Chartreuse

The ‘hills’ to the east, above the two lakes, separate this area from the huge Lac du Bourget, with Aix-les-Bains on the east side and Chambery to the south. The names seem all to be associated with cats and we ascended Col du Chat, rather than use the Tunnel du Chat and then down to the lake and to a supermarket. Today is Ascension day and the people of the area are either riding bikes, sitting in cars not moving very quickly or at the Intermarché. They are here, as are we, because it’s the only place open! We need to stock up and so we fill the trolley and stand in the queue. Most of the checkout personnel must also be ‘pont-ing’ to le weekend as there are few are here.

We then retrace our steps and again drive up Chatland and this time up the D42 to Mont du Chat. The road is a cycling magnet, as it forms long switchbacks between hairpins and we ascend to 1,496m and then beautifully, we arrive at a parking spot just as it’s being vacated and slide in. There are a lot of cars and bicycles and it’s quite a spot. The restaurant has laid tables with cloths and they are doing what we simply cannot do in England and serve proper food from plates at a roadside ‘cafe’.

The best bit is the view; it’s a beautiful day and the high peaks in the distance are white. Standing high above the ones near it is Mont Blanc - it sort of takes your breath away because it is so big.

We stand and look and gaze and say “hi” to some people there who were at the campsite. What’s the chances of that?! Then we head south to the Chartreuse area and enjoy the scenery which is pastoral with big craggy outcrops. Spring growth is in full force and everything is bursting in the sun and heat.

We have a picnic by a lake, along with a lot of locals and no doubt plenty from Grenoble / Chambery. As is common in France they are mostly in family groups, often there’s three generations together.

There’s a book-bank; these seem to be very popular and come in all sizes. This is a bigger example.

We had an afternoon coffee high up at Corbel (at 842m) and passed le Dèsert d’Entremont, a small ski area. Then we descended a little further over the final few km, to arrive at Entremont-le-Vieux, still at over 800m.

The campsite here is a little quirky. It caters for small camper vans, has a few lodges and welcomes hike-campers with a pitch for 3/4 tents. Inside the building it’s rather like an old youth hostel, with a room for cooking, eating and planning the next day. There’s a rule to remove shoes at the communal bathroom entrance but the result seems to be that many pairs are discarded, never to be worn again. In fact there’s a shelf with kids shoes on and I’m sure none of those moved the three days we were there.

The village is tiny and borders a rushing river with close-cut grass on either side, making a small park. In the heat it was a nice place to be. The loud clangs of cowbells were ever present, though and for some reason these stopped during the night for just a very few hours. They started again at 6am but I honestly don’t know why they were fitted to the poor animals, as they were kept in a field next to the farm (more like a hobby) and were not used as intended to locate the animals as they wander up and around the crags.

So morning sleep was a challenge and if the cows weren’t enough, at 7am the church bell struck the hour. At 7:05 it chimed the hour again and then there was a single bell tolling in three groups of three. Maybe there’s some Catholic Church significance to this but I don’t know what that might be.

The area is beautiful and we had a great walk that was full of surprises as we followed the river downstream into what became a gorge, with the river carving through a deep canyon. It’s a small river and the canyon narrow but even so, the depth of the rocky sides and some of the pools was very surprising. It’s a long way down and there’s no getting out!

I haven’t mentioned that on morning #1, just after the 7am bells, a sole market trader came to the village car park and set up a stall just through the hedge from our pitch. It’s just as well that his Cerises tasted great, as it was another slightly early wake-up!

I’m mentioning too many negatives. Chartreuse and this village are beautiful and I haven’t seen such an idyllic alpine pasture area before, without going into the high mountains. This area is in many ways, more accessible and less daunting.

Towards Savoie

We stayed on the motorway, which for us is unusual in France but we have experienced the traffic calming in the towns and villages. A direct and fast journey was planned and achieved, with a nice morning stop and appropriate accompaniments.

