Wednesday 30th November
Let me introduce you to some of my new friends. Drinking red wine is all very well but once in a while you need to treat yourself to some proper laughing juice. We’ve met the Perlembourg before, one of Lidls finest and only 79c. The other two were a bit more than that but the Kronenbourg was outstanding, a very tasty wheat beer produced in France.
We had a great plan, it has been changed again because we’re not entirely happy with where we are. We are on an ACSI campsite and they have stuck us as far away as they possibly can. The toilet block is a hundred yards away, no toilet seats and no paper in the cubicles (you only forget that once).
The shower cubicles are tiny and there is no hot water between 10.30am and 6.00pm. When the hot water is on the shower is very hot and very powerful, in fact it was so good not being on severely restricted motorhome water conservation mode that I washed everything twice so I don’t have to have another shower next week.
As you can see the weather has improved but it is noticeably cooler in the shade from the trees than it is away from the campsite. We were going to stay here for four weeks and get the special discount, we’ve decided to move on, find cheap aires and spend all the money we save on cheap gin.
Today we went for a stroll into Avignon. The outskirts of the city are nothing to write home about, in fact they are best avoided but once inside the city walls everything looks and feels much nicer. The city covers a huge area and was once home to the French Popes hence the large impressive buildings. We thought about going into some of them and then we thought again, the problem is that we’ve seen so many fantastic buildings this trip.
This is the ‘World Famous Bridge’ as our Tourist Information girl calls it. Can you see anything missing? All that time when they were teaching us that song (which is the only reason it is world famous) did they ever tell you that most of it fell down? It used to be 900m long with 24 arches.
This tower looked interesting however there was no mention of it on our map and there were no signs or even doors into it so I can’t tell you anything about it except it is in Rue Carnot (I think he developed the petrol engine).
We spent a good couple of hours looking in the sparkly shops. There were lots of pedestrianised walkways crammed with jewellers, some of us were very happy.
We eventually got her unstuck from the windows and managed to climb to the park at the top of the hill. Another view of the bridge. On the other side of the Rhone where the trees are is our campsite which is on a large (the largest in France) island. The tower in the top right is where the bridge used to end, it’s in a town called Villeneuve which we will be visiting tomorrow.
St Andrew Fort, containing St Andrews Benedictine Abbey. Round about this area are the Palaces built by the 13th century popes, again we’ll visit tomorrow.
A close up of the church on the bridge at Avignon. Today has been very warm and we’ve managed to sit by the river with a picnic and do as little as possible.
Are you at Camping Bagatelle? I began to wonder just based on the description of the facilities, before I even saw which town you were in. We were there a couple of weeks ago.
Yes, well spotted. It was one of the very few sites open at this time of year. Moving on tomorrow, heading south.