Four Wheels, Two Wheels And Over The Waves

Moving from a fully booked campsite in the middle of a very long public holiday weekend (Wednesday off, Thursday off, Saturday and Sunday….is anyone likely to actually work on the Friday?) was worrying us a little as to where we might be staying on Thursday night.  So I was in the shower by 7am and we’d eaten breakfast, packed everything away and driven out of the Cicada Campsite around 8:30am.  We were aiming to be in a campsite, hopefully on the Giens peninsula, by late morning.  Our fingers were crossed that they wouldn’t all be fully booked already.

We found the road out of Cassis and up on to the top of Cap Canaille and as promised there were fabulous views in all directions; back across Cassis, out to sea, across the craggy hills inland and also down to La Ciotat.  It was a beautiful route and definitely worth the detour.

 

 

 

From La Ciotat the road was a bit more of a trudge.  Being péage avoiders, we took the D559 along the coast, but it was a road through endless small coastal towns, roundabouts, traffic lights and very bad signage; we ended up veering off a few times and then as we approached Toulon we decided to get on the péage, just as it ended.  Toulon doesn’t have a by-pass, or a fast road through it, so we continued plodding along slowly until we finally found the péage leaving the city on the east side.  It was great to finally get some distance covered quickly, but as we arrived in Hyères we hit more traffic.  We managed to find the road that takes you out to the peninsula of Giens, but then found ourselves completely stuck in dreadful traffic.  We hoped everyone would be trying to get to the village itself, but it seemed that every man and his dog were heading for exactly the road we needed, through to Camping La Tour Fondue.  We crawled and crawled with a lot of time spent stationery and people walking down the road faster than we were travelling.  300 metres from the campsite entrance, in total frustration, I hopped out of the van and walked down to the campsite, which was right next to an enormous car park and the boats that ferry people over to the Île de Porquerolles.  I was really pleasantly surprised that there were still four vacant slots available, so I grabbed one to see us through to Sunday and walked back to find Rodney who had managed to creep almost to the campsite entrance.  It had taken one hour to drive 1.5 kms.  We would hate to see what this area is like in the summer peak season!!!

After lunch and a bit of a rest, we decided to go for a walk and see what the big attraction is outside the campsite gates and came up with nothing.  It is obviously the Île de Porquerolles that is very, very popular……

The next morning, after another night of rain, the sun came out, so Rodney spent some time getting the bikes off the back of Eileen for the first time this trip. He checked the tyres, adjusted the brakes and we cleaned them up a bit.  At midday we set off up the hill to Giens.  Crawling in the traffic the previous day had me thinking that it was a very long way up to the junction to the centre ville, but I was really surprised to find that 1.5 kms isn’t really very far at all.  The steepness of the hill did have me walking the bike for a short bit, but we did make it up to the top, where the village is situated, in pretty quick time.  There was a really lovely little park full of flowers which was originally part of the chateau that is unfortunately no longer there.

 

 

The views from up there were fabulous; across the narrow stretch of land to the mainland and over both bays on either side, where there were masses of windsurfers, kite-surfers and boats, it almost looked like graffiti on the water.  On the other side of the peninsula, across the turquoise sea you could see the islands that hang off the coastline, including the Îles d’ Hyères.

 

 

 

There wasn’t much of a village to wander around, so we opted to sit down for a drink at a café and then cycle down to the causeway.  From there we found one of the beaches on the eastern side, although we couldn’t actually see any sand as it was only about 10 metres wide and was completely covered with human beings!   Instead we got back on our bikes and cycled back up the hill and over the crest to enjoy a fantastic freewheel all the way back to the campsite.

 

 

Having roundly thrashed Rodney at Uno after dinner, we had a reasonably early night and then got one load of washing done while we ate our breakfast on Saturday morning.  Then after clearing up, we strode over to the ticket office on the quay and bought tickets for the next boat over to L’ Île de Porquerolles.  There was a timetable, but the boats seemed to be ignoring them and just loading up around 300 passengers and then leaving before the next boat came in.  So what we thought was a 10am boat, backed out in to the bay at 9:50am and we were off to the island.

 

 

The little port on the island was full of yachts of every size and shape, it was quite a sight.  We walked up to the main village and then to get away from the crowds, we decided to walk up to the Fort Sainte Agathe and then over to the Moulin du Bonheur, which was translated as the ‘windmill of happy days’…. cute!  But there was no getting away from the crowds with boats full of people arriving every half hour.  Every path we walked was crowded already and we were on an early boat!  There were walkers and cyclists of every age, shape and ‘style’; seriously kitted out experienced walkers and casual families in flip flops, all out and about enjoying the fresh air.  It was actually very cheery and we really felt like we were on a holiday.

 

 

We opted to go further and ramble over to the far side of the island to the lighthouse and then walked along the top of the cliff to the Calanque de l’Indienne and the Grand Cale Ouest, both having wonderful views out over the blue ocean and to the Île de Port-Cros.

 

 

You can walk, or cycle (no cars) for miles over the island past olive groves, grapevines, wild flowers and cliff tops and we did walk about ten to twelve kms all up.  We stopped for a three-course lunch back in the village and then ventured along the coastline east of the port to the first beach, Plage Notre-Dame, where we wedged ourselves in some rocks to relax, read and get out of the constantly buffeting wind for a while.  We could see why thousands of tourists come over to L’ Île de Porquerolles every day; it really is a lovely place, especially on a blue-sky day.

 

 

We finally caught a boat that left around 4pm and endured a real rocking and rolling ride back to the mainland and strolled back to the campsite for our last night at La Tour Fondue.