Ending Up Anywhere

We've lost count of the number of times we've visited Île d'Oléron, France's second largest island, connected to the mainland by bridge just off the west coast. Having spend three and a half weeks on the largest island, Corsica, and six nights in the Loire, we were craving sunny beaches again. The weather forecast was perfect and it was just three hours drive from where we said goodbye to our campervan owning friends Jules and Pete. Literally less than a minute after Tony said he'd booked the campsite he declared: 'I've booked the wrong one'. He'd booked Huttopia Les Pins when we prefer Huttopia Chenes Verts. Tony got his pine trees mixed up with his green oaks. It wasn't the end of the world. One campsite is only a 40 minute cycle from the other. Our preferred beach is a further one hour and 20 minutes away right the other side of the island. The mix up would just make us get more exercise. We arrived at 1.40pm and I fully expected to have to wa

Le Chant d'Oiseau  We departed Corsica with enough holiday days free that we could leave France for another EU country should France have remained on the UK government's ridiculous 'Amber Plus' list. Had France remained amber plus we would have had to quarantine for 10 days upon arriving back home and so had a Hook of Holland to Harwich ferry on standby. In the end, France was put on the amber list before we'd left the island and so we were free to remain in France and mooch around for another 10 days. Our friends Jules and Pete were in France in their campervan and we arranged to head up to their campsite for their last six nights. We arrived at Le Chant d'Oiseau at lunchtime and were warmly greeted by campsite owners Stu and Syb who had saved us the corner pitch we stayed on last year where there were plenty of big trees for our hammocks to hang. This year's stay was to be a far more joyous occasion than last year's when we weren't intending to be

  Our two planned over-nighters, the night before and the night after the Corsica to France ferry didn't go to plan. We'd have been better staying put at Camping Amurucciu and driving the hour to Bastia port rather than getting ourselves 30 minutes closer on the vineyard we've used twice before. The vineyard was not accepting campers for some reason. Fortunately it was only just past lunchtime and we still had time to look for alternatives. We found Camping A Stella just ten minutes further up the road and checked in for a night for 25 euros. There were a couple of stunning beachfront pitches available but both were close to steps down to the pebble beach and the last thing we wanted was people walking past our pitch. In the end we sited ourselves out of the way beside a dried up river bed and went to spend the day on the sandy beach just the other side of a rocky outcrop. It was pretty stupid for Tony to climb over that with his ankle still recovering from major fractures

  It's normal to feel down at the end of a holiday and this isn't even the end, just the penultimate night on this beautiful island. I feel a mix of emotions. I'm sad to leave but I'm enormously grateful for the chance to have had this holiday given the circumstances. Then I feel guilt at even contemplating a foreign holiday while most people have had staycations. I've felt far safer at Camping Amurucciu than I ever would have done on a crowded campsite in the UK though. That said, whatever anyone had planned for a break this year they look as though they've enjoyed which is fantastic; we all deserve it, I think. I thought I'd feel bored having stayed on one campsite for the entire duration. We've made Amurucciu the first site of each of the two previous visits to Corsica because it effortlessly gives us the beach fix we've craved. I think we've stayed six or seven nights at the maximum on either occasion. They don't call Corsica 'Île de

  We've found another Corsican beer to try. Kiara seems to come in several variations, each in different coloured labels. It is a six pack and I put two each in the cool box which is still going strong after being plugged in for two weeks. Tonight's dinner will be paella with a reasonably priced, decent sized bag of fruits de mer. Naturally Cleopatra already had paella rice in her store cupboard. We've been eating a lot of pasta dishes for evening meals. We've made pasta puttanesca three times since it's our favourite. One evening I suggested macaroni cheese but Tony didn't want anything so heavy. We compromised on a recipe I found for goats cheese and mushroom pasta sauce. I suggested adding chopped walnuts for a bit of crunch and it was divine. The goats cheese did two nights of the same, broken up by a night where I decided I needed meat and we made mustard lentils with me having beef steak and Tony a grilled aubergine. Last night we thought we'd try maca

