The motorhome diaries: The good, the bad and the ugly

The good

Just when we think France can’t treat us any better, we pull into Biarritz and begin the reconnaissance for potential campsites. Usually this requires some imagination and often some audacity too (anything that doesn’t have a sign with a picture of a campervan with a red line through it is fair game; and okay, sometimes there is a sign, but it never looks exactly like ours); which is why we assume our eyes have been deceived by a mirage when we first spot the oasis.

Metres from the beach, an easy walk from the heart of Biarritz, and signs indicating it is only for campervans; regular vehicles prohibited! And, there are power-outlets so we can plug-in. And a dumping station. All for free! Gotta love France!

Immediately after parking, we get ribbed by a good-natured pom, telling us we are far too young to be ‘on the tour’, and that we should be working. I reassure him that we have already paid enough tax in England to fund his pension for the next few years.

So Biarritz is home for the next three nights; riding our bikes along the cliff-tops, running along the foreshore, afternoon drinks watching the sun set.

We also finally encounter a fellow vanner who isn’t of retirement age; an English lad known as ‘Fish’, who’s been living on the road for nearly 12 months. We chat for a while; he seems a nice guy. He tells me that one of the other guys camped in the park is celebrating their birthday that night, with a fire and a few drinks down on the beach, and invites us along. Eager enough for some company other than our own, I tell him we’ll be there.

That night, before we’d joined them, I hear Fish arguing loudly with someone else. I look out the window and see him storm back to his van, only to reappear brandishing a hand-gun like he was Dirty Harry. After some more vigorous debate, and having a loaded firearm aimed at his face, Fish’s opponent must have conceded the argument, because he departed rapidly with squealing tyres as Fish launched flying-kicks at the side of his vehicle. Having left my Kevlar vest back in London, M-A and I decided to stay in that night.

Finally, and reluctantly, we leave Biarritz. We don’t travel far, but we do say au revoir to France for now, and hola to Spain.

San Sebastian was always going to struggle to provide us with a campsite on a par with Biarritz, but the one we find is still quite impressive. On the promenade that runs around the headland; it is pay-parking but free overnight. And it doesn’t explicitly say you can’t camp there, right? The only problem is that it is too water-front. The spray from the waves crashing against the rocks provides salt-water rain all night.

San Sebastian looks spectacular. It has urban beaches like nowhere I’ve ever seen. It seems you can walk out of an office building and step onto the sand. When first arriving, we join a crowd watching an unsuccessful rescue attempt of a sailboat, capsized and beached right on the Playa de la Concha.

We climb up Monte Urgull, and enjoy the views of San Sebastian and the Isla de Santa Clara from atop the castle walls.

The next morning I get my first surf of the trip, at the Playa de la Zurriola The water is colder than I expect, and I’m grateful for the thicker wetsuit I borrowed from Sean. My fitness is terrible; my arms quickly turn to custard. But the surf is clean, and there are only a few other surfers out (no one in Spain wakes up before 10:00). I’m eventually reluctantly forced to return to the beach to regain some feeling in my feet; now I understand the booties other surfers are wearing.

Coffees by the beach warm us up, and then we say good-bye to San Sebastian.

Good times...

The bad

We shouldn’t have even been there. The only reason we headed to Bilbao was to visit the Guggenheim museum. But as we enter the city’s outskirts, we realize: It’s Monday. Museums are closed Monday.

The mission should have been aborted then. It wasn’t.

Having vowed never again to enter urban areas in the van without a clear destination in mind, that’s exactly what we find ourselves doing. Attempting to find a parking-space, we turn down a lane. That the cars parked on both sides of the lane were all facing toward us didn’t tip us off. The car travelling down the lane towards us did. It was a one-way street, and our way was not the way. I press the clutch, grab the column-shift and push it away and down; into reverse.

