Category: Uncategorized
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Sur Le Pont D’Avignon
I’ve wanted to go to the Palais des Papes in Avignon since I read Charles Dickens’ travelogue about visiting it on a cold winter’s day, with his wife and children, before repacking them all into carriage and horses to continue to Genoa. We tried once ages ago, our teenage children with us, in blistering August…
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La Napoule, Mandelieu – Cote D’Azur’s Sparkling Seaside Suburb of Cannes
We pull up in Camping Le Cigales as it’s one of the only campsites in Mandelieu-La Napoule, open in mid-October. Parked under the towering palm tree, the parakeets singing overhead, we don’t feel too short changed. We stroll along the Parc des Oliviers which lines the River de L’Argentiere, watching the kayakers and children in…
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Gracious Genoa Proves to be a Mediterranean Gem
Slaloming round Genoa’s spaghetti looped motorways always brings out the startle reflex in me. But Seán, insouciant as ever, just rolls with it. When we leave the motorway at Pegli, a suburb just north of Genoa’s centre, I hold my breath as he squeezes the van between mopeds, motorbikes, cars, pedestrians out for their evening…
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We go open-cast mining in Rio Marina, Elba
There are over 250 minerals in Elba’s mountains. The island has been mined from the Etruscans to the Tuscans and we’re heading to the mineral park in Rio Marina to learn about the practicalities of extracting them. But this must wait as we wind our way around the main road, because we’ve just got to…
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Elba’s Languorous Lacona – Humming Rosemary Bushes, Singing Naturists and Turtle Highways
During the week we stay in Lacona we settle into a lazy routine, a morninf walk along the fine crescent of beach, paddling in the surf, to Valle-Santa Maria Campsite, and through there to the local shop with its vivid vegetables: the peppers more red than at home, the aubergines more purple and the courgettes…
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Following in Napoleon’s Footsteps on Elba
Seán does love an App and this one, the Avenza Map App, proves essential when we decide to climb Monte Barbatoia in Lacona to descend to Napoleon’s Villa in San Martino as the walking signs play hide and seek with us. We climb up the boulder strewn path from Lacona, which runs like a rust…
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Elba – A Jewel Venus Scattered into the Tyrrhenian Sea
As the ferry sails towards Elba, I cannot detach Seán from his App that tells him the names of the romantic, volcanic islands. Excited as a boy, he points out what he thinks is Pianosa, which we later discover is called the island of silence; then Capraia, island of goats; Montecristo, setting of Dumas’ tale…
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Dieppe to Elba – Proof that the journey is sometimes as good as the destination
I don’t expect our journey to Elba to be anything special, apart from the visit to my old school pal, Pina, in the Aosta Valley, which is always wonderful, as we’re setting off on 1st October’s low season. But our very first stop at Camping Châlons-en-Champagne is a musical surprise. We spend a little time…
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Brittany and Decompressing in Damgan, Stepping into the Past in St. Malo
Brittany extends a relaxed welcome to us as we appear in Damgan, positioned in the Gulf of Morbihan natural park. Camping Célimène squeezes us in for three days, even though we have to move pitch each day, one bijoux pitch next to the recycling and one on top of the children’s playground. But so many…
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Gascony’s Aire-sur-L’Adour to Charente Maritime’s Fouras-les-Bains
Weaving down through the Pyrenees from the Somport Tunnel is stunning, under cliffs and through gorges, vultures swooping above and the rushing River Gave d’Aspe. When the mountains give way to rolling hills and fertile fields, the vineyards appear. We stop in Aire-sur-L’Adour’s Camping Les Ombrage de L’Adour, beside the lazy, green river, the ancient…
Campervan Therapy 