Campervan Therapy

The day dawns sunny and a balmy 17 C , the sea is a tender jade colour, so, of course, we don’t set off south from Dieppe at 9 a.m., as was my ever-optimistic plan. We finally get going at 1.30 p.m.

Our campervan tour is meant to be an art one of the Languedoc and a bit of Spain, but this is France, so the art of living is everywhere. We spend a time watching the cockle and razor clam foragers dig around the rocks. Their ages range from a seven year old to an octogenarian.

After a peek into the  half-timbered courtyard of the castle, I have to pose seated in the giant black metal frame on the headland. The meta art installation, Sitting Panoramic, invites you to take in the bay as if you were a painter.

Then we forage in our own style in the historic centre, which is still full of independent shops. We return to the van laden with veg and the unctuous Neufchâtel cheese.

I am always surprised at how wooded France is and I am again as we speed past fir, mistletoe-laden poplar, beech and the ubiquitous silver trunked birch. We finally reach our night’s stop off at Lunery-sur-Cher in the Berry Region, our choices being rather limited for camping in rural France in mid-February. Our Search for Sites app saves the day as usual, pointing us to the once-Municipal Campsite, now a fully-automated camper stop.

 The campsite borders a river walk along the Cher. It is also the starting point for many rambles; and has ruins of an ancient mill in the centre of the site. A sturdy looking medieval church, a boulangerie and a tabac/bar/restaurant is the extent of the metropolis. We watch the bats swooping, a cat slinking, the only sound the desultory tones of two firemen chatting on duty.

We do not set out to get to the Mediterranean in one manic dash, our only criterion is to pick up the A75 at Clermont Ferrand as it’s a free motorway south, but the rain pelting the van decides otherwise. A grey curtain of rain blocks out the spectacular scenery of the gorges south of Clermont; the extinct volcanoes in the Auvergne; Eiffel’s Viaduc de Garabit’s elegant, red metal structure; not to talk of the dramatic metallic white of the Millau Viaduct.

As we hit Lodève and swoop down from the Massif Central to the Languedoc’s plains south of Montpellier, the sun comes out, the temperature gauge registers 18C. The garrigue scrubland, of herbs, cistus, broom and Mediterranean pine suddenly shouts ‘South’ at us.

Then there’s the shepherd tending his goats on the hills south of Montpellier that the SatNav has sent us through to avoid the rush hour traffic, and at last, we arrive at the camper stop at Palavas les Flots, once a small fishing village on a spit of land between the Med and the lagoons.

The vast number of flamingos has me swooning. We camp up portside in the camper stop, and stare out at the flamingos balancing on one leg or burying their heads in the lagoon’s waters, fishing.