Situation update: Maybe 20cm of spare width either side of the van; Only side-mirrors (the central rear-vision mirror simply looks into the living quarters); Approximately 30 metres back to the intersection; An angry-looking taxi-driver a metre in front, impatiently inching his front-bumper towards ours. I slowly reverse, my eyes repeatedly switching between the two side-mirrors, constantly adjusting the steering-wheel, trying to maintain that sliver of air between either side of the van and the parked cars. We make it back to intersection. Confident now that I’ve cleared the narrow lane, I turn the wheel sharply, swinging the rear of the van back onto the larger, two-way road we had turned off. Just as I’m about to halt the reverse and drive off forwards, that moment every driver dreads.

M-A shouts, simultaneously with the slight jolt I feel.

I quickly check both mirrors but can’t see any obstacles. M-A, who had exited the van, returns to report what I dreaded and expected; ‘You’ve hit a car.’

‘How bad?’ I'm scared to ask.

‘There’s some damage, but it’s OK.’ I fail to see how that can be a valid outcome.

Two vultures ladies who had witnessed the incident are already circling.

Situation update: We’ve just hit a vehicle; we are now sitting in the middle of an intersection; two ladies, one old and the other ancient, are in our faces and yammering Spanish; the taxi-driver still can’t get past, and is looking even less impressed.

I assume that these ladies, like almost everyone over a certain age, see it as their duty to uphold law and order; vigilantes with perms and too much lipstick. M-A remains to convince them that we aren’t fleeing the scene. I attempt to, not flee the scene, but slightly relocate; to a location preferably not in the middle of an intersection.

I quickly re-encounter our original problem: the streets are narrow and there are no parking-spaces. I have moved away from the intersection, finally allowing the traffic past. Having turned down another one-way street (after carefully checking the one way is my way), and travelled about the same distance down it that we had down the original lane, the cars parked either side had narrowed the road to a width that was clearly insufficient for the van to fit.

Situation update: I have left M-A alone at the scene of the accident; I am faced with either attempting an even more daunting reverse (and look how well the last one turned out) solo this time, or sitting and waiting for traffic to come behind me and block me in, creating a lovely jam, and making me the least popular person in Bilbao.

This is one of those moments where you hope to wake-up, startled, and realize it was all a nightmare. I click my heels three times, ‘There’s no place like home’.

I open my eyes. Fuck, still in Bilbao. The only option is reverse again. I hate that gear.

Again I play the game. Again I think I’ve won. Again as I swing back onto the two-lane road where M-A is still talking to the ladies, CLUNK. No way. This cannot be happening. This is the worst day ever. I jump out as M-A runs over. I’ve hit a small bollard. Fortunately, it was just the tow-bar. No damage done.

I double-park some cars, but at least manage to get the van into a position where it is not blocking traffic, and we can deal with the situation.

The ugly

I believe we are good people. We intend to do the right thing. The problem is we’re not sure what the right thing is. Do we call the police? It is only a fender-bender. We rifle through our paperwork, looking for our insurance documentation. The two ladies are writing a phone number down; I assume it is for the local police station. We can’t find a phone number for our insurance company. Another man approaches us and speaks to us, in Spanish of course. From what we can interpret, he says the car is illegally parked (it definitely was), got what it deserved, and that we should make like Speedy Gonzales.

The little guy sitting on my right shoulder, dressed in shining white robes, and wearing a golden halo says ‘You have a couple of options here: You can call the police; you can wait by the car until the owner returns; or you can leave your phone number and email address, along with your registration and insurance details’.

Another little dude, with red skin and horns, sitting on my left shoulder and carrying a pitchfork interjects ‘Are you fucking crazy? Do you really want to deal with the police? Do you really want to spend the next five hours waiting for this chump to return to his car, only to have him call the police, and have to wait another two hours? Sure, leave your phone number; he’ll call, you won’t be able to understand a damn word each other is saying, and he’ll call the police and give them your registration number. Then you’ll have to explain to them why you fled the scene of an accident. Listen to the man. “Arriba arriba, andalay andalay!”’

He also mentioned killing the two old ladies and storing the bodies in the van, but I cut him off there.

So M-A puts on a show for the witnesses, scribbling away on a piece of paper before folding it and securing it under the windscreen-wiper. Cue the chase music. We get back in the van and make the slowest getaway in history. I ask what she wrote on the paper. ‘Hello’.

