Leaving caravan behind in France.

Sun 29^th- This morning Bruno came back to his house after having been out on call nearly all night with a bag of pain au chocolats and croissants for us. These really are kind and genuine people. Explored locally on foot and had a lazy day.

Mon 29^th- Got up at 7am and Bruno loaded the campervan onto the back of his truck, then took us to VW in Le Mans. They plugged it into the diagnostic machine and said that there was a cut out device which had been activated because the engine was working so hard. They said it would be ok to continue and that if it should lose power again to switch off engine for a few minutes. We went back to collect the caravan from Bruno and Nadia’s house, and headed off again for the caravan storage site, south of Limoges.

After about 100km the van started to misfire so we stopped for a bit to let it cool down then carried on, avoiding the motorways because it costs a fortune to be recovered from the motorway in France. Finally we arrived at the storage site in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Bruno and Nadia have kept in contact, and we have promised to keep in touch with them throughout our trip.

Wed 2^nd Oct- Cycled into the nearby village for coffee and croissants. The sun is shining and we are back in shorts and tee shirts. Hooray, this is more what we had wanted the trip to be like. Tomorrow morning we shall set off in the direction of Italy, hoping that without the caravan the campervan will behave itself. Fingers crossed.

Thurs 3^rd- Left Suris and the caravan behind for the winter and headed to Clermont-Ferrand in mid France. Had lunch in a nice village called St. Leonard de Noblat, on the banks of the river Vienne. Found a tiny aire for the night right in the heart of the volcano region. A bit noisy but free!

Fri 4^th- Drove to Lyon along the autoroute with the intention of going into the Alps to Mamora and Bardonnechia but unfortunately the weather was wet and the clouds were low so there didn’t seem much point. Instead we turned south to Marseille and went along coast to Cassis and la Ciotat in la Calanques area. This is somewhere I’d wanted to visit for a long time. On the Med it’s warm and sunny and we paddled. Others were in swimming. We found a campsite right on the seafront in St. Cyr la Mer. We took our dinner down to beach and enjoyed a lovely warm evening. Massive thunderstorm over night though!!

Google Les Calanques.