We travelled northwards along the west coast, taking the car ferry across the Gironde from Le Verdun to Royan, a voyage of thirty minutes. We drove past La Rochelle and Ile d’Oléron and, because we didn’t have our bicycles, we even bypassed the Ile de Ré where we had spent such happy times pre COVID restrictions.
We planned to spend a few days at the coastal town of La Faute-sur-mer. We arrived on a Friday afternoon and found the site to be almost full. We grabbed one of the last available spaces – several vans that arrived after us were less successful and, with a the 6 pm curfew, goodness knows where they went. It was early March and a total of 65 camper vans (that’s about 130 souls) were overnighting in that small town – no commercial sites were open and neither was there any possibility of finding a quiet spot in the town to spend the night – there were warning signs everywhere banning camper van parking. We loathed having to squeeze into what was no better than a car park. The following morning we moved on.
We drove north through beautiful countryside, stopping by the Loir at Bazouges between Angers and Le Mans.