We arrived at Saint-Jean-de-Chevelu which is a little west of Lac du Bourget, the huge lake which has Aix- les-Bains on its eastern shore. We went to a previously researched campsite, Camping des lacs. This is a lovely spot of about 100 places for a mix of tents, camper-vans and smaller motor homes. There are also cabins and some that were a bit like shepherd’s huts. It’s situated next to two small lakes (surprise!) and there’s a ring of small mountains around. These would have been peri-glacial lakes 🥸 back at the last ice age and have now become a joint playground and eco place. You can swim, fish and respect ‘nature’ here but need to get in the right part at the right time to do what’s allowed.

A lady pecheur told us of carp and we had seen and heard a huge fish jump out of the water (and back in) when we were there the previous evening but there was no evidence that she’d managed to catch anything.

The campsite hosts were really happy to engage in my French ‘conversation’ and it’s really useful when people do. I just blurt out what I want to say, in what I think are roughly the correct words and it usually works. 

We set ourselves up for “one night, or maybe two” but it ended-up being three. The first two were très tranquille but the last was with a full site and it was a little more noisy. The next day would be Pentecost (Ascension I think) and that’s a French ‘oliday.  It’s a Thursday and most people ‘Pont’ across to le weekend by taking Friday off too.

So there were kids playing out late and early and having a great time in the building heat. There’s a few days of very hot weather on the way.

We bought strawberries at what we would find to be a great price, at a roadside stall in the village and it didn’t take long for the guy in the boulangerie to sell us some cheese as well as the bread we had gone for. He also did his best to sell ice cream for a shop in another village.

We are now in shorts. At last we are getting England 2025 type spring weather! To celebrate we went to the lake (a 2 minute walk) and got in from the pontoon that’s shared with fisher people. The water is murky but not cold and we had a dip.

We had a slightly longer swim the next day, again in just our budgies and bikini, whilst a couple of blokes spent a long time donning wetsuits and caps, before heading across the lake at a very leisurely breaststroke. At least I can manage crawl in my birthday suit although not all the way across. I’m very wary of giant carp.

There’s an easy walk around the two lakes and later we would snap a pic from the road over the col high above.

Camp cooking is as sophisticated as at home, although there we don’t go for boil-in-the-bag rice. It’s handy when camping as the rice gets everywhere!

It was a nice couple of days of proper R&R after a busy spring, in retirement. We feel totally on ‘oliday too!

Onwards

You can’t visit a classic car enthusiast without admiring their car and we got our timing right, as it was the monthly club meet on Sunday. This was held at the Hippodrome in Maisons Laffitte, so it was just up the road.

The definition of ‘classic’ here is 30 years and so many of the vehicles there looked very familiar to us 😳. TR5 and TR6, MGB, RR, BMW, Maserati, of course the Jensen Interceptor that our host drives, 2CV, Caterham 7, a beautiful Austin Healy 3 litre and then this…

This is identical to mine, a Fiat 850 Sport Coupé, that I owned from 1978-81. Seeing it, brought back memories of welding, brazing, stripped driveshaft splines, clutch on the M1 and many miles of amazing touring. We drove around France on a camping road trip for all of September 1978 and the following year did the Ardennes for a month too.

Here’s Nige’s Jensen…

Maisons Laffitte is a very nice area to the west of Paris centre. The mansion is now owned by a trust I think and is a beautiful building.

All we needed to do then was leave Paris towards the south east but it wasn’t easy. We do not / did not have a vehicle height restriction, programmed into either of our navigation tools and so we were not guided away from the A86.

So when, in a load of traffic, we were moving towards it, the max 2m height warnings were a surprise and one that was nearly unavoidable. Just at the last minute is there an emergency slip off but not before a couple of car horns encouraged us too.

The map doesn’t show stress or the detail of stops and checks!

We made it into a nice Sunday motorway drive. We were disappointed that we were no longer on the ‘free flow’ motorway from Normandie to Paris. The French think it’s so modern to use cameras and then web payment for the tolls. Having setup our account and paid for yesterday, we then found there’s only one other free-flow and we won’t be driving it.

We arrived on the banks of the Yonne and to a gorgeous ‘aire de camping car’ at a small village called Gurgy. Here there’s a barrier and card machine and for €11 you can stay overnight with electricity included, in a broad line of about 20 spaces, facing the river. It was quite amazing and we had a great evening and sleep.

Couldn’t help myself capture these pics of two motorhomers with their must have accessory.

