Almost every time we have visited France in the last few years we have been travelling out of season in late autumn or early spring, spending the colder days of winter as far south as we could get in Europe. When we had endless time to spend this was practical and undeniably pleasant. One ofRead more

At Lac de Pardoux we enjoyed hot walks beside the water and watched French teenagers ignoring all the safety signs around the footbridges over the lake. “Don’t jump in from here!” … of course they did. Great whoops of delight from their friends and gasps of horror from everyone else. There were diving and jumpingRead more

We had a wonderful evening with our French neighbours. They were so keen to improve their English and to help us improve our French that the evening became almost hysterical as we tried to communicate. Danielle and Jose, the absolute soul of kindness and hospitality, gave us artisan beer (yes I know, the alcohol fastRead more

It’s about 550 miles from the north of Portugal to Sitges on the Mediterranean coast just south of Barcelona. We rarely drive more than 150 miles a day and so we knew that the trip would involve several overnight stops. For us this makes the journey interesting, stopping at places we’ve never been before andRead more

There was no doubt that the aire at Betanzos was a fine place to stay for a couple of days yet on the first night our moods were low. The problem was that other than Muncho in Foz hardly anyone had spoken to us since we arrived in Galicia. Even though we understood that peopleRead more

We made steady progress along the coastal motorway from Asturias to Galicia stopping overnight at a free place beside a reservoir in Overo. There was a big shopping centre just a few hundred yards before the thoughtfully provided motorhome parking so we popped in there to fill the fridge. This was the first really bigRead more

We spent three nights on a busy campsite in North West Spain at the start of the Easter holidays. The sun was shining, the campsite was full and there was the happy buzzing sound of children playing together, managing to communicate whether or not they shared a common language. It was amazing how quickly weRead more

Determined to try new places, we scoured the website of the Camping Car Park people and found an interesting looking place in the little town of Taillebourg. The name itself intrigued us, as it sounds as though it should be in Belgium or the Netherlands but is in fact in the Charente region. Here weRead more

We left the aire in Broglie in heavy snow and made our way half a mile up the high street to Lidl. We were running low on battery power and it was something of an emergency because the batteries power the blown air part of the heating system. We really needed the heating on inRead more