Monthly Archives: June 2017

St-Jean-de-Luz – 12 June

Leaving here tomorrow.  We hoped to go to Spain but we are well into the last part of the holiday so we will skip Spain and head north to wine.  Went to Bayonne today.  Nice place, very laid back with nice shops and a lot more French than other places around here.  Cloisters closed just as we arrived, Cathedral shut,  Castle closed just as we arrived.  We’ll come back.  Oh pants, the silly hats shop was evidently still open and we missed it.

Get your mitts off my bum you creep.

St-Jean-de-Luz – 9 June

Friday evening and a very pleasant relaxed campsite has been turned into an urban shanty town that would not be out of place in Bogota (no disrespect to Columbians who are trying to make their capital better).  How can the previous picture turn into this in the space of two hours on a Friday night?

They fought the dogs and killed the cats

And on Saturday we find goalposts and a football in our pitch (that we had paid for all of):

They think it’s all over – oh, we wish it was.

Dreadful parenting, squawking brats, and everybody thinks they are Messi.  They are not: they are just annoying, spoiling everything, and breaking campsite rules.

St-Jean-de-Luz – 6-7 June.

Having left Lourdes we found ourselves in Spain.  No idea what the road signs meant, so went back to France to work it out.  Huge queues at the tolls for people trying to get into France, but no trouble at all getting to Spain from France.  This is a horribly complicated area to navigate but mercifully found a Carrefour for food and wine, then completely by accident found a good campsite in St-Jean-de-luz.

Nice beach:

St-Jean-de-Luz

Splash

Leaving Lourdes – 6 June.

Poured with rain overnight so we need to get out of here.  Off to the coast then:


Reflecting on Lourdes, it is a nice place  but the religious aspect to it overpowers everything else.  Every other shop is selling stuff to do with the apparitions and cures, there are coaches clogging up the town most of the day trying to drop people off at loads of hotels, and, as we have found, the weather can be really rubbish.  Of course people go to Lourdes for their own reasons, but for the casual tourist with no religious convictions, maybe not worth a special visit.

More rain in Lourdes, hills covered in cloud.

Lourdes – 2 June

Yes, Lourdes.  Very pleasant drive on the D6113 from Carcassonne to Toulouse, followed by a rather less pleasant drive on the A64 to Lourdes, where it got colder, windier, wetter and nastier.  Now at Camping-Sarsan, which is a lovely, friendly campsite.  Free, fast inernet.  Shame about the torrential rain accompanied by thunder and lightning.


Visiting the town we find it is full of shops like this:

Typical shopfront.

Containers for the local water.

Carcassonne – 29 May- 1 June

Change of plan – rather than get the bus to Carcassonne from Trebes, just go to Carcassonne.  Slightly expensive and slightly commercial campsite but nice with big private pitches in the old section.  This place has got bigger since we were last here with a new area of the campsite and a motorhome aire next door.  Stupid wristbands required, free internet (but very slow hence no posts for four days), nice chips and mediocre pizza.  Good campsite on the whole and we’ll be back if visiting the area again.

La Cite

La Cite