To Paris

We checked the forecast again and save for a few slightly ‘dodgy days’, it looks good; the drive to the Alps is ‘on’. We thus triggered a ‘maybe’ part of ‘The Plan’ and surprised our friends and very long term residents of a Parisian suburb, by asking if we could call in. Of course after about seven or eight years, one cannot ‘just call in’ and overnight hospitality was offered and we set the compass and timer to arrive a couple of days later.

The river Seine gets awkward after flowing through Paris, well it’s fairly bendy there too and the trip towards Paris got tangled-up with the river a bit. However our OsmAnd map is detailed enough to show a ferry across at the edge of the village in which we planned to stay and we approached it with interest.

There was no queue and no charge. Unlike the UK where there would have been at least a toll dating back to 1504 or some such time, collected by a family with the responsibility handed down through the generations, this is a free service provided by some sort of river authority. We happily drove on and off within 5 minutes.

The Abbey at Jumièges is just below the village campsite and is one of the oldest Benedictine monasteries in Normandy. It might be constructed of limestone. It has a very intense white colour that’s almost marble in its appearance. The abbey dates from about 654 but I don’t know if any of those first parts are visible now. I doubt it but it seems to have been well established by the 11th century.

The campsite is affiliated with the two touring clubs in the UK and you can see this, as there were several vehicles with a UK plate. We are usually the only one. Of course the Landy generated some chat and an elderly couple came to see us to say that they too had a 110 (Puma) with Icarus roof but that it was getting too hard to handle and they were instead towing a small caravan.

Innocuously they enquired about our travels: “Have you been far?”, “yes” we said, “to Portugal, the Alps, Albania, Greece, Bosnia…”. Had we been over that hard road in the north of Albania? “You mean to Teth?”, “Yes”. “We have”.

Then they talked about retrofitting the seats if they decide to stop using their Landy altogether,  happening to say that they can easily fit a third seat as “we ‘needed a minder when we crossed Libya”. Wow. They had shipped the 110 to Cape Town and driven home, in 2008, via Libya and on (somehow) to Jordan and Syria. Then in 2020, they got tangled up with Covid19 when they were in the USA, having shipped it to Savanna, Georgia!

So they had a story or two to relate.

The campsite shop sold cider which tasted good and encouraged us to lookup the producer. It comes from just across the river and we decided to pay them a call in the morning as we drove away. This required a different ferry back across, only a few miles from the other. Again there was no queue and we were soon across and at the cider place.

This is an innocuous looking business that grows its own fruit, presses, ferments and bottles it. We had a great time engaging in a discussion about bottling particularly and the control / minimisation of ‘giveaway’. All this with one guy whilst the other wrestled with a brand new SumUp till and reader. We were the first to use it and unfortunately for us, we ended up using cash!

Later we approached the west of Paris, crossed the river when we shouldn’t have and were welcomed by our friends, about 20 minutes late! A lot of catching-up was done that afternoon and evening.

By the way, please let me know that you are reading this, either by WhatsApp or by leaving a comment on a post. Thank you to those who do 😘

Honfleur

You’ve either heard of it or you haven’t and we hadn’t. At the estuary of the Seine, opposite the port city of Le Havre, is this beautiful town. Of course I can look good in nice clothes and nearly everywhere looks good under blue skies. Yesterday Honfleur was dressed well and it looked great.

Unfortunately for the seafarers, the harbour access was eventually blocked with Seine silt, save for a dredged channel that maintains access for small boats. Maybe it was the creation of Le Havre as a result that has meant Honfleur retains an olde worlde charm that wasn’t destroyed in WW2.

We walked the 2+ miles from:the campsite to the Vieux Bassin and drank a throughly deserved Café Crème at La Maison Bleu, a café on the cobblestones where the waiter was one of those career guys who can just do it.

He doesn’t carry any aids, save a tray and a cloth, with a card machine when he’s ready to take payments. When he came for our order he already had those from at least three tables and picked up two more on the way back. These were all mental notes; no order pad was used. It was beautifully professional and it’s hard to imagine many others being able to do that.

We walked the streets, following a recommended route, popped into a couple of churches and marvelled at the old buildings. Many others were doing the same as this place is very popular. There are plenty of Dutch, German and a few Belgie visitors and I expect plenty of French too but they mingle more easily.

