Pea soup, floods and frost

South for the winter!

Pea soup, floods and frost.

We have decided to head south for the winter in TrundlebusToo leaving December mid and coming back late January visiting some familiar stopovers and just for fun throw in lots of new ones.

The ferry was booked and preparations for Stage XIII started to take shape. As with all our adventures we came up with numerous routes south from Calais to Palamós for our Christmas stop over. The weather was to play a big part in the planning and MeteoFrance was bookmarked and regularly visited for updates. 

We eventually decided on Boulogne > Rugles > Richelieu > Montignac > Montferrand > Peyriac de Mer and then cross the border into Spain and our Christmas stop at Palamós.

(Details of sites etc. below)

We spent the night prior to the crossing at Canterbury New Dover Road P&R. Previous experience had taught us that fighting our way round the M25 to catch a 4pm ferry was asking for trouble. It’s still great value at £8 for the overnight stay and the ticket still allows uses of the bus into town if your into that sort of thing.

Wednesday lunchtime arrived and we set off for the short hop down to Dover, we arrived well within the 2 hour window for our 15:55 crossing and were pleasantly surprised to be offered an earlier sailing. Obviously we jumped at the chance. 

After a calm crossing we hit the French shore and headed south towards Boulogne and the Auchan hyper market complex. After a quick shifty round the shop for a few essentials, honestly don’t know why we stressed so much with the “no meat and dairy” rule as nobody at the border controls checked anything other than our passports.

Anyway after a peaceful night we set off for our first proper days driving in France for 3 years. It’s like riding a bike.

Our next stop over was at Rugles, a very peaceful aire with free services including hook up if you can get there before the French!

This is where it all started to go wrong. We headed for the Loire Valley to check out a few prospective stop overs on the way north. The river was so swollen it had managed to take out a couple of major bridges we needed to cross and the detours were shallow we say interesting. All I will say is it’s a good job we were in the TrundlebusToo rather than Trundlebus. 

Our next overnight at La Celle-Saint-Avant had turned into a swimming pool even though it was on hard standing so we headed for n old faithful at . Once again the Cardinal wasn’t up to receiving visitors so we settled and looked forward to our next Aire

The municipal aire at Montignac-Lascaux was our next port of call. After a wonderful drive down through early morning fog and afternoon sunshine we hit the aire at Montignac. €10 for 24 hours includes all you can eat 16amp hookup. Thank goodness we were on hook up as it dropped to -2°c overnight and we woke to thick freezing pea soup fog once again making our next decision so much easier.

Yes it was a 6 hour drive but as we drive south the warmth surged through the windscreen and was a welcome interlude from the fog. 

We woke in Peyriac de Mer after a rather chilly night with the sun attempting to chase away the night. After emptying waste and refilling water we set the Sat nav for Le Boulou. Sadly our exit was cut short, the barrier code we had didn’t work so after a quick call to the Marie and about an hour wait we were finally set free by a very confused workman who couldn’t get the code to work either.

A quick sprint down the road to Le Boulou and E LeClerc for a spot of washing and some much needed vitals we headed for the aire behind cemetery. Sadly it was inhabited by what can only be described as “new age travellers”. We decided to cross the border and hit Spain a day early

We thought about heading for EmpordArea in Palamós a couple of days early but decided to spend the night in Sant Hilari Salcalm. A quiet aire adjacent to a sports hall with services available.

Tuesday morning we headed Palamós after scraping the frost off the van. 

we will be parked here at EmpordArea until 27th December when we hit the road again and head for La Linea and a new year celebration.

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