  We've always accepted that a lot of effort is needed to reach a beautiful, sandy, deserted beach. Before all our holidays were taken on Cleopatra's four wheels the Greek islands were our beach holiday destinations. Rhodes became our favourite Island and we spent four or five summers there. We'd stay in an apartment in Lindos where the rooftop restaurants all had views of the acropolis but by day we'd drive our rental car 30 minutes south, drive down a track we would never take a car we owned, and then walk another 30 minutes to Agios Georgious beach. In Crete we'd stay in Matala in the little-visited south of the island and leave everyone on the town beach while we scaled a mountain to get to the 'red beach'. In Corfu we had a few favourite beaches away from tourist resorts, including the beautiful Mirtiotissa. Then Cleopatra introduced us to roadtrip holidays and we discovered Île d'Oléron where our favourite campsite was the opposite side of the isla

  For the first time this visit, or on any visit come to think about it, we can see two small islands from the beach. The one you can see in this photo is, I believe, Pianosa. We've fallen into a comfortable and familiar routine that campers often do of being up with the sun and in bed just after dark. I don't like to go to bed too early since I hung up solar fairy lights in the trees just in front of our camping spot and they look lovely. It's nice to see them come on as the sun sets over the mountains. They do seem to be confusing a cicada though, which continues to chirrup as though it's still daytime. So we're up fairly early, sitting outside with a cup of coffee as the sun rises over the Mediterranean. We walk the 15 minutes to the decently-sized E LeClerc supermarket to buy supplies as it opens at 8am. I can't resist a baguette for breakfast. For the first three days I filled it with ham and cheese. Then I purchased a delicious chunky paté, and today I fan

  We settled into beach life easily. It's a hard life, all this going to the beach all day and sitting with a beer or two in the evening, falling asleep listening to the waves crashing and a sea breeze blowing across us in our rooftop bed. In the morning we'd wake up to a dip in the sea while the coffee was brewing.  We pitched literally 20 steps from the beach which was not busy because Camping Amurucciu is all that's on this piece of Corsican coast. Even so we walked five minutes in either direction to have masses of sand and sea all to ourselves. Corsica has a population density a third that of mainland France and one seventh that of the UK. So when you take ten kilometres of beach on which there's only one smallish campsite and not a lot else, you end up not sharing your paradise with many others. Nothing could have been better for summer 2021. The landscape is stunning and it's amazing just swimming or floating around looking back at the beach and the trees and

We arrived for the ferry to Corsica half an hour before they were allowing anyone into the port at Nice and so we drove along the coast a little until we found a parking space. It was 50 cents for 35 minutes, perfect for us to wait until we'd no longer be turned away at the port. We were the third vehicle to drive onto the ferry, the Mega Andrea. This meant we were also the first onto the sun deck where we grabbed deckchairs right at the back of the boat and faced them away from everyone. There were far fewer deckchairs than I remember on the last crossings and therefore fewer people on the deck and I didn't feel particularly uncomfortable. One learning point is the Mega Andrea isn't as speedy as the Mega Express we've travelled on before and the journey time to Corsica's port of Bastia was 7 hours rather than the previous 5 hours 45. It was sunny throughout the whole journey but windy and bearable. We slapped on factor 50 and alternated between dozing a

  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

  It is late July 2021 and I barely posted anything to any social media about our forthcoming holiday because I couldn't let myself believe it would actually happen. I was trying to manage my own expectations and disappointment if the Covid restrictions of either France or the UK prevented our travel. When we learned travel into France from the UK was to be allowed, about two weeks before our departure, we risked booking the ferry from Nice to Corsica. We'd have preferred the Savona to Corsica route but Italy would have required us to quarantine for five days. One week before departure the shambles of a UK government, from out of nowhere, created a whole new category in its green, amber, red classification for foreign travel. France became 'amber plus.' This would mean 10 days of self isolation when we returned home. We immediately changed our return ferry crossing, bringing it forward to allow us the necessary time at home. It was annoying but not disastrous for a six-

 

  It's been a tough year for everyone and we hadn't been able to take advantage of February or Easter school holidays. In fact I worked through the Easter break so I was even more excited at the prospect of going away in our campervan.  We were ever hopeful that we would be able to travel to France or Spain but that wasn't to be. As a back up plan we had booked a campsite in Cornwall and our holiday started with a 5am alarm. Once we had our bikes loaded and an awful lot else we were on the road by 6am. What a journey! We could check in at 1pm and we had already allowed extra travel time for bank holiday traffic. 1.35pm wasn't bad for time and soon we had set up the huge Outwell awning we hadn't used in years.  Our campsite, the Caravan and Motorhome Club site in Marazion has no facilities block so we needed the additional space of our massive awning in order to be self sufficient. The intermediate space between the van and the enclosed awning was a perfect space for