Early in March we’d booked to go to Iririki resort which is on a small island a couple of minutes by ferry from the centre of Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu. Two weeks later the devastating cyclone Pam hit the islands. It was sad to see footage of so much destruction in a place…
Monday morning started fine although the forecast was for cloud and rain to come later in the afternoon. We caught the first cable car to the top of Bellevarde and set out to walk the path called “La Spatule”. This was a path that wrapped around the peak and then descended 800 metres above La…
Early Saturday morning we caught the train from Montbard station as we were heading for Val D’Isère in the French Alps. We’d skied there around 10 years ago and wanted to visit for walking and to experience the resort in summer. The journey was around 7 hours, via Lyon and Chambery to Bourg St Maurice and…
Auxerre / Dijon / Essoyes / Layer sur Roche
We spent the next week with my sister, brother-in-law and father at a gîte in Layer Sur Roche, a tiny village about 100km north-west of Dijon. The five bedroom converted farmhouse seemed so spacious following our previous six weeks in the camper van – although we still missed our former “home”. According to the local…
After petit dejeuner at the seafront cafe and a final swim we left Ondres to set out on the around 1200km journey across France and back to Rheinfelden. I have to say we were both a bit sad as this felt more like a task than an adventure. We’d decided to split the journey across…
There was one day left before starting the long trek back across France to Rheinfelden to drop off the campervan. Originally we’d intended to visit Bordeaux but rather than struggle with parking and traffic we decided it would be better to explore Bayonne and Biarritz. We parked on the edge of Bayonne and cycled into…
The heavy traffic and crowds dressed in red and black clearly signalled this was no ordinary day as we approached St Jean de Luz. Coincidentally we’d arrived on the weekend of “La Fête de Noir et Rouge”, a Basque festival of music, dance and bonfires. Luckily there was still one small space left on the…
As we entered Spain the roads became wider, but much less well maintained, and we bounced down the valley to the ski resort of Formigal. The signage and markings were “in your face”, the buildings modern and everything seemed more ordered but very sterile. Formigal is skiing on an industrial scale. No quaint Alpine village…