We assume Bilbao’s entire active police force is pursuing us. Why doesn’t the sat-nav have an ‘Anywhere but here’ button?

We make it a few blocks away. It’s not the police that halt our escape, but our guilt. I pull over, and tell M-A that I can’t do it. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself. She agrees, but we’re still unsure what to do. ‘How much cash have we got?’ M-A asks.

We scrape together €150 and decide to leave it on the victim’s windshield. Obviously there are plenty of flaws in this plan, but at the time it seems our best option. We return to a spot a few hundred metres from the scene, and M-A goes and places the money in an envelope next to her original note. When she returns, she mentions that the original note had moved.

‘You didn’t take it?’ I ask incredulously, as if I’m a veteran of these situations. I run and grab the original note; luckily as it turns out. It seems the two ladies had been unimpressed with M-A’s original manuscript, and had replaced it with their own. Written in Spanish, I can’t read much of it, but I certainly recognize our registration number. ‘Rude English’ also seems to make an appearance.

We wait in the van a little longer, concerned that someone else may take the money. The driver returns to the vehicle just as we’re about to give up. He finds the envelope before he sees the damage. We can’t see his expression, but I imagine he may be slightly confused. He does a lap of the vehicle and notices the damage. One more lap, a bit of a look around, then he gets in a drives off.

We do the same. Propelled by paranoia and guilt, we make a bee-line for Portugal; in our minds pursued by a bigger police convoy than O.J. Simpson’s Bronco.

We agree to never speak of Bilbao again.

The motorhome diaries: Chateau de Figeac

Gotta love France: Two-hour lunch breaks; Mondays off; Bakeries with the world’s best bread and even better pastries; Great beer; Shop assistants with the attitude ‘If you approach and ask for help - you’ve got it - otherwise I’m going to leave you to it’; Citizens that understand that if the government makes a decision you disagree with, why wait until the next election and vote for someone else, when you can fill a bottle with a highly flammable liquid, stuff a rag in the top, light it, and throw it at the nearest police.

And, of course, wine that almost explains all the wars that have been fought over its soil.

We made the drive from Bordeaux to the Saint Emilion region. The narrow roads wind through acres of vine-yards gnarled stumps; the foliage must all be holidaying somewhere warm for the winter. We arrive at the Chateau de Figeac.

The other guests who were to be on the tour are late; so our now private tour of the sandstone chateau begins. We hear some history; the estate dates from the 2nd century AD. We see some wine-making in action; they buy new oak barrels for each batch at €600-a-pop. And we learn about Saint Emilion wines and Chateau Figeac in particular; Figeac blends 35% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Cabernet Franc and 30% Merlot; unlike most St. Emilion wines which are more typically 70% Merlot and 30% Cabernet varieties.

Then, we get to the real reason people take tours of wineries: To drink wine you could never afford to buy. We sample a ’98 (apparently a good year) Figeac. The mandatory spit-barrel is present, but I sense eyebrows would be raised if someone actually chose to use it. Why would you?

What do you follow some of the finest wine humankind has produced with? Tinned-tuna for lunch in the van parked outside, natürlich.

From the chateau it is only a short drive into the village of Saint Emilion. It’s straight out of medieval times; paved streets; buildings of sand-coloured rough-hewn bricks. A biting-wind runs through the narrow lanes. We walk the steep hills, past endless wine cellars peddling their wares. The first fat drops of a rain shower chase us back to the van. We decide to camp nearby and return in the morning.

M-A returns from her morning run to our camp-site; a picnic-stop beside a small stream, a few kilometres from the village. We drive back in and walk the cobblestones once more. The aroma of freshly baked treats and coffee cannot be resisted; we enjoy cappuccinos and macaroons. (I should say I enjoy a macaroon. If you ever want to see M-A truly disappointed, hand her a tasty-looking treat that contains even trace amounts of marzipan.) Caffeinated and sugared, we ascend the tower, and look down upon the picturesque walled-village, surrounded by vineyards as far as our sight allows us to see.

Gotta love France.

