RV Roadtrip – A Few Months of Slow Travel in France and Spain

After a couple of months in the States we were ready to get back to Peppa and RV life in Europe. We hadn’t really planned anything out but were planning on taking things slow and just enjoying France and Spain. We flew into Paris and stayed near the Latin Quarter which is a part of Paris we really like (who doesn’t?). Just wandering the streets is so enjoyable. Another thing we’ve started doing is a trip on the Batobus, a ferry that lets you hop on and off at various stops along the Seine river. Dogs are allowed and it’s a no brainer when we visit Paris. We stayed in Paris for four days and used the Batobus like a taxi or metro for two of the days.

After our Paris ‘vacation’ we picked up the RV from Sens which had conveniently been filled with water and plugged in to get the fridge cooling. We did a grocery stock up and then headed about an hour south to Joigny and a little municipal campsite we had stayed in when we first brought the RV to France. It was very tranquil, the village is lovely with a weekly market and still has a medieval era gate, church and homes. It was quite hot, though, and it seemed like our fridge was struggling. We tried several ‘tricks’ to help it stay cool but it felt like a losing battle. After a week or so we decided to switch it over to LPG and that started working like a charm.  From Joigny we headed up to Sezanne and then to Eperney. The camping at Eperney was absolutely packed, we couldn’t believe it! Shani had made a reservation which was very fortunate indeed. When we started RV life in Europe we never made reservations but it seems things are different now. So many more vans on the road and so many completely full campsites. In what is likely a future trend for us, we left the camping car in Eperney and took a train up to Reims for a two night visit. (Someone might have been celebrating one of her milestone birthdays.)

Reims was very nice and it was great to have a couple of nights in a hotel. Reims is the unofficial capital of the Champagne wine-growing region, and many of the champagne houses headquartered there offer tastings and cellar tours. For more than 1,000 years, French kings were crowned at its Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims. This grand cathedral is known for its stained-glass windows and Gothic carved portals, including the Smiling Angel. (Wikipedia)

After Reims we were back to the camping car and off to a little village called Briare. It was in Briare where things started to really come apart. The fridge wasn’t working on 220, only LPG and 12V. Our ‘beloved’ GPS Gabby had given up the ghost and took the backup camera with her. And now, sometime in the night, a massive power surge killed off part of the brains for our leisure electrics (the part of the electrical system that provide the power for the camper part of the RV). We noticed something wrong in the morning when we plugged in the cell phone charger and it started smoking! When the electric company guys came out to the site the power was still flowing through the camping site outlets at 400 volts (it should have been only 220 volts!!).

Not yet knowing the extent of the damage, we headed off to a repair shop to have the situation assessed. Shout out to the guys at CLC in Orleans who got us in (after lunch, of course – it is France after all) and diagnosed the now damaged electroblock. They also checked our internal wiring, our extension cords, and came up with a temporary remedy that would allow us to still use the camping car while we figured out insurance claims and potentially waited for replacement parts. We decided to camp in a little village called Bracieux near Chambord and the lovely chateau there. It is a little south of Orleans which we figured was a good spot to wait out the insurance/repair/ordering parts for the van issues. As is always the case, these things take a lot longer than expected. We decided to keep moving along, still at a very leisurely pace, and we were enjoying the Loire and the chateaux that are quite abundant in that region. The next stop was Saumur and then Angers where we spent ten days. For all of these stops we had been making advanced reservations and it was a good thing too, we saw people turned away as the sites were completely full.   After Angers we went to the absolutely picturesque Coulon for a couple of days and then to Cognac. The camping in Cognac was not very crowded for a change but that might have been due to the Asian Stink Bug infestation. They didn’t seem to like our camping car, though certainly we did have our issues with them. Cognac is a little underwhelming but it was an easy walk from the camping, first along the river and then through the forest.

Very near Cognac, and still in the official region, we met up with some Instagram friends @john.n.kellie and their friends @siloadventures. There is a cognac producer called Cognac Goyon that has a free aire for camping cars and offers a tour and tasting.

