On Wednesday morning, with the grumpy folk next door packing up and Rodney, sort of, nursing a slightly aching brain (it was only one bottle of wine, must have been a cheap one), we decided to stay another day. After two loads of washing and a huge number of emails typed up, we sat outside for a risotto lunch. Tricky. The plane trees around us have been throwing out seeds covered in the most amazing fluffy stuff. It was like snow everywhere. It had rained in the night and there was a bit of a breeze building, so perhaps that was why it was even worse that day. As you tried to eat the fluff floated up your nose, or in your mouth, it drifted in to your drink and attached itself to the wet washing. When you waved your arms around, other campers waved back, it was quite hilarious really.
Rodney went off for a cycle ride to Sainte Maxime later in the afternoon, but being a bit saddle sore from our St Tropez ride, I opted to stay at ‘home’ and catch up on other things. Rodney found himself caught up in some sort of festival in Sainte Maxime; lots of locals were dressed up in period costume and some men kept gathering together and firing huge guns at the ground; he said it was incredibly noisy. After watching some pètanque players, he cycled back to the campsite and got back just as the skies opened yet again.
From around 5pm it just didn’t let up. There was no way we could sit outside after dinner, so we dashed over to Ian and Ann’s caravan and we all settled in for another evening of non-stop nattering. More wine and Bacardi were consumed and around 10:30pm Rodney and I made the mad dash back to Eileen through deep muddy puddles. A small waterfall was pouring off the awning and the tarpaulin underneath had become a series of small ponds. We dried our feet and dived into bed, then listened to the heavy rain falling all night. Even the ‘beeping’ owl, which had woken us on the three previous nights, must have been tucked up in a nest; we didn’t hear a single beep, just raindrops.
I started Thursday morning by meandering around the puddles to the ladies’ bathrooms and found the floors were under about six inches of water! Fortunately the shower section wasn’t too bad. We boiled up some eggs for breakfast and then as the rain stopped, we packed everything away, wet chairs, wet awning, wet and muddy tarpaulin and then we said our farewells to Ian and Ann. This evening won’t be the same without them. And yes Ian, we are desperate people, we miss you both, but it will be an alcohol- free night this evening!
We drove along the coast road through Sainte Maxime and on to Fréjus. We stocked up at a huge Carrefour and having parked at McDonalds (due to height restrictions at the supermarket), we decided to have our first and last French McBurger and chips for lunch. We then drove back towards St Aygulf and checked in to Camping Du Pont D’Argens. It’s a fairly big campsite and perhaps even more flooded than the previous one. The facilities aren’t as nice as the Mexican style ones at Port Grimaud and it’s not next to the beach; it was a bit of a walk across a large nature reserve at the entrance to the Argens River to get to the plage and the water no longer looked azure, more a very muddy brown. But, there’s a cycle path outside the campsite gates that goes in to Fréjus and St Raphaël, so if the rain holds off tomorrow, we aim to cycle over there in the morning.
The puddles didn’t get a chance to dry up because it rained in the night, but we did wake up to a blue-sky day, so hopped on the bikes and cycled off along the velo pistes to Port Fréjus. It’s a fairly modern marina with shops, cafes and restaurants and oh so many yachts. We sat outside a café and drank hot chocolates and wondered how many yachts exist in the world, because we’ve seen an awful lot of them in this small area.
We found our way out of the marina and cycled along the beach road all the way along to the twin town of St Raphaël where a massive new marina seems to be growing. An Asian restaurant beckoned to us, so that solved finding a lunch spot and we won’t need to cook this evening; we’ll be too tired anyway after all this cycling….. There didn’t seem to be much of real interest in St Raphael, so we cycled inland to Fréjus centre, the old historic area. Foolishly we didn’t take our raincoats with us and so as the rain started to come down quite heavily, we ducked in to the Gothic cathedral. It was rather dark and austere inside, but there were some rather lovely modern stained-glass windows.
As the rain eased, we cycled around the town for a while searching out the roman remains from when Julius Caesar founded the city in 49BC. There really isn’t a lot left and the aqueduct made the Pont du Gard look really special; mind you it’s still impressive that something can still be around after so very long.
With Rodney now in need of a cup of tea, we headed back to the campsite, swept the puddles off the tarpaulin and settled down for the evening. We think we’ll head further east tomorrow, towards Antibes and see where we end up.
