One night in Saint Imoges

The Friday-night dash for Folkestone, the first chapter of all our European adventures, isn't ever going to be a holiday highlight. There's usually a traffic hold up on our journey to the Eurotunnel terminal.

Once safely across the channel, French motorways are a dream to drive on. We put our watches forward an hour and the sun was going down as we continued our drive south.

Saint Imoges is a perfect overnight stopping point being just ten minutes off the motorway, with a generously-sized aire de camping car in woodland, next to a lake and just outside the village.

It was still 21°C when we stepped out of the van into the pitch-black night. There was a light breeze but it was warm, like a summer-holiday evening. It was midnight and the only sounds were ours, as we popped up the roof and put our pillows and duvet on the upstairs bed, and the faint hoot of an owl in the distance.

We had to sleep with the windows unzipped to allow the breeze to pass over us and cool us down. We both slept well and we were back on the road at 8.30am, driving south into the French countryside.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

West coast of France campervan tour

Image
Having decided there's no need to travel half way across a country between camping stays, to mix things up a bit, this summer's fortnight holiday will be spent along France's West coast, starting at Ile d'Oleron and then heading a couple of hours south for each of our other two bases. We were worried about a reported two hour delay near to the Folkestone Channel Tunnel terminal and so, before the Dartford Crossing, we put back our scheduled train by 90 minutes. The traffic was just clearing as we got nearer and as it turns out we'd have been ten minutes early for our original booking. The delay meant it was already 10.30pm by the time we were on French roads and wouldn't reach our chosen aire, Neufchattel en Bray, until 1am. Unfortunately the aire was completely full and so we had no choice but to continue. We arrived at our second choice of aire at 3am. The two extra hours drive through the night meant two hours less the following day though. We d...
Read more

Probably the best aire in France

Image
  Driving days are rarely exciting - we're not ones for stopping to sight see when we've an ultimate destination to get to. So the discovery of La Chute du Grand Baou for our pre-ferry crossing stopover was the best surprise.  While Tony was driving south through France I was researching aires that would leave us with a short drive the next morning and I had a shortlist of three. La Chute du Grad Baou was top choice because of a promised waterfall. I thought I could make out people swimming in one of the website's photos and I'm never one to turn down an opportunity for wild swimming.  We arrived in Brignoles at around 5pm and popped into Lidl to do a small shop for food and wine for that evening. Then we filled up with diesel before heading 15 minutes north to the aire. A short dirt track leads down to a small restaurant with tables outside. To the side are three huge terraced fields for motorhomes. There was one other motorhome there already, hugging the shade from th...
Read more

Valencia

When I came to add our latest trip, I noted that the last blog entry was October 2022. Oops. We've been much better at keeping our YouTube channel  up to date. There you'll find at least half a dozen videos from the summer of 2023 when we went 'Huttopia Hopping' - that is to say we stayed on six different Huttopia campsites over our six-week road trip, from the Atlantic coast, across the Pyrenees and over to the Mediterranean. Back to the present and we're just home from nine nights on the continent. Our ultimate destination was Valencia where we spent five nights at Devesa Gardens.  We didn't rush our drive down, though I guess some would say we did. We stayed on a Camping-Car Park about an hour south of Paris for night one. Knowing it would be 10/11pm when we went through Paris we thought the roads would be quiet. They were not and I wouldn't ever want to go this way again.  The Camping-Car Park at Souppes Sur Loing was a nice peaceful site. Only two other...
Read more