It’s an easy place to visit and when we’d had a sandwich, drunk a beer and seen plenty of oysters being served, we walked the long way back via a viewpoint that really shows the town, the Pont Normandie and the huge motorhome ‘Aire’ at the other side of the big wheel but I cut that from the pic.

Then we were surprised by the tunefulness and volume of these bells which chimed the quarter as we stood to admire their construction. This is at La Chapelle de Grâce, the site of a Norman (C11th) sanctuary that was built in order to help protect seafarers. Mostly it was lost in a landslide in 1538 but some parts were spared and another chapel was built in 1613,

The return walk was on country lanes that afforded glimpses of grand houses behind high hedges and gates. It was a nice wander of maybe 3+ miles, back to the campsite La Briquerie (https://www.campinglabriquerie.com/), where the ACSI rate was €23 plus visitor tax (which seems to get you everywhere except the UK).

We thought it best at this point to try the local cider and it was excellent.

A bit of Normandie

We’d taken the ferry as a change from the tunnel, as well as the route to Portsmouth giving us that chance to drop-in to SIV but it is slow! Le Shuttle is so quick to load and unload and although the Commodore Clipper is a very small ferry, we sat in line for ages, both before and during the check in and border process. Maybe the M1/25/20 drive isn’t such a bad option after all.

That route has brought us here to Normandy and it’s full of things to do. We are going to spend a day at Honfleur which is across the Seine from Le Havre. One is a big port and the other a beautiful coastal town. We’ll concentrate on the beautiful bit.

First though we need a place to stay as it’s already 7pm when we disembark (no queues or further checks here are needed to enter the EU). Just up the coast are a couple of places on Park4night. We drove past one in order to have a look. It’s a €10 fee to go through a security gate to a house but we think you need to ring a French number and we wonder about the preimposed ‘spend cap’ we have on the pay monthly sim in the phone and decide to look at the other place.

That’s in a village up the road and is a small parking area next to the church, at the entrance to the cemetery. When we arrive, there are six camper van / motor homes already occupying the six reserved spots and although there are a few other parking spaces, we are not sure.

The sign says parking must be in allocated spaces (it’s very succinct in French but I can’t recall it). The ‘six’ are all Dutch / German, save for one and I muster my best Franglais and ask if he thinks we are ok where we have parked. He says that as we are out of the turning circle for the bus, then we are. This doesn’t help for some reason and we resolve to return to the €10 make-a-call gate, which is only a few minutes away.

As we pull-up to the gate and start to fumble with the phone, it opens and the kind lady hostess bekons us across the apron and welcomes us. Not only that, we don’t need to park alongside the other four small motor homes and we can drive onto the grass and park further away. It must be a Land Rover thing.

So we do, The dog stops barking, we have a beer in the sun and all is well.

The next morning we pay the fee and drive 20mins north to Etretat. Dawn has done the research and knows what to expect but even so, the high chalk cliffs with their sea arches and the huge steep pebble beach are quite a surprise.

We walk along, out towards the school kids picking in the rock-pools for snails (?) and I find a lead sinker off someone’s beach fishing tackle. How long it has been there I can’t tell but it hasn’t degraded.

It’s a popular place, even in this sudden cool weather with heavy rain on the way. We walk up the cliff and back down again, manage a coffee and then walk back to the Pay-by-phone car park (the only one that allows >2m).

We know it’s going to rain. A low pressure system is heading straight for us. We’ve almost forgotten what rain a like, it’s been so dry in England.

So we head for Honfleur and a big campsite a couple of miles out, with lots of hot water and facilities. We’ve invested in ACSI cards for this year and the site will thus give us a low season discount. 

The motorway pèage doesn’t seem to know if we are class 1 or 2. One of these will be more costly than the other but which one is selected is a lottery at each barrier. We pay extra on this motorway section to go across Pont Normandie. There’s little alternative but it’s a great bridge anyway. The fact that they are adding cables to those that have been there since it was built 30 years ago is slightly surprising but presumably the result of recent bridge collapses (was it Genoa?).

It rains all afternoon and into the early evening, before we finally venture out for a little leg stretch and then some very appropriate warming soup. 

It hasn’t been a long drive today!