc tunnel to Italy then a drive Through Aosta Valley towards Tache, where I start Monte Rosa the following week.
Chamonix
Before we headed into Chamonix we were recommended by a Friend 'Sam the Worm' to stop for the night in Les Houches, a small alpine town 15 minutes outside of Chamonix. I was in Awe! The place we stopped had magnificent views, The Aiguille Du Midi and my first sighting of the mountain ill be hoping to conquer in September, Mont Blanc. The highest point in Europe!
We woke up the next morning, and headed to Chamonix. As we were driving through the town we spotted a climbing wall outside, I thought to myself 'oh climbing comp, ill go see that' after we parked up and a quick google search later I remembered, 'its the climbing world cup!!!'
We had a great day, and I couldn't of been happier or luckier! We had pizza, had a look around the town of Chamonix and watched the climbing qualifiers. I was super stoked to watch climbers like Adam Ondra, Janja Garnbret, Brooke Raboutou, as well as British climbers James Pope and Hamish Mcarthur. We sat in the sun all day drank beer, watched climbing, while looking at the views of Aiguille du midi, Mont blanc and Glacier des Bossons appearing over the top of the climbing wall.
That night, woth a belly full of beer and skin full of sun we stopped in a great spot just outside Chamonix next to a town called Argentiere. We were tired, abit tipsy and sunburnt and we pondered on our time in France.
This country has been wonderful, we have loved nearly all of it, minus the UPS saga, the French people are welcoming (especially the fellow campers) We have met some extraordinary people and been to some of the best places we have ever visited. We will return, but for now its time to travel to ITALIA...
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...VIVE LA FRANCE!
