Nice place:

Cobbled streets

The also make a sparkling wine here in addition to the more well known stuff:

LES CORDELIERS

But who are these guys and what to they want with us?

Jurade de Saint-Emilion

In fact they are the Jurade de Saint-Emilion and mean us no harm.  The Jurade have been around for centuries but nowadays perform a ceremonial role at various stages in the wine calendar.  Wonder if they can do anything about Brexit?

Time for wine.

Here is what they make at that strange place:

Hic.

And if it is any good we will have a few more.

Sadly would be wasted on us tonight, so back to:

Well it tastes ok, but, really.

Need a better plan for exploring Bordeaux, so we moved on to Saint-Emilion via the Carrefour hypermarket at Libourne.  Fully stocked fridge again.  Vines on the doorstep:

What could they get up to in this strange looking place?

Third day in Bordeaux and look at what we are drinking:

Well it tastes ok, but, really.

We got this from Carcassonne two weeks ago.  It is bizarre how difficult it is to buy wine in Bordeaux.  Camping-Beausoleil is a lovely campsite but there is no shop and apart from a tabac up the road, no where to buy anything.  We need to try harder tomorrow.

Anybody who has known us for more than five minutes may be surprised to learn that this is the first time we have visited here.  The journey was a bit mad:

No wine shops here.

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.

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.

30 Degrees plus all day,  then crazy winds, then rain and thunder, then a sunset:

We can live with a few hours of rubbish weather for this.

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

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.