A Road Trip Through France
In September 1978 I was living and working in London and needed a break. My girlfriend, Anne, and I decided that a road trip through France would be just the ticket so we set off in her tiny Mini stationwagon, intending to camp along the way. Interestingly, exactly a year before I had been languishing in Greece and in exactly a year's time I would be back there.
First stop was a weekend in Paris where we did all the usual tourist jaunts, even climbing up a few floors of the Eiffel Tower. On Saturday night we wandered around the Latin Quarter drinking ghastly red plonk at exorbitant prices (next day I had a hangover from hell!). We saw the Moulin Rouge and even took a boat trip down the Seine.
Anne and I had both done a wine tasting course in London and wanted to do some serious wine exploring. So we headed for Bergundy and set up camp in Beaune. The camp sites were excellent and were our base for exploring the surrounding vineyards. From there we wandered south through Beaujolais, Rhone and Chateauneuf du Pape. I bought a bottle of Cote du Rhone and brought it all the way back to SA many years later - by which time it was vinegar!
And so we made our way down to the sea at Cassis, about 50km south-east of Marseille. A delightful little place with good camping, pretty harbour-side restaurants, beaches, and miles of rocky coastline.
But just over the hill was an even better place: a short 2km walk from our camp site was a gorgeous little cove with clear, warm water and magnificent swimming and snorkelling. I even got Anne to join me in swimming around, something she had never done before, well, not in the ocean, anyway.
Leaving Cassis with some regret we motored up the coast, just taking a quick look at the French Riviera: Saint-Tropez, Cannes, Antibes, Nice and finally Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo was particularly disappointing, the sea covered with a sheen of oily muck. I couldn't face swimming in it, so we moved on.
I must say, it had been a very pleasant holiday with lots to see and do, especially at Cassis. And so we headed home back to London...