Nimes/Move/Tarragona

Sunday 9^th Sept: Settled into the site and tried out the communications chain – poor unfortunately, another ‘hotspot’ connection and with reception only available at the office/restaurant area. After much patience and persistence we got through to most of the family to find that all is well. The site is a very quiet, well laid out and ideally located municipal site with loads of large pitches so we have got a nice and comfy pitch with very few other people around. Whilst the site is not at the top of the quality list it has all the necessary requirements and is good value for money. We decided to keep some of the momentum going and planned a visit to Nimes for tomorrow, Pont du Gard on Tuesday, a rest/pack up day for Wednesday and then our move to Spain on Thursday. Neil is eager to get to the next site as it is actually on a beach beside the Med and next door to a nudist beach – oh la la. We did a small orientation drive (where the shops are) around and the good weather continues with a sunny 29C day. Did our Italy tolls figures which came to €127.30  for 501km (18 cents per km) - a bit surprising as certainly not the most expensive by far, that is still held by Slovenia. We will see how France fair soon.

Monday 10^th Sept: Onwards and upwards to Nimes (bigger place than we expected), we managed to follow Mr TomTom and safely get into a car park in Nimes and then set off in pursuit of the Amphitheatre, war memorial and the Square House – all on our list of ‘to visit’. The Amphitheatre was rather spectacular, in good condition and is an excellent example of early Roman ‘feed the Christians to the lions’ arenas. The war memorial is France’s recognition of all the children who died during WW2 and is tasteful but of course a bit sombre. A bit strange but the Square House is a splash of Roman architecture in a modern part of the city centre. The whole of Nimes was very clean, presentable and enjoyable. Good things come to an end and we had to fit in some shopping, I had promised Linda – we got the food stuff and treated ourselves to some new lightweight clothes as we over did the cool climate clothes packing. The weather continues to be mainly hot and sunny and today was no different with 29C. Spooky but we had problems finding the supermarket, found it eventually, it was called Casino and we had driven past it twice thinking it was an actual casino and not a supermarket. Unfortunately for Daisy it was shower day, very indignant being washed down in the RV shower but full of beans after it.   The old dear (Linda) deserved a night off so we tried out the site restaurant for a meal – very good with large portions and much flavour, the beer and wine were good as well.

Linda, Daisy & friend
Nimes



The Amphitheatre
Nimes

 

War Memorial
Nimes

The Square House
Nimes

Tuesday 11^th Sept: A visit to Point du Gard (tallest surviving Roman aqueduct) and a drive through some of the local towns was on the cards for today so after yet another leisurely breakfast  we headed for Romoulins for a walk round the ‘old bridge’, one good thing about our timing of visiting these places are that most of them are nearly empty due to the time of the year/schools being back so no crowds and easy parking. The Point du Gard certainly is very impressive and makes one yet again wonder how they managed to make something so majestic which is still here today, surely today’s engineers are missing something. On the way back to the site we took in a quick look at Avignon and Arles, both very nice and full of historic features. The day had been a nice dry day with plenty of sun and 29C.



Pont du Gard
aquaduct

View from Pont du Gard
aquaduct

Nimes campsite

Wednesday 12th Sept: Early start to the 'prepare to move' day meant that everything was ready to go by early afternoon, including a quick wash and clean for the Jazz - thought it best as it needs to go for its first service soon and there is a Honda garage near to our next site near Tarragona. The 'beast' checked out OK and apart from some small niggling problems is doing really well - better than us if the truth be known. Some days are harder than others but on the whole it may well have been better doing this 5 to 10 years ago and we may have found it not so exhausting at times - mind you it is still great seeing all these sights, meeting so many different people and re finding ourselves. Settled the bill in preparation for tomorrows departure, probably best that we move on as the weather today was a bit dull and cool at 23C with some spits of rain as well. Whilst we have only been in France a short time we have managed to see what we wanted to and as we hope to revisit, albiet the northern part, we encountered no surprises and the area of Languedoc Roussillon has much to offer other than the normal riveria style coastal places. 

