Sunday, June 29, 2014

Antibes

We had a bit of an eventful journey yesterday.  It all started well as we left the lovely campsite at St Tropez. We should have stayed for a few more days or at least till Monday so we would have missed the nutty French drivers who go extra nuts on the weekend.  I really don't know what their hurry is, they really need to chill a bit, but more of that later.

Our destination was the Cannes / Antibes area, so we plotted a course up the coast road.

I had an email from a mate in Oz who holidayed in the South of France numerous times back in the 70s.
He stayed at a place called   St Agulf.  Hopefully the next two pics are it ...
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We carried on through some nice countryside ...
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There was some low cloud around the Agar area, but still very warm ...
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The road then followed the cliff face along the coast.  It wasn't as narrow as the Spanish cliff roads, but unfortunately the Frogs don't like windy roads so cut off every corner they can, which is all of them.  It was starting to really piss me off with cars coming around bends on the wrong side of the road.  Eventually it happened - some French twat in a motorhome of all things came round the bend on the wrong side of the road!  Bang!  The mirrors hit each other and mine folded in.  He started to pull in ... hopefully his mirror smashed - they are about £175.00 to replace!  Mine wasn't damaged so Elaine pushed back into place and we carried on. 

We decided to pull into the next campsite to sit out the weekend….the barrier was shut to the entrance to the campsite so we sat outside waiting.  A car came out so I drove in whilst the barrier was up.  The chap who ran the site was out in a flash with a mega attitude, telling us off for coming in at lunchtime!!!  We would have to wait an hour until he would be ready to serve us!   We had a look around the site and didn't really like it, but couldn't escape as the barrier was down.  A little while later his Missus came along and wanted to know why we were parked there.  I told her we wanted a spot for one night, she said they don't allow one night stops, super "we will go then"….we escaped.

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There was a weight restriction of 3.5 tonnes on the beach front at Cannes so we had to use the back roads, which were rather grotty.  I should have ignored the the weight limit,we are only a bit heavier at 4.250 tonnes.
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We found a site close to the centre of Antibes, but it was up a really narrow road, with loads of coaches parked up on one side and a ditch on the other, so not too much room to move!   Once again the barrier to the site was down, so I waited outside whilst Elaine checked in.  A coach wanted to get past so I moved up and squeezed onto a driveway.  I sat there waiting for Elaine to get the barrier opened, but within a couple of minutes some French women came out of her house screaming that I was blocking her driveway.  I said I wouldn't be long I was waiting for the barrier to open, but she went off on one.  She didn't want to go out she just wanted me to move I gave her the classic Gaelic response , I shrugged my shoulders!

Eventually the women from the campsite came and rescued me and opened the barrier.

It was not a bad site and we moored up right next to the pool. We decided to stay for two days, to chill a bit and in the hope that the Monday drivers would be a bit better!

We had a very lazy start today.  By midday we decided to walk to Antibes to check it out, but we had only gone about 1 km when it started to piss down with rain, so we decided to return to base and have a seriously lazy day.

Today's prom pose is by a drainage ditch just down the road from the site.  The site is located in a seriously dodgy area with a lot of pikeys down the road ...
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Once back at the van we just lazed around and read.  I went for a swim later in the day as the sun returned with a vengeance.

This is our mooring, with Bombo trying to stop Elaine from reading, the pool is in the background  ...
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This evening I went to the site bar to watch the Cloggers vs Mexico, I cheered on Mexico but was well drowned out by the squawking Dutch women!

The cloggers won…..it really wasn’t the best weekend!

Where we stayed:  

Camping Les Frenes, Antibes
Not a bad campsite - old style but friendly enough.  The road outside and the general area felt pretty 'dodgy' with lots of barbed wire and glass along the tops of walls.  There was a fairground going on while we were there, not sure if it is permanent or not, but pretty noisy.  In the ACSI book so it was 18 Euros plus 1.50 for the second dog!!  Wifi was 10 Euros for 3 days - or 7 Euros for 1!!

It was very rainy when we were there so we didn't do much but had we planned it a bit better we would have maybe gotten a train to Monaco ... we weren't sure about the dogs though, as Paul saw on an official website that they have to be muzzled !!!

Friday, June 27, 2014

Model..........Boats

 Another lovely day on the French Riviera.

