A Motor Home Swap in France
Brian & Margie's Travels
Brian and I had a amazing experience travelling through parts of France, We swapped our motor home, for a French motor home picking it up approx 2 hours out of Lyon in a village called Noeleux.
Noeleux has 170 inhabitants and across the lane was a working 2000 year old church, now we are talking serious rural France J Our hosts had their own goats, which they made cheese everyday, and a HUGE garden. Amazing to see, Noel had at least 15 – 20 jars of herbs she has collected around about the village for her Herbal teas, let alone the cooking herbs out of her garden.
So we set off on our adventure. We stopped at many small villages, the more rural you were the more they spoke French ( but with 6 weeks of Shelley’s tuition we survived well) . Life was quite easy really as we found all the French very friendly, we did attempt to speak as much French as we could, which I believe helps.
I must
tell you about our first night, we slept in the motor home ourselves and
our two grown up children, in a car park at a place called St Paul-Trois
Chateaux to awaken to be virtually in the middle of a market in full swing, it
was a amazing market which we didn’t
realise until we had seen a lot more. Most villages will hold a market weekly,
so I had researched and knew where each one was, and we tried to go to quite a
few.
In France they have domain camps, and these are very cheap and very varied camps of what you may get , e.g. power etc, but they are on the outskirts of each village, you can just rock up and see what you get. They also have many flash camps which are not that expensive, I think the dearest we had was just over 50 Euro for 4 of us, in a fantastic seaside village and the campground had , pool, disco, two restaurants, hairdresser, masseuse, cafe, laundry, all right beside the sea. At St Tropez our camp on the sea was 30 euro for the 4 of us, not bad for a private beach, restaurant etc.
Quite a bit of the time we free camped, which is very easy in France, but the domain camps are so cheap say 5 euro a night, that comes mostly with hot showers etc basic but absolutely fine. We did have a GPS which was very helpful but not always correct. The French have a very weird way of placing road signs by the time you see them pointing, that’s the exit, but you get that after a while.
When
you travel the way we did, you really get the feel of France, rural cuisine is
far better than city cuisine, the rural French people are amazing and no
frills, wine was poured into tumblers not wine glasses, very basic outside
barbecue, cooking on a grill, above a fire, fresh food is most important, and
of course the long slow meals are a given.
We toured around to the most amazing places, The villages of Le Baux – Provence, has a walled village that still closes the gates at night, Pont du Gard –aquaduct, we kayaked underneath it :)
Saint –Cir Lapopie and Rocamadour are two of the beautiful villages above Toulouse, and not to mention Carcassone- medieval walled village, we were there on Bastille day and saw the most amazing fireworks display I think I will ever see, the French poured into the village area approx 10.30am, awaiting the display to start 12 hours later, with a very big festivities going on all around the village.
We travelled in the month of July so we could take in a few days of the Tour de France cycle race, that was indeed fantastic , all the fanfare, free camped up in the mountains, very close to a ski village so we had a patisserie not 50 meters away, and of course a bar, we were lucky enough that a ompapa band came in and we had people paying French horns, piano accordion etc , we danced with other Cycle revellers, I danced with a Basque supporter, who gave us his card and said if we needed any help just to phone, very generous.
Rural France anything can happen, fetes,
carnivals, it’s truly a delight, it’s like to take a step back in time, and the
rural French certainly know how to live. Very family orientated, and living off
the land as much as possible, they live very simply. Our hosts lived in a 200
year old family home, that still had animal stalls attached, their son was renovating
2 old villas into one, and one of them had a very old wine cellar that had been
blocked up in World War two, of course they did not knock the walls down but I
was stunned that this is normal life for rural French people.
Don’t be put off driving in France, once you get the hang of narrow roads (rural) it’s easy, the only big city we drove in was Lyon. They do have quite a lot of toll roads, and the fees vary, if you just want to get to a place then yes toll roads are great. Keeping in mind they can be expensive, and you never know what the cost will be until you get to the booth to pay.
All in all for us, the motor home was fantastic, it just depends on how you want to travel and what you want to see, but you can just go onto the internet and type in e.g. Motor home swaps in France for house in Tauranga NZ or swap motor home. It is very cost effective way to travel. If you would like more information about the swapping or where we went, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Margie Foster 5765360 or fostermb@xtra.co.nz