Super cool experience. In addition to their own cognac, they also produce cognac for Remi Martin and Hennessy. They also make two versions of a sweet wine and so we bought some cognac and a white and a red. You know, to support local businesses :).

We joined our new friends at another aire in the region before all going our separate ways. We headed down to St. Jean de Luz for some familiar camping near the ocean for a week and then into Spain while one of our new friends was going to continue slow travel in France on the way to Spain and the other was racing across to Italy and then a Schengen reset in Turkey . We had no real plan for Spain, it just seemed like a good place to re-visit.

We figured we would cut across Spain and maybe head as far south as Valencia chasing warmer weather.  Our first stop was Camping La Barguilla just outside of the quaint village of Ramales de La Victoria. The camping was muy tranquilo and we probably would have stayed longer had they not been closing for the season. The village has several great spots to grab a drink and do some people watching.  Another spot we should have stayed longer at was the organic olive oil farm Aceite Artajo Tudela. It was a little tricky to get to but so worth it! Their olive oil is superb. There are trails through the farm, a lovely lake and of course you get to buy the oil directly from the farm. Had we planned better we would have stayed another day but it was the weekend and we had already booked our pitch in Valencia. We’ll be back.

We ended up staying outside of Valencia for just over a week before moving onto Peniscola, one of our favorite Spanish coastal towns. We have a favorite little dive bar where beers and wine are 2 Euros each. We also found a spot that does a really good gluten-free burger. The present castle was built by the Knights Templar between 1294 and 1307. Definitely worth the visit if you’re in the area. This time around we stayed for about two weeks.

We had made plans to fly from Madrid to Uruguay to resume the 4Runner road trip in South America and in order to import Sebastian into Uruguay he had to have blood tests and a clean bill of health. Normal people would have found a good van storage facility in Spain but we’re partial to our storage in France and so that’s the direction we turned the van. One of us might have been dropped on their head as a baby one too many times because we hatched a scheme to drop the camper off and take a train to Paris and spend the night. Then, the next day we would take a train to Barcelona and get the vet certificate, spend a few days and then take another train to Madrid for a couple of days and then fly out. This scheme required Sebastian getting blood work in Barcelona about 3 weeks before landing in Montevideo. And so to Barcelona we went.

After Barcelona we continued north to L’Estartit, a small town and seaside resort on the Costa Brava. Our timing was bad as half of the site was undergoing the annual tree trimming and so we were all packed in like sardines. The facilities were nice and the little town has its charms. Unfortunately for me, I took a chance on some queso fundido that might not have been cold enough in the fridge and gave myself some very violent food poisoning. The texture of the processed cheese was all wrong but my desire for cheesy goodness was too strong. (We now have a thermometer in both the fridge and freezer.)

My food poisoning stuck with me for a few days which was a real bummer as we had trains and planes to catch, and so we moved on to a couple of aires in France and then the Ibis hotel in Sens. We figured we needed a couple of days to get the rig in storage shape and to pack all our gear for South America. Unfortunately, Shani also ate something from the fridge that must not have been cold enough and got her own bout of food poisoning! But at least we were almost in a hotel at that point. Unbeknownst to us, we were there for the Rally of Sens and so there were quite a few interesting rally cars for us to check out while we did our van chores.

And that was the end of our road trip in Peppa. We had a few hard knocks but it all worked out and we had some good adventures. It was really nice to have our little home on wheels and the slow pace of travel definitely suits us.

The train trip to Paris was easy, Paris was great as always and lucky for me, coincided with my birthday. We stayed very near the Gare de Lyon station so very convenient for our train trips. Next stop on the train was Barcelona which of course was great again. Having an apartment there was really nice, it’s a pretty amazing place. Madrid was a bit of a surprise, we really liked the city – green space, interesting markets and parks to walk but the lodging was super expensive, not sure why?
Stay tuned as we land in Montevideo, pick up the 4Runner from storage and start moving north.