Yesterday I wrote about the chap who took six hours to erect his tent.  Today's story is about an Italian family who are moored next to us in their motorhome.  There are five kids and two adults in a van smaller than ours!  The kids are amazing - they all have their little jobs to do around the van as in preparing food, washing up and general house keeping ... they are all very efficient.  The kid's ages went from about four to eighteen.  However, yesterday the eighteen year old looking girl behaved in an absolutely disgusting manner :)  She came back from the beach on her own and rather go inside the van to change she stripped off naked right outside my window!!!  I was appalled ... I didn't know where to put my eyes!!

There is a German couple opposite us, the fellow's eyes were also popping out of his head.....naughty girl!

Today we decided to catch the bus into St Tropez.  Unfortunately the bus driver didn't like dogs and refused to take us, apparently dogs travel at the discretion of the driver.  We went to the site office for them to book us a cab instead but they said it would cost 46 Euro each way.....bugger that!  They then suggested that we walked down the beach for 1.5ks, then we could catch the ferry across to St Tropez.  We then decided it was too hot for the doggies to do that, so we left them in the van ... we are parked in the shade of some huge trees so it is really cool inside the van.

Off we went down the beach passing some nice little beach bars ...       

The ferry left from a lovely little place called Port Grimaud ...

Bargain price, 6.70 Euro for a one way ticket ...  

Some pretty flash boats moored out in the bay ... 

Check this one out, that is a fair sized chopper on her upper deck ... 

The boat is owned by a rather wealthy Indian chappie apparently, called Ravi Ruia; he is worth about $8.5 Billion, now that is an awful lot of poppadums ...

Meanwhile back on the cheap and nasty little ferry boat the gut was catching some rays ...
...and sucking his gut in ... El !

Elaine had a pose on the marina ... 

This is the largest rubber ducky I have ever seen, it was about 80ft long!  

Another pose with a beautiful ketch in the background ... 

As you can imagine St Tropez is a bit flash and expensive and full of very glamorous looking types, we fitted in really well!  


All of a sudden we came across a lovely carousel ... 

And some artists painting and selling their wares ... 

You have seen the boats now to the 'model' part of the title.  She was absolutely stunning but more amazingly must have been close to 7ft tall! 

The chick in charge of the shoot was a loud, gruff Aussie woman! 

This boat was rather nice...... 

If you have the sort of cash to buy a super yacht, then a Rolls convertible is probably small change ...

We transferred some of our savings from Oz and emptied a local ATM so we could buy a couple of ice creams ...

We then had a walk around the other side of St Tropez.... 

We then went to the bus station to catch the bus back to camp, but the next bus was an hour away, so we went to a cafe for a drink, which completely depleted our savings!  We finally got on the bus (with a lot of model types!!) and eventually got back to camp, once it had been around the houses!!

Lovely lovely place but tomorrow we will move on ...
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Where we stayed:  


Really, really nice campsite ... the best yet !   There are two sides to the site ... one on the beach and the other across the road.  The beach side looks out at St Tropez Bay and across to Port Grimaud and St Tropez itself.  Huge site with brilliant facilities and really nice, helpful staff.  They also have really good, shady spots available on the beach side, under the trees.  

Thursday, June 26, 2014

St Tropez

A quick two hour trip along the coast and we were moored up on the beach opposite St Tropez.

We could have parked right on the beach but we preferred the shade of the trees, its still only 23 steps to the sea!

It takes about 20 mins to set the motorhome up for a stay.  Firstly I level it on the ramps you can see under the front wheels, then wind out the awning and attach the storm straps just in case the wind gets up. Then it's just a matter of unloading the table and chairs and hooking up the 240 volt shore power.

The red car behind came with a tent and all the camping gear, it took him  just over six hours to set it all up.  I hope he is staying for a couple of weeks!


It's a nice little beach, we went in the sea for a while, I reckoned it was superb, Elaine thought it was too cold and screamed a lot while getting in!


St Tropez is across the bay, it is about 7ks away.  The bus stop is right outside the campsite. We will check out St Tropez tomorrow, apparently it is up to the bus driver whether they will let us take the dogs!


There are a few super yachts moored in the bay. I am sure we will see a few more of them in the  marina tomorrow.


It;s a really nice site, you couldn't get any closer to a beach.  They also have a nice restaurant and bar, we went up there tonight for dinner and to watch the Germany vs USA game.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Sanary Sur Mer

Yesterday's post was just a stocking filler so today we have the full unabridged version!

Sammy was on spellcheck duties.....actually he was asleep on my keyboard!


