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Saturday 16th December 2023.

The day started with a heavy mist which lingered for some miles until we were well south of Bordeaux when thankfully we emerged into warm sunshine. We had to make an unexpected stop at a service area as whilst travelling a carton of pineapple juice flew through the air and coated the floor with a sticky liquid, joys of travelling😊

We were aiming to spend a few hours in St Jean de Luz and after a few hair raising moments zig zagging across this very busy town we managed to park in an area frequented by surfers.

St Jean de Luz is a fishing town at the mouth of the Nivelle river in S.W. France’s Basque region. It was once one of the largest fishing ports in France and historically a haven for privateers and buccaneers who were authorised by the King to seize enemy ships. Today it is still a busy fishing port.

It has wonderful sandy beaches and is well used by surfers.

The town is known for its traditional half timbered house painted red and white, the houses on the sea front are connected to the sea edge walk by walkways.

The town has a pedestrianised shopping street plus many other narrow streets full of small individual shops.

A short drive from town is the campsite where we are spending the night, it’s well laid out with very good facilities including a heated swimming pool that Alison took advantage of, Michelle took advantage of the washing machine whilst I sat in the wonderful warm sunshine and enjoyed a few beers.

Friday 15th December 2023

Ever since I first visitedSt Emilion over 30 years ago I promised myself that one day I would spend the night here so I could walk round and enjoy the evening ambience.

The most luxurious and central hotel is the Hotel de Pavie and is the first choice for those who can.

It’s even more astonishing that the nearest parking is 200m away, but I do believe someone will park your car for you.😊

Well I am achieving my bucket list wish and staying about 800m from that hotel in Homer, free for the night😂😂😂😂

This morning we visited an old friend Dominique near Libourne and then drove to St Emelion where we met up,with Alison and Peter with whom we are spending the next few weeks. We went for an afternoon stroll around the town, very little commerce is open, most shops are shut until March, I did however find a pharmacy to stock up again on cold medication😊

After a short break and a quick meal in Homer we set off again to walk round town in the dark and enjoy some of the Christmas illuminations.

Thursday 14th December 2023

Our journey today was to take us from last nights stopover to our old home town of Montpon where a year ago we sold our house. We set off on a wonderful straight smooth road and after 5 miles it said “road ahead closed take the deviation.” We did it took us along narrow twisty country roads for miles and of course the deviation signs soon ran out.

After that everything went reasonably well especially as we were eventually on roads we knew well and had been driving for over 30: years. That is until we came to within 1 km of our destination of Montpon, the road was closed due to flooding of the River L’isle no access to the bridge and we had to take a 15 km detour to get back to just the other side of the bridge.

The purpose of our visit was to take Layla to our French vets so that she could have her rabies booster which needed to be done and recorded on her French Pet Passport. The vet was superb, normally Layla goes a little mad and snaps at the vet when she sees the needle but he was so good she didn’t even know she had had it, well worth 48 euros.

Not only did Layla need medication but so did Michelle ( no sadly not at the vets) her cold has worsened again and she was having sinus pain so it was another trip to the pharmacy where we managed to obtain some tablets for her.

Our last journey of the day was down the valley to Libourne but we did deviate back to our ex neighbours house to deliver her Christmas card. As we approached Libourne Michelle guiding, she told me to take a right turn, after 2 km the road was closed due to flooding, as was the next one we tried, the third led us along a narrow dry road just the width of Homer and it then dipped down and there was a short tunnel under the railway that only gave us 10cm headroom it was a wincing experience.

Wednesday 13th December

When we planned our route south through France we decided to keep off busy main roads and see as much of a part of France we hadn’t seen before. Yesterday we drove 134 miles via Vitre to La Pertre, and today’s route although seemingly not too direct was in fact shorter and we covered a total of 173 miles today.

A huge section of the roads we travelled on today were as we often picture French roads, long and straight going on and on to the horizon, speed is limited to 50 mph and every so often you arrive in a village or small town where the speed is restricted to 20 mph. We aimed for a town called Cholet for our lunchtime stopover.

After lunch we walked approx a mile into town where our first stop was the pharmacy, I managed to convey my needs in French and bought a bottle of cough medicine, a packet of cold and flu tablets and some menthol vapour rub for Michelle. The town looked very pleasant and had large suburbs and edge of town commerce, we didn’t stay too long as we didn’t have much time to spare.

The latter part of our journey was along some narrower roads thus slower and it was turning dark as we pulled into the camp site at Brioux Sur Boutonne, at first we were on our own but later one more camper van arrived.

There was a lot of flooding in the fields as we travelled along and the camp site on the edge of the river was no different about one third of it was under water.

One amusing thing we have seen on our travels over the past two days is town/village name signs as you enter and leave are turned upside down. Michelle turned to Google and found out it was the work of farmers protesting against the Government . The French know how to protest Eh!

Monday 11th and Tuesday 12th December 2023.

We have started our trip to spend Christmas and New Year in the Valencia region of Spain.

We set off on Monday in fine weather and had an easy journey down to Portsmouth where again the Brittany Ferries curse got us.The girl in the check in booth refused to accept Layla’s Pet Passport saying there was a stamp missing, nothing I said helped so I had to trek to the main desk in the terminal where the man who looked at the passport said it wasn’t a major problem we just had to travel at our own risk???? I’ve no idea what he was on about, we never have any trouble anywhere else only Brittany Ferries at Portsmouth, in fact at Dover in April they didn’t want to look at the passport the girl said” she’s obviously your dog”.

Last week Michelle developed a terrible head cold and Monday morning I woke with the same ailment so by the time I got on the ferry I felt pretty crap, I dozed for most of the 6 hour journey only getting up for 30 minutes to have what turned out to be a somewhat sub standard meal.

