Early nineties I was living with my boyfriend Fred. Of course there’s enough to be said about why we are not together anymore, however one thing we had in common was our love of traveling and putting lots of culture and joie de vivre in our weekends and holidays. With Fred I visited France a couple of times and one trip still is very memorable to me. It was September 1992 and we hooked up my parents caravan behind my old Opel Kadet and took off for a month.

We started driving along the coast in the North of France enjoying lovely views. Our first night we slept in the caravan we had terrible thunder and lightning, so bad I was even afraid to stil get a shock when I was stepping out the next morning. Shocked I was, but in a positive way. What lovely villages and little towns we found at the Normandy coast. Honfleur, Trouville and Deauville. Such charm, like stepping back in time. This was for sure a first but not last visit to this beautiful area.

I love traveling by caravan or camper, it gives so much freedom. Wherever I lay my head…Home is where I park my car. So we drove through Normandy, visited lovely villages, had picknicks and walks along the beach and ended at the big tourist attraction Mont St. Michel bordering the beautiful Brittany. A tourist trap it may be, still I love the place surrounded by its tidal environment. And visiting on a Friday in September it wasn’t too bad re numbers of visitors. Climbing up in the little monastery village, finding a secluded spot in the church garden and then enjoying the never ending views of the tide coming in. Also a place I revisited on later trips to Brittany.

Next we travelled to the Vendée and the Charente Maritime, yet another region that felt like a fairy tale. What stuck with me most was looking out on the Atlantic Ocean at night, seeing the lights of all those little islands in front of the coastline. Magical, even though we didn’t visit any islands that time around.

We had dinner in Les Sables d’Olonne and strolled a bit along the beach before hitting the road again the next day. A Saturday, with lunch in Cognac and a stop along the Route Nationale at one of the many ‘producteurs de Pinaud de Charente’, a delicious aperitif which we sampled and of course we purchased some bottles to bring home.

Next stop was Biscarosse Plage, a village near the “Etang de Biscarosse” in Les Landes. Finally we got onto our bikes and discovered the area by riding through villages and the far stretched dark forests of the region. Walks along the Atlantic coast where windsurfing and bodysurfing was already an big sport then. A visit to the open air historic museum Ecomusee Les Landes in Marquèze, showed us how the region was inhabited in earlier centuries.

Later that week we took the car and caravan again and the road trip went on. We travelled along the Atlantic coast to St. Jean de Luz and Biarritz. A very quick action of yours truly prevented us from ending up with a cabrio-caravan as my map reading partner hadn’t noticed he sent me towards a very low tunnel. An event that was quickly forgotten when I saw the beautiful views of the Atlantic and the charming buildings in the lovely town of Biarritz.We travelled on towards Hendaye and the Spanish border, had dinner in a local cafe where the villagers were preparing for the opening of the hunting season which would be celebrated in the next few days. As very dark weather had come to the region and was there to stay for these next days, we decided not to await the festivities and travel on.

Across the Midi Pyrenees we drove direction of Albi and the Gorges du Tarn and finally settled for a week in the village of Nant in the Aveyron/Cevennes area. A small campsite in the Gorge du Dourbie was our home for that week. A camping fermier, where the farmers wife provided us with everything we needed from her farmshop. It was a week of cycling (and walking up the last part of the mountain), reading on my sun stretcher in front of the caravan and cooking lovely meals with ingredients from the many markets in the region.

In that week we also visited places like Roquefort, le Cirque de Navacelles, la Couvertoirade, the village full of history of the templars. And of cours Milau, a town known for very beautiful leather gloves and at that time not yet for the spectacular viaduct that has been build in the early years of this century and opened in 2004.

I really adored the Cevennes for the peace and quiet. A great place to restore and do various outdoor activities. We also saw (and heard) the opening of the hunting season. Also a great anekdote created by our lovely farmers couple at the campsite, they took their wild boar out for a stroll in order to search for truffles. I can tell you, it’s a very weird sight, a farmer with a wild boar on a leash and his wife and children running after them.

After a week we turned up the legs of the caravan again and drove on direction Avignon. Only a quick visit and on we went, Arles and Camarque were next. Beautiful fields, flamingos, the ‘gitans’ and their horses and of course the town of Vincent van Gogh.

The last week we parked our caravan in the Gorges du Verdon. How I could handle even more beauty after all I had already seen on this tour still remains a question, however one thing still stands, this is a very very handsome region. We camped on the shores of the lake at les Salles de Verdon, the new village replacing the old village that was flooded when the artificial Lac de st Croix was created.

Beautiful walks, road trips to lovely villages in the gorges and a day spent in Aix en Provence made this a week to remember as well. Except for one night when it rained so terribly everybody from the campsite had taken refuge in the local cafe au vieux Chêne, we were outside every night as temperatures were still very nice even though we were nearing October by then.

And then it was time to return home, work was calling, the end of the holiday was near. We drove our way back following the Route Napoleon through the Alps, Jura and Vosges towards the North of France. People must have thought we were crazy driving with our caravan on these steep mountain roads, but we made it and experienced yet again the most stunning views.

Later that year the relationship came to an end but I’m sure that even now, 25 years later we both cherish those lovely memories of our Tour de France.