Tag - #campinglife

Bonjour Francais (Part 2), Ondres

13/08/18 – 14/08/18, Ondres, Nouvelle-Aquitaine. It felt slightly strange coming back to France having spent nearly a couple of months without paying for any overnight accommodation. When we checked this time, it seemed that most of the aires in southern France (At least close to the coast) carried a fee. If we were going to pay for it, we wanted it to be 1. close to the beach, 2. have full facilities 3. allow dogs on the beach and 4. Not be more than a 3 hour drive from where we currently were in Spain.  This pretty much narrowed down to the area surrounding Bairritz & Bayonne. We chose Ondres as it fulfilled all of these. (GPS 43.576248, -1.486290) We arrived mid-afternoon and it was relatively quiet – only about 10 Moho’s in the carpark when there was easily space for 30. We got plugged in, set-up and headed off to the beach – a wide long strip of sand with a fairly choppy Atlantic crashing on the shore. There were a few beach-side restaurants and snack bars along the...

Amongst the Cider Apple Trees – Astigarra (San Sebastian)

12-08-18 – 13-08-18 – Astigarra (San Sebastian), Basque Country We were really looking forward to hanging out on the beautiful beaches in San Sebastian, but when we got to the city’s arena where we knew we could park for free, we realised something must be going on. The arena was cordoned off and there were lots of Police around. Dan quickly did an internet search and found out that we’d only gone and arrived during the week of Semana Grande. This is a huge Spanish festival of music arts, dance and religion that goes on for a whole week, and it was obvious to us that whatever was going on at the arena was part of the festivities. Clearly we were not going to be able to park there, but it seems at other times of the year, it would be perfectly fine.  We had planed to ride the 20 minutes into the centre (GPS 43.297403, -1.970098) (approximately 2 miles), but with nowhere to park, we made another plan. Given all the other parking areas were closer to the centre...