Tour de France

Bevan and I took a week off work, packed up his car (the mighty silver bullet) and set off on a tour of France. We had no plans and the only deadlines we had to meet were our ferry crossings. Things didn't start out so well though, I found out the night before that we needed regestration documents, GBP sticker and headlight adjusters for the car but we managed to pick these up before our crossing and were waiting in line with over an hour to spare. However, the silver bullet had other ideas and was reluctant to leave. It was our turn to board and it wouldn't start. We fiddled under the bonnet as all the other cars loaded and as a final desperate act we tried to run start it, fortunately this worked but we weren't allowed on until we had turned off and restarted normally - fortunately this worked as well but as we drove on past a big sign advertising European break down cover its fair to say we were slightly nervous.



The crossing was fairly uneventful, we sailed from Dover to Dunkirk in 2 hours across a very busy Channel, there were boats everywhere. We went exploring round the ship and were escorted of the top floor by someone who didn't believe we hadn't crossed any barriers to get up there.

After a couple of hiccups upon arrival involving a wrong turn that almost took us to Belgium and working out how and where to get fuel, we were finally on the right track, or so we thought until a car was coming straight for us and we realised we were on the wrong side of the road but a quick swerve and a bounce over a traffic island got us on the road to Lille.

The next major issue was to find something for dinner and a place to spend the night. Dinner was solved reasonably easily and after venturing down a couple of back roads we found a good spot to camp, just off the road outside a little village behind a huge pile of what looked like turnips but we later discovered were sugar beets, of which France is the largest producer in the world. The sugar beets hid our tent perfectly from the road and we quickly fell asleep. We were woken abrubtly at 6:30 in the morning by a roar of machienery - a couple of trucks, tractors and a ditch digger had arrived to load out the sugar beet so we stumbled out in the dark, wished a driver 'Bonjour', shoved all our gear in the car and took off.

Sugar beet harvesting



Top quality camping camo....



After a rocky start the rest of our week was somewhat less eventful. The car perforemed its not starting trick once more in the main street of a little town completely surrounded by mountains and we had to run start it again up a slight up hill which was hard work.

Other mishaps included:

- being stopped by French police on the second to last day who didn't understand a word of English so didn't know what we were showing them (licence and registration). Luckily for us they just laughed and sent us on our way.

- our nightly hunt for somewhere to sleep. So often we ran in to signs saying 'Ferme' (which means closed) on the entrance of camping grounds. We managed 5 nights in camping grounds, one in a motel (what a treat that was) and 3 'camping rough'

- a rainy night down south near Sete on the Medeteranian coast. Fortunately we managed to find a camping ground by following a camper van. The tent got pretty wet and despite best efforts it also come up through the groundsheet.

- a freezing night in Chamonix. All the camping grounds were closed which so we were on a grass verge outside the camping ground and it was pretty cold at 1000m.

- a noisy night camping beside a canal. The canal wasn't moving but there were some funny noises including strange chewing noises, splashes and a sound like a duck getting eaten alive - not condusive to a good ight's sleep

We did have some pretty good times too of course. For starters it was great spending a decent period of time with Bevan which is something I hadn't done for a while. We got on pretty well and had relatively few arguments over directions, although we took a lot of wrong turns.

We did do an awful lot of driving which didn't leave a lot of time for other things but we did see a lot of countryside. We didn't go on a single toll road either which meant that we went on some more interesting roads.

The clear highlight for both of us was the gondala ride up to this place:



which was about 1,000m below Mt Blanc and had perfect views of the peak and surrounds. It would have been great to get out on the snow but we really needed crampons and ice axes so we had to settle for the fat American tourist style of sightseeing and go for a walk a bit further down. We did take a lot of photos though.....





Glacier heading down the hill towards Chamonix





Looking toward Chamonix on the way down.



Aiguille Du Midi



Mighty Mt Blanc itself



We had great weather for most of the week, it only rained once although it was quite cold a couple of nights.

Stopping for lunch / drying out the camping gear



Viaduct



We stopped for lunch at this place which was built on a hill and had walls surrounding it.



Dinner by the canal



Grapes in Bordeaux



Military cemetary near Calais



Looking down the Atlantic coast