{"id":1847,"date":"2013-05-17T17:18:05","date_gmt":"2013-05-17T16:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=1847"},"modified":"2026-05-25T06:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T05:52:11","slug":"muddy-puddle-camping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2013\/05\/17\/muddy-puddle-camping\/","title":{"rendered":"Muddy Puddle Camping"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 After two loads of washing and a huge number of emails typed up, we sat outside for a risotto lunch.\u00a0 Tricky.\u00a0 The plane trees around us have been throwing out seeds covered in the most amazing fluffy stuff.\u00a0 It was like snow everywhere.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 When you waved your arms around, other campers waved back, it was quite hilarious really.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"It
It looks like snow on the ground in the campsite<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 \u2018home\u2019 and catch up on other things.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 After watching some p\u00e8tanque players, he cycled back to the campsite and got back just as the skies opened yet again.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Festival
Festival time in Sainte Maxime<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

From around 5pm it just didn\u2019t let up.\u00a0 There was no way we could sit outside after dinner, so we dashed over to Ian and Ann\u2019s caravan and we all settled in for another evening of non-stop nattering.\u00a0 More wine and Bacardi were consumed and around 10:30pm Rodney and I made the mad dash back to Eileen through deep muddy puddles.\u00a0 A small waterfall was pouring off the awning and the tarpaulin underneath had become a series of small ponds.\u00a0 We dried our feet and dived into bed, then listened to the heavy rain falling all night.\u00a0 Even the \u2018beeping\u2019 owl, which had woken us on the three previous nights, must have been tucked up in a nest; we didn\u2019t hear a single beep, just raindrops.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"A
A serious game of p\u00e8tanque<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

I started Thursday morning by meandering around the puddles to the ladies’ bathrooms and found the floors were under about six inches of water!\u00a0 Fortunately the shower section wasn\u2019t too bad.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This evening won\u2019t be the same without them. \u00a0And yes Ian, we are desperate people, we miss you both, but it will be an alcohol- free night this evening!<\/p>\n

We drove along the coast road through Sainte Maxime and on to Fr\u00e9jus.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We then drove back towards St Aygulf and checked in to Camping Du Pont D\u2019Argens.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fairly big campsite and perhaps even more flooded than the previous one.\u00a0 The facilities aren\u2019t as nice as the Mexican style ones at Port Grimaud and it\u2019s 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.\u00a0 But, there\u2019s a cycle path outside the campsite gates that goes in to Fr\u00e9jus and St Rapha\u00ebl, so if the rain holds off tomorrow, we aim to cycle over there in the morning.<\/p>\n

The puddles didn\u2019t 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 Fr\u00e9jus.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fairly modern marina with shops, cafes and restaurants and oh so many yachts.\u00a0 We sat outside a caf\u00e9 and drank hot chocolates and wondered how many yachts exist in the world, because we\u2019ve seen an awful lot of them in this small area.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Port
Port Fr\u00e9jus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

We found our way out of the marina and cycled along the beach road all the way along to the twin town of St Rapha\u00ebl where a massive new marina seems to be growing.\u00a0 An Asian restaurant beckoned to us, so that solved finding a lunch spot and we won\u2019t need to cook this evening; we\u2019ll be too tired anyway after all this cycling\u2026..\u00a0 There didn\u2019t seem to be much of real interest in St Raphael, so we cycled inland to Fr\u00e9jus centre, the old historic area.\u00a0 Foolishly we didn\u2019t take our raincoats with us and so as the rain started to come down quite heavily, we ducked in to the Gothic cathedral.\u00a0 It was rather dark and austere inside, but there were some rather lovely modern stained-glass windows.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Stained
Stained glass window in Fr\u00e9jus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 There really isn\u2019t a lot left and the aqueduct made the Pont du Gard look really special; mind you it\u2019s still impressive that something can still be around after so very long.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Aqueduct
Aqueduct remains<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 We think we\u2019ll head further east tomorrow, towards Antibes and see where we end up.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"A
A gorgeous fake window<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 After two loads of washing and a huge number of emails typed up, we sat outside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8405,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1847\/revisions\/8405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}