We left the Aire at Gordes early in the morning (Tues 24th).  This was our free overnight stop - mind you, I think someone would have come to collect some Euros from us had we stayed longer! 


A last shot of Gordes in the early morning sunshine ... 


Finally something happened which I never thought possible, I met drivers who were worse than Aussies.

These drivers go mental in Marseilles ... no regard to any road rules, any lane will do, as in Oz.  All the scooters seem to have death wishes ... not too fussed about them as they are always going to come off worse.  It is bad luck if your house catches fire or you are having a heart attack whilst in Marseilles, cos these drivers give way to no one!  You can play with your blues and twos as much as you like, they ain't giving way!   


Due to my supreme driving ability we made it through unscathed and were soon on yet another mountain road heading down the coast  ...


We arrived at our camp-site and immediately took the dogs for a walk and a cool off in the Med.  This is where we were told off by the miserable old French bat as I mentioned yesterday ...


Today we walked to the village of Sanary Sur Mer and today being Wednesday it was market day, and what a market it was ... 


They sold everything imaginable - I treated myself to a new t-shirt and El completed her recent quest to find an orange skirt (don't ask me why!).  Most of the stuff seemed to be good quality stuff aimed at the locals rather than the tourists.  Talking of tourists, there are very few poms here, we didn't hear an English voice all day.


The market is located on the edge of the harbour ... 


I'm afraid I have taken rather a lot of shots of these boats as they are just so colourful ... 


So much nicer to look at than a mega gin palace with silicon-enhanced bimbos lying naked on the deck
.....did I just say that?!!!

This was another 'am-I-really-here/pinch-yourself' moment ... 


Not really a prom pose, but as close as we could get to one ...


Yet more boats ... 


Back to the market ... 


Lots of nice fruit and veggies ... 

There were loads of food stalls ... all sorts of cheeses and meats and olives and unrecognisable things!

Heaps of different spices ... 


These stalls belong to the fishing boat moored in front.  It is also part of the market, the fish is unloaded directly to the stall.  Only one problem though....... 

.....this happens early in the morning whilst we are still sleeping!  Talking of which, there was a mega storm last night with loads of thunder and lightning.  I was a bit worried about the awning filling with water, but I had it dropped down at a fairly steep angle so all the water ran off!


Back to the boats ... 


Oh look, even more colourful boats ...



A change of scenery - there was another piece of Tromp l'oeil ... 



If it weren't for the pink Crocs she would blend right in ... 


By now it was beer time, firstly the waiter bought water out for two hot dogs ... 
They weren't Spanish prices though - it was 9.50 Euros for a beer and a mineral water!


Right outside the bar was this.....more 'kin colourful boats! 


We liked this street name.........Impossible!!

When we got back to the campsite, we took the plunge ... went in for a swim!  I did 2 lengths and El did 25!  The pool was all but deserted this afternoon because it was a bit cloudy ... fickle lot!


Haven't done one of these for a while, here we be ...
Sammy is upside down ... he wouldn't wake up and move over!

Tomorrow we will move on through St Tropez to take pics of silicon enhanced bimbos on mega yachts.

I'm over all these bloody colourful little fishing boats!


We are now into the eighth week of the European trip so quick thoughts so far.....

France and the froggies are coming first followed by Spain and the Spaniards followed by Portugal and the Portugeezers.  In saying that France is a lot more expensive than the other two so living-wise on our paltry budget Spain would be a winner.

The motorhome is just fantastic and is everything we could want for, so easy to drive and gets along if needs be.

I wouldn't want to tow a car behind as some people do, it's just too much hassle if you get into a tight spot in a little village or narrow lane etc.   I would, however, definitely buy a small scooter to hang off the back ... they are superb once you are moored up, you can explore all the little bays etc. so easily.

The other thing we overlooked was to buy a large groundsheet to fit outside the motorhome.  Most of the sites are gravel or dirt, there ain't no grass down these parts and consequently a lot of crap gets inside the van.  We did bring the full size hoover with us though!

Also, we have booked our return ferry, actually tunnel back to the UK for 18th July.  We will then explore more of the UK and catch up with family and friends before winter arrives......!!   


Where we stayed:

Camping Parc Mogador - click for more info!  Really nice site ... quite busy, so a popular spot. Nice pool, little bar and pizza bar plus little shop.  Reception are really friendly too.  Not a long walk to the port - took about 15 mins, dragging two slow dogs along!