Read Between the Wines
Following last week’s visits to Paris’ teeming tourist attractions, Lowri and I decided we’d had our fill of bustling conurbations and so instigated a five-hundred-kilometre drive westwards across the French farmlands to the Atlantic coast. It was our longest – and most monotonous – leg thus far but, thankfully, made all the more enjoyable by five hours of continual Chanson Française (French folk music) – Lowri did not agree. It was early evening when we reached the coastal city of La Rochelle, just in time for an enthusiastic bridge master to lower his impressive drawbridge and allow us into the lively Old Port – where our parking location, in a budget insurance company car park, was to be found.
Thus far, we have exclusively used Park4Night to source our overnight camping locations, with a 100% success rate – seven days without a break-in is a significant milestone. The app pinpoints every possible location this side of Tanzania where one could drop a ridiculously sized vehicle before offering Amazon-style reviews on each spot. It even shows you all the available facilities at each location whether it be warm showers, greywater drop, or mobile baguette man (although only on Tuesdays). Given that we won’t have any hot water until we return to the UK thanks to our ineffective Chinese diesel heater, this information will be invaluable in allowing us to find sites to clean our malodorous torsos.
I had a vague recollection of visiting La Rochelle as a child and it’s certainly still a family favourite. Platoons of weary parents marched up and down the promenade in front of our van, sobbing kids in one hand and defecating dogs in the other – it had lost none of its charm. The Old Port is guarded on both sides of the harbour by an imposing fort, which was charmingly lit in pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. After destroying a couple of super-sized veggie burgers – being vegan in France is more difficult than Guinea-Bissau – we spent the remainder of the eve wandering the tourist-worn, cobbled side streets around the port, stopping off for tourist-priced drinks in some of the numerous hipster bars, before heading home to our tourist-snubbed sleeping location.
We continued tracking the Bay of Biscay south until we reached one of France’s largest, and most vintastic, cities: Bordeaux. With our knowledge of the place stopping at the vine, we had absolutely no idea what to expect from our visit. However, it swiftly grew into our favourite destination of our budding trip so far for a whole host of different reasons. Tram links to the centre were speedy and straightforward – unlike the Paris transport system which had me searched by the gendarmerie at one in the morning for failing to have the correct bus ticket – whilst the centre was pleasantly youthful, not overly hectic, and extremely multicultural. Need a traditional, green Peruvian poncho? No problem. Fancy an Argentinian-Pakistani food fusion? Then, Bordeaux is the place for you.
As well as eateries with cuisine from every country and disputed territory the world over, the city hasn’t forgotten its claret heritage, with the Cité du Vin (or City of Wine) museum a recent addition to its attractions. Shaped like a “fine Médoc swilling around a Bordeaux glass”, it just so happened to be a five-minute walk from our parking location – what a coincidence! Despite the fact we were both teaching in the afternoon, we couldn’t turn down the opportunity to complete a wine-tasting sesh from the top floor, which overlooked the Gironde estuary and the city at a distance – Wetherspoons Carmarthen roof terrace eat your heart out. However, just before Lowri had the chance to price up the nearby chateaus, I locked her in the van and whizzed us off to within wine-spitting distance of the Spanish border, allez!
The exquisitely named Saint-Jean-de-Luz was our final French destination, a seaside town which – at first glance – didn’t seem too unlike an Aberystwyth or a Swansea Bay. With its bustling arcade and carpeted bars with just the right amount of stick, second and third glances didn’t help to differentiate it much either. Nevertheless, it allowed my semi-aquatic partner to finally dive headlong into her natural habitat for the first time since leaving Kittle and, hopefully, this will become a more regular occurrence once we reach slightly warmer climes. For tomorrow, we enter Spain.
J
