Abondance

There was a very friendly couple from Bristol on the site, who were eager to checkout the Landy. We were equally eager to look over their very new Sprinter conversion, completed at a highly recommended company, in Yeadon of all places. It was very plush and new and probably very expensive.

A slightly different Sprinter conversion, fully winterised and self contained, preferably on 4 wheel drive, might our next project.

Also on the site was a very busy group taking part in a car rally.  I don’t mean a gravel and mud kind of race; this is more of a “can we all get from A to B to C?” type.

Le 1er Electrofeminin Rallye au Monde certainly looked important and the cars were all plugged into campsite electric outlets. I doubt they would have received full charges overnight though.

The driver ladies all had little popup tents and a young cameraman with ‘Press’ on his branded jacket, was running around filming everything, including the unfolding of these spring-up tents.

When an electric ‘Staff’ car was driven up to the toilet block in order to save the legs of two Staffers, I’m afraid my interest around this world first in electric vehicles, started to wane,

It rained a lot that night and the forecast for further south wasn’t good, so hoping for something reasonable, we decided to go to the Valley of Abondance, which is famous for its cows and the milk from which the cheese is made.

There are no campsites, so we took the advice from Park4Night and stayed at the car park at Lac des Plagnes, at the end of the tarmac, south of Abondance.

This was a serene place, the quietest stopover, except that it really is amongst the cows. The local dairy herd of 30-40 cows were milked in the shed across the road and they were brought in and let out at about 4:30. That’s afternoon and morning’s . They also wear cowbells. It is a noisy experience but somehow we loved it and stayed there for two nights.

The views were tremendous, both of the mountain above and the lake below it.