The motorhome diaries: D-Day beaches

I’ve seen the cinematic recreations so many times (thank-you History Channel); the doors on the boats open and the allied soldiers hit the beach; sand, water and flesh shredded by thousands of German bullets.

But now that I’m standing at the shore where it took place, even with Steven Spielberg's assistance, I actually find it difficult to imagine.

The beaches are still referred to by their Operation Overlord code-names. We camp a short ride from Juno, the beach where the Canadian soldiers landed.

We drive around to Arromanches, a small seaside town where a surprising amount of Port Winston - one of the Mulberry harbours the allies established for unloading cargo - is still intact.

Continuing west, we come to Omaha, where the Americans landed and the heaviest fighting took place. My military-strategy training starts and ends at playing Command and Conquer, but if I had to choose between manning a machine gun in the dunes and storming the beach from the boats...I wouldn’t want to be playing this mission as the Allies.

65 years after D-Day (Jour-J in French) there’s not much to mark these beaches apart from any other; the odd crater, a few concrete bunkers and some remaining hardware. Of course there are memorials scattered all along; including a giant, shining-silver monstrosity on Omaha that’s just way too abstract. Even with the thousands of white crosses in the American military cemetery, it is difficult to contemplate just how much blood was spilled here in such a short amount of time.

The motorhome diaries: The road to Rouen

Thwack. The black bee hits the windscreen. Although I suppose from its point-of-view, the windscreen hit it. Its frantic struggle to fly away makes me believe it may survive this unfortunate encounter. The leash of insect-insides tethering it to the windscreen makes me believe it probably won’t.

Most French camping-grounds don’t open until April, many even later. So although our destination is the D-Day beaches, the need to recharge essential items (laptop, sat-nav, mp3 player, phones) convinces us to take a detour via Rouen, and a camp-site we know is open in Les Andelys.

We drive into the ancient city of Rouen’s medieval quarter; picture a fat rat running a narrow maze. I rely on the ‘just look straight ahead and hope for no bad noises’ defense when faced with ‘surely this street is one-way – nope, here comes a car in the opposite direction’ situations. It works for me this time, but I vow to try another strategy in the future; preferably abandoning the mother-ship and launching the pods (bikes).

Rouen is history. The city got the shit kicked out of it in WWII; the buildings are mix of old, new, and patched-up. Amazing to think that some of them were standing when Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake in the main square...

We leave Rouen and head for the tiny town of Les Andelys. Our cigarette-lighter still isn’t working, so we power-on the sat-nav only long enough for M-A to note down the directions with pen-and-paper, before we shut it off again. However annoying you imagine this may be, believe me, it is worse. No roads in France have their actual names signed, and for our distances we are constantly converting between kilometres and miles. We miss virtually every turn. Not surprisingly, the sat-nav’s batteries run dry before we reach Les Andelys.

Somehow, right on dusk, we find the campsite. The location is fantastic. Just out of town on the banks of the Seine, we have the place almost entirely to ourselves. And, we have power; and a shower; and on the overlooking cliff an old tower; and by the river a pretty flower...what’s that? Enough already with the rhyming? Done.

The next day, M-A, still in hard-training for the London marathon, runs most of the way around France. I throw down a few laps of the camping-grounds, just enough to keep the guilt at bay. Later, we climb the hill to where the ruins of a castle lie. The day is perfect, and we can see the whole area. We spend the afternoon drinking beer, watching the barges slowly carrying their cargos up and down the Seine.

As we are departing Les Andelys, we stop in at a mechanic and M-A manages to explain our cigarette-lighter issue. The check the fuses (ahem, as had I), and conclude (ahem, as had I) that the fuse is fine (confession: it took them 20 seconds; it took me half-an-hour). They kindly abandon the tasks they had been working on, and repair the wiring for us immediately. They also charge us only 5 Euro. And people say the French aren’t helpful? M-A asks the two mechanics if they’d like to join us on our travels. The two of them, plus the camping-store attendant from Calais – this van’s going to be crowded. But, with our sat-nav powered, we are fully functional. Roll out troops.