It was only a short drive from the port to our stopover at Lion sur Mer a Camping Car Park aire, by 10.30pm we were set up for the night but non of us had a good nights sleep.

Tuesday morning we set off with me again feeling very rough and we drove south to Vitre an old historic town, it was very quiet there with very few people about. I selected to visit Vitre as 6 years ago we were on the way there and en route broke down in Homer 1 spending 3 days on a car park waiting for a new starter motor. The day it was repaired we had arranged to meet Peter and Alison at Mont Saint Michel so we didn’t have time to stop.

It was a short drive from Vitre to tonight’s stopover a campsite at La Pertre a small countryside village where again there are only two of staying the night.

Thursday 7th December 2023.

Last night, Michelle and I accompanied by our daughter and son in law took our twin 30 month old grand sons to see the illuminations in Wolverhampton.

The route zig zagged around the park for almost a mile, we had the pushchairs with us but they were soon abandoned by the boys, Ben managed about 70% of the route whilst James astonished us by walking the whole route unaided, not bad since it’s only been a few weeks since he was in hospital with a broken leg!

There was a small area with a few fair rides and two refreshment stalls.

These are just a few of the photos I took, there was much more to see. We had a good time walking around and counted ourselves lucky that as we arrived it stopped raining having poured down all day, the boys went home well tired.

Sunday 26th November 2023.

Today is Michelle’s birthday and after yesterdays busy active day we decided to have a relaxing day. After a lie in and Michelle had opened her cards and sent thank you texts we decided to wrap up and take Layla for a walk.

The map showed the Firth of Forth to be only a few hundred metres from the camp site and a footpath leading through some trees to the waters edge. However the map didn’t show we are 30m above sea level and the path dropped rapidly down via some rather precarious steps.

There is a wide tarmaced footpath being well used by cyclists, joggers and dog walkers, the tide was in but there were a few beach areas which turning a deaf ear Layla made a beeline for.

Just off shore there is Cramond Island which apparently you can walk out to at low tide, if you don’t leave in time you have to wait for low tide to be able to return.

Part way along the walk there is a large cafe with outdoor seating area and the road past the camp site Marine Drive ends there in a large car park. You can however continue walking along the wide pathway to Cramond a mile from the cafe.

We spent the afternoon relaxing and watching a film.

Tomorrow we are departing and our stopover is in Lancashire on the drive of Alison and Peter our motor-homing buddies.

Saturday 25th November 2023.

The day started with a frost and a temperature of 0 degrees and when we returned at 6.30 pm it was zero again and only reached a maximum of 5 degrees during the day, we had to keep moving to stay warm, in total we walked 7.6 miles around Edinburgh.

We are visiting Edinburgh both to have a break and also to celebrate Michelle’s birthday and visiting this city was on her bucket list.

We travelled to and fro into Edinburgh from the site by minibus a service that runs all week and worked well taking us right into the city centre.

We commenced our walk about in West Princess Street gardens where there is currently a fairground in the centre, we walked steeply uphill to join the Royal mile and turned left to the castle, the queues to go in were about 50m long and there were several hundred people queued up to go in. We have long accepted that travelling with Layla often means we can’t access a lot of historic buildings ( or certain cafes, restaurants and shops) but it’s a small price to pay for the joy she bringsshe was a star today walking through crowds of people where all she sees are knees😊 She does get a lot of fuss off strangers. We knew we could take her into The Camera Obscura and headed back down the Royal mile to it, however again there was a 20 minute wait to get in and when we saw it cost £22 each to go up we decided to give it a miss.

We walked the length of The Royal Mile to reach the ScottishParliament building and The Palace of Holyroodhouse, sadly Hollyroodhouse wasn’t open at weekends. We zig zagged back and forth across the city taking in the sights and finding somewhere to eat.

One of the Michelle’s aims for the day was to see the city in lights and as our minibus wasn’t leaving until 6 pm we had a chance to see the city slowly go dark.

We had a very enjoyable day and will leave with good memories of Edinburgh.

Friday 24th November 2023.

This is just a short blog to keep dates in order.

We had a good night last night except for one security light in the car park that flickered on and off all night long thankfully the blinds kept out most of the problem.

We decided to avoid the motorway today and take the old historic route A7, thankfully the sun shone all day and traffic was very light with very little HGV traffic. The scenery was wonderful a mixture of open countryside and we drove through the Southern Uplands, traffic only becoming heavy as we hit the ring road around Edinburgh.

We stopped for elevenses at Hawick enjoying a coffee and cake in cafe that also bizarrely doubled as a charity shop and you could buy the items on display.

Thursday 23rd November 2023.

We drove 192 miles today mainly on the M6 to tonight’s pub stopover en route to Edinburgh where we are visiting for the weekend. We started off in lovely sunshine but after an hour or so the day turned grey, as we reached Lancashire, road works slowed us down to 50 mph for many miles, and then as we hit the Lake District it began to rain heavily thankfully ceasing as we arrived at Carlisle. For all the journey we were buffeted by cross winds and wind socks by the side of the motorway were at 90 degrees to the flagpoles indicating the strength of the wind.We we’re glad to arrive in Carlisle.

It was a short walk into Carlisle along a well sign posted footpath which lead us directly into the towns pedestrianised centre. The light was beginning to fade as we arrived so we didn’t really get a chance to do the town justice.

Carlisle existed before the Romans arrived so has a long history and many buildings still exist from times past, we will return in the future and explore more at our leisure.

The pub was part of the Hungry Horse chain we decided to have a meal instead of cooking, Thursday night was buy a main meal and get a free dessert so it was a no brainier😊🍴🍺

We should have selected the following dessert in honour of Homer but opted for the millionaires shortbread instead.