Ah France

BORDEAUX VIA BIARRITZ

The following morning it's a short drive to the French border where there's some heavies hanging out. Guys with big guns everywhere and a guy hiding behind bushes with road spikes ready to throw out. We couldn't spot what bad arse they were after, maybe it was the truck from Romania, people smuggling into France. Then again maybe it wasn't and our imaginations were running wild.

We drive along the Biarritz coast where the surf is huge. We pull into the town and go for a stroll near the beach, watching fascinated by the big waves crashing ashore. We walk down to the beach for a few photos but when a wave comes thundering right up the beach and onto the walkway we were on we're sent scurrying for higher ground to avoid being swept in.

We continue north, heading towards Bordeaux, and before long old Betty has a line up of trucks behind her. We steadfastly ignore them as we're on a two lane motorway, driving in the slow lane so it's not like they don't have the option of passing us by easily enough. We soon learn to pick a French or German driven truck from a Spanish or Portuguese truck, as the former will catch you, indicate, pass, indicate and pull in nicely in front of you. The latter is a completely different kettle of fish. A Spanish or Portuguese driver will catch you, tailgate you for ages, sit right on your 20 year old campers arse for another 10 kilometres, pull out, nearly collecting your bikes off the back of the camper as he goes, pass and pull in, taking paint of the corner of the front bumper as he goes. I flip the bird at umpteen Spanish truck drivers that afternoon.

We get to the outskirts of Bordeaux and find our campground, a nice little place. I manage to get across that we want to stay three nights, two people. The camp owner manages to get across the price (shown to me on a calculator!) and that the bus to town is found by turning left out of the campground gates. Transaction successful. We head into town by bus and tram, both of which are rammed full of university students. In town we sign up for a half day tour to some vineyards in the expansive Bordeaux wine region and are done for the day.

We do a dash of sightseeing about town the following day before our tour left for the vineyards of the Medoc area, renowned for its reds, mainly cab sav and merlots (blended of course). We drive for about an hour past one pretty chateaux after another. Finally our driver Jacque has had enough of throwing us around roundabouts too tiny for tour buses and we've arrived at our first chateaux for a tour and tasting. The Chateaux Arney gives us a long winded speech on the wine making process and I admit I tuned out after the hearing the word fermentation for the 17th time in as many minutes. But eventually we get to the good bit, the tastings. We're given a 4 year old wine to start with which is quite delicious, but its easily topped by the 10 year old bottle we taste next from 1999. We grab a bottle for ourselves for an unbelievable €12.

Onto the next one, a family owned chateaux, classified as second class since 1855 (5 classes of wine). Luckily they know we've been been drilled on the wine making process, so tell us more about the history of the area and chateaux itself. Then it's onto the tastings, the first being more Merlot, less Cab Sav which Ryan like and I don't so much. The second wine is the opposite blend, more Cab Sav, less Merlot, which I like better and Ryan less so! Then they sweeten us up with a wee baked treat, a little desert traditional to the area. It's made with the egg yolks left over from the chateaux using egg whites to draw impurities out of the wine. Then its back onto the bus with pedal to the metal Jacque who whips us back to Bordeaux in next to no time.

On our final day in Bordeaux we wander about, poking our noses into wonderfully large wine stores and smear our noses against the windows of patisseries and chocolatiers. We pick a couple of bottles of the good stuff and waste no time in polishing one off with dinner back in camp. This is the life.

BORDEAUX TO BRITTANY

After a mega long drive the following day we arrive into Brittany and eventually find somewhere to stay. Well at least we think we can stay there. It appears as though the campground is still open, though there is no one else there and no one manning reception. So we park up and plug in. A few hours later the owner knocks at Betty's door and takes a tenner from us for the night.

The following morning we drive 10km down the road to Carnac, a small village with a brief mention in the Lonely Planet. Carnac is famous for its stones - a dense collection of megalithic sites - like Stonehenge but stranger (these ones are all in rows and rows, stretching for kilometres across the land) and many more stones. The more than 3,000 prehistoric standing stones were hewn from local rock and erected by the pre-Celtic people of Brittany, and are the largest such collection in the world! Stonewho??

Local tradition claims that the reason they stand in such perfectly straight lines is that they are a Roman legion turned to stone by Merlin. The stones were erected at some stage during the Neolithic period, probably around 3300 BC, but some may date to as old as 4500 BC.

From Carnac we head off on some of the most scenic roads we have driven on, toward St Malo in the north of Brittany. Our drive leaves us in love with France and the countryside and villages of Brittany. In the seaside town of St Malo we eventually find a carpark and are able to walk into town round the bay, which smells just as beaches should, a definite waft of seaweed and salt hangs in the air. In town we walk around the old town wall looking down into the busy streets and stroll the beachfront some more. We wrap things up and drive a short way to a campground near Le Mont St Michel to see it the following morning.

The following morning we head a few kilometres along the road and see Le Mont St Michel looming up at the end of the road through the early morning sea mist. Its an impressive castle at the end of a long sweep of beach, and at high tide it becomes surrounded by the sea. There's a small town in some narrow streets below the castle inside of the castle walls, and I think all of 40 people live there. We spend a good few hours there exploring before we head into Normandy, to stay in Bayeux for a couple of nights.

In Bayeux we park Betty up and take a solemn wander through the war cemetery in town. The orderly rows upon rows of crosses are rather sobering. Then we walk into the town centre to see the famous Bayeux tapestry - its a 0.5 by 70 metres long embroidered cloth which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England as well as the events of the invasion itself in 1066. Now what wikipedia doesn't say is that Geraldine has its own replica of this famous tapestry, made entirely of metal. I suggest you check it out.

The following day we use Betty to take us tripping along the Normandy coast where the Allies came ashore in WWII. We stopped off at various beaches, including Omaha beach and explored the remains of war along the coast, including seeing German concrete bunkers, the breakwater constructed off the coast and more. Before we leave the next day we go through the Normandy museum which is quite well done. We also pop back into town as its market day and get some fabulous Normandy cheeses to take back to London.

Towards the middle of the day we hit the road and make a beeline for Calais. We drive until night falls and we are only 50km short of Calais. We manage to find a free camping spot above a beach somewhere along the coast and pull in for the night and our last night in Europe is spent in a peaceful and low key spot. The following morning we are up and off, reaching Calais for our ferry crossing in no time.

13 weeks and 17,000 kilometres later, we are back on the Dover-Calais ferry, where it all started. Boo.