Loire Valley….the missus wants castles and they have loads of them as well as thunder storms. Not ideal. Picked Saumur as a base, not for any particular reason, but they make nice fizz, so why not? When looking for campsites I noticed the promise of 22mm of rain and hail. Plan B resulted in a B&B booking that turned out to be a castle. Got their last and biggest room and managed to cook up a storm using the lovely bathroom as our kitchen. Spend the night looking at the impressive thunderstorm and enjoying being dry.
Next morning we were off to town. Almost managed to get to the mushroom museum without a drink, BUT was almost by magic led into a tasting room of one of the big fizz producers and hey….it was almost after 10 so a drink was perfectly ok. Visited the mushroom museum which was weird and interesting. Now we have actually seen how they grow those fungi ones. Had a walk around Saumur, saw the castle and the old town.
Decided to head south with a pit stop in Bordeaux. Good meal, saw an old colleague and then headed for a small town down south. Back to camping and the village had a country festival on. That turned out to be exactly as scary and horrible as one could imagine. I will not rant on about french guys and confederate flags and 3-wheeled motorcycles….no, I won’t! Bless them, cause they haven’t got a clue. Anyway, we stuffed our faces with foie gras and vino for a few days and left without looking back.
We were actually heading straight for Pamplona, but due to a brainwave from Tasha we found ourselves hiding through the Pyrenees in glorious weather and camping wild in 2000m by a lake. What a lovely walk. Woke early and jumped in the lake for a bath. That was fresh and much needed … until the cows came to the water to drink and Tasha had to jump out fast. Hiked for 3-4 hours and got back to our well-missed van. Vamos a la Playa! Hot, dusty and sweaty we raced (yeah right) over the last pass and entered Spain.
Counterclockwise around Europe 