Thursday 13th Sept: Managed to get a prompt start, as planned due to having over 300 miles to go to the next site, and pulled out of the site at 7.30am heading for the motorway (and its tolls) and a fuel station - we understand that fuel is a bit more expensive in Spain so plan to top up before leaving. Pulled in for diesel and put 217 litres in for €327.44 which is just about £1.20 a litre so not too bad. So far the 'beast' is returning the equivalent of 12.44 miles to the gallon, which is very pleasing considering the recent terrain and having the toad/trailer behind - it may even be better as we have not accounted for the diesel used for generator running. The trip down through the bottom left hand corner of France was full of loads more fantastic scenery and was very enjoyable until Linda saw the size of the Pyrenees that we had to drive over, across  and through at the border area so she was a bit quiet for a while - she really does not do mountains! We paid our last French road toll to make France €0.25 per km and qualifying them as the second most expensive road tolls (Slovenia still leading with €0.27) with the most expensive diesel so far. Into Spain and once we left the Pyrenees behind and got the Meseta mountain range well off on our right hand side Linda started to talk to me again. The countryside started to take on more of an arid/desert appearance with lots of palm, orange, olive and pomegranate bushes/trees so we started watching out for bulls. Followed the Spanish coast southwards, skirted around Barrcelona, had a 1 hour lunch stop and got to our new site, Cala d'Oques at Hospitalet del Infante (just south of Tarragona) at 3.30pm - a good, easy and nice run down. WOW  what a site (curtsy of the BPG) our pitch was next to the beach with a veiw over the Mediterranean Sea - breathtaking, we set up in brilliant sunshine and 29C then sat out watching the waves and replenishing out liquid levels - hic!

Keep trucking!

Oh Oh the Pyrenees

  










The view from our pitch.

The pitch at Cala d'Oques

Friday 14th Sept: It just had to be done - watch the sunrise, go for a dip in the Med, and then breakfast on our own bit of the beach - it was great! The sunrise was classic, the Med lovely and refreshing and Linda told me to say her breakfast was fantastic (it actually was). Must admit that it was a bit strange lying in bed and the waves lapping onto the beach during the night but as we plan for this stop to be a restful one we can always have a siesta after a few sangria's later on - when in Rome and all that. Eventually we managed to tear ourselves away from the idyllic views from our sun loungers and finish off settling into our pitch, complete our home comms/updates and look round the immediate area. We can see this place being very therapeutic and tend to just CHILL for a week or so, we can class it as our 'holiday'. Daisy needs to be on her best behaviour as she must be on the lead on the site (actually according to the sign only poodles need to be on leads) but can free run on the beach - and she does, just loves the sand but is still a bit wary of the sea/waves. Lovely sunny 34C day which helped top up the tan.      

Sunrise!

Discrimination against poodles.

Saturday 15th Sept: Repeated yesterday mornings routine, we could certainly get used to doing this every day - a high level of calm and relaxed mood seems to have hit us since arriving at Cala d-Oques so we are looking forward to our 'holiday'. We took a trip into the town/village, Hospitalet del Infante, and found some of the main requirements (meat, fish and bread) but needed to go a bit further up the coast to Miami Platja for some supermarkets - both places very nice and well within cycling/walking distance if need be. Hospitalet del Infante has a Sunday market but as it is mainly for tourist type nik-naks we will be passing on that. The good weather, sunny and 30C, just meant that we had to have a quick walk along the beach and camp area in the afternoon; the camp area has various nationalities on it and is very clean, tidy and beach like with a nice quiet atmosphere with loads of typical vegetation - the fig trees and olive trees getting some of our attention, the figs are delicious. The beach stretches right up to Hospitalet del Infante in the north and to the 'Camping Templo Del Sol' beach in the south (the narturalists beach) so we were informed and is perfectly clean and in picture book condition.

Hospitalet del Infante

Hospitalet del Infante

Daisy chilling

Sunday 16th Sept: Another day in our current paradise, so very easy to plan and complete lazy days here. We did notice yesterday that we should have invested in some wheel covers (the sun is so intense at times that the tyres take some stick), not to be defeated some plans were drawn up, some material (old awning) redeployed and Linda made 2 superb wheel covers (hand stitched) - I of course keep an eye on her, very tiring so I kept dropping off.. Boy do we look smart now. Just to show I have a bit of a heart later on I burnt some meat on the BBQ for her, mind you she did the accompanying salad. The day was a bit overcast at times but was still 29C, it did not prevent another beach walk - Daisy just loves it.