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Winter Tour 2008 – Day 14: Except for a French woman peeing next to a British motorhome in the middle of the night, there was nothing remarkable about the night in Gacé. After breakfast we got back on freeway and didn’t have much time to loose if we wanted to be back before dark.

We made it through the smog and bumpy roads in Belgium and arrived back home in Almere, just in time for dinner. At home everything was fine and it was nice to have space and a warm place again with a hot shower.

In total we drove 5421 km during this tour (on average 387 per day), which is much more than our usual distance. In total we spent EUR 191 on freeway tolls in France and some in Spain as well. I hope that visitors from those countries will have to pay in Holland as well one day. We spent 4 nights on camp grounds and the other 9 on official camper parks. Because we spent more time on simple camper parks, we sometimes where short of electricity and should try to find a better solution for that. Our motorhome has solar panels but those are 10 years old and not as efficient as current models.

Looking back we probably wouldn’t do this tour again. The goal was to avoid the fireworks and get some sun and warmth. This year the south of Europe got much more cold and rainy weather than usual and there was basically no place to go. Traveling with our small motorhome in rainy and cold weather is not really fun. We did see some great place but in the end it would be better to save the money and vacation days for a different time of the year like early spring, but then we need a different solution for the firework issue. Staying in Almere is not an option.

Winter Tour 2008 – Day 13: We started the first day of the year with a quick visit to the beach and were lucky to find some open stores to get fresh bread and some local products of the Isle of Rhé like sea salt. Once again the weather was getting worse. There was an ice-cold wind and the sun was hidden behind clouds, so there was no good reason to stay on this island much longer. We will add it to the list of places to visit again.

The route back to Holland was going through the region of the Loire valley. We have visited this area years ago and were looking forward to see it again.  First we tried the camper park in Châteauneuf-sur-Sarthe, directly next to the river. It is a pretty place but everything was closed and turned off, so no floating water or electricity. I tried to use the power convert in the camper to charge my notebook, but every time I turned the converter on it blew a fuse. Without a running notebook to edit photos and watch a movie we didn’t feel like staying there and went back a few kilometers to Briollay. In Briollay it was the same situation – a remote camper park without supplies. In Chenillé-Changé it looked like we were lucky as there was a power outlet next to the camper park which was being used for flickering Christmas lights. I connected the motor home but when I plugged-in the power adapter of my MacBook Pro, it blew this adapter and the main fuse of the motor home. Also the power convert got fried beyond repair. With an empty laptop battery, a broken power adapter and a destroyed power converter,  there wasn’t much left for us to do at night, so after having a good dinner we decided to keep on driving. Two hours and 186 km later we stopped in the village Gacé, which has a simple camper park in front of the town hall.

Winter Tour 2008 – Day 12: After visiting Talmont-sur-Gironde we drove via Mornac-sur-Seudre, La Tremblade and Marennes towards Rochefort, but as it continued to be foggy and uncomfortably cold, we didn’t stop in any of these cities to walk around and take pictures.  Just before La Rochelle the fog finally disappeared and made space for the sun and blue sky. That made the decision easier to go on the Isle of Rhé (Île de Ré) and find a place for New Years Eve, preferably somewhere quiet and close to the sea.
The Isle of Rhé was more densely populated than expected, and we were not the only ones visiting this day, but at the end of the road of Les Portes-en-Ré we found a small camper park just meters away from the sea. As expected it was very quiet here and only at midnight we heard some firework explosions far away, probably in La Rochelle.

Winter Tour 2008 – Day 12: The day started as it ended yesterday – foggy and cold. Not far from Mortagne-sur-Gironde we visited the ancient village Talmont-sur-Gironde.

The enclosed and fortified village was founded around the Romanesque church of St Radegonde in 1284. In the summer this place must be packed with tourists but now we were almost alone walking through the tiny pedestrian-only streets between the small houses.

Winter Tour 2008 – Day 11: If it had been another sunny day we would have stayed for a second day in Mimizan-Plage, but the clouds caught up with us again, bringing some fog along with it. So we went back on the road heading north – slowly going home.  We didn’t have a tourist guide for this region and unfortunately they were not being sold anywhere. The only help we had were the pictograms of attractions like castles and viewing points on our France map. Soon after Bordeaux we left the main road and instead followed countryside roads along the Gironde estuary, which took us along countless vineyards of the Bordeaux wine and through villages like Plassac and Blaye.

Unfortunately it stayed foggy all day, so we didn’t many pictures. Just before dark we reached a nice camper park next to the harbor of Mortagne-sur-Gironde.

Winter Tour 2008 – Day 10: After a quiet night in Anglet, we went on a bit further up the coastline to see something of Aquitaine, a region of France where we had not been before.  Soon the land became flat and mostly covered with evergreen forests, we were traveling through the Côte d’Argent. After buying bread in Mimizan, we wanted to see the Atlantic ocean and followed the signs to Mimizan-Plage.

Here we noticed a camper park sign and decided to give it a try. What we found was a huge parking lot directly behind the dunes with many motor homes, a service station and electricity, all for just EUR 5.50 per night (low season rate). So we stayed and enjoyed the sunny warm weather at the long sandy beach. For most of the time it was warm enough to be outside without a jacket, which is quiet nice for December 29th in this corner of the world.