France...au revoir

To get to Italy from Spain you must travel through France.
From Barcelona we went north up the coast and crossed the border. We met heavy traffic and police checks at the border but we're not even looked at when our turn came.
Great roads all the way through.
We now use cruise control and dial up 96km hr.
This is a nice speed and even the driver can look around. Open road speed limits are between 110 and 130 kmhr. Trucks sit at 90km hr, so your always passing trucks. I have pissed a few truckies off with my leisurely driving demeanor and have been honked at on the rare occasion.
I've got Linda chewing my right ear and my dear navigation assistant "Lucy" always telling me to turn here, stay in that lane,,,,,,you get the idea.....hen pecked. Lindas pet name is "Captain Cook"

We travelled to a small place called Loupian, which sits across from the small port city of Sete.
Loupian was the windiest camp yet and nearly shredded our cheap as chips canvas. We stayed a couple of nights in Loupian then met with a young lady we met in Bolivia.  Many thanks Charlotte for helping with our camping card.

There is a beautiful harbour in Sete

Overlooking most of Sete 

That afternoon we travelled to Saint Rèmy in the Provence region.

Before we arrived we visited Pont Du Gard, which is a Roman aqueduct constructed AD 50....approx. This was constructed to supply water to the roman settlement now called Nimès.  Incredible construction.

Linda at the grotto.

Close by are various Grottos where megalithic man once lived.

We arrived at Caroline and Mikes holiday place just in time for dinner and wine. Had a very pleasant evening with their families. Saint Rèmy is a very old and picturesque place to visit. The old town is surrounded by a stone wall, which was common amounst early European villages.

Saint Rèmy boasts it's own roman ruins other than the aqueduct.

So that was France.

Barcelona

Barcelona was a very interesting city.
Of course it is famous for hosting the 1992 Olympic games and also for the Sagrada Familiar,  but also for it very old history.

This a street view of the Degrada Famillia. 

An example of the old history were the Roman excavations below the centre of old Barcelona.
You descend below street level where archeaologists have unearthed the old Roman town.
Full displays of streets, houses, places of work and places of worship are all there. Lots of ceramics and relics. Unreal to be down there.

This photo comes from Google as photography was difficult.

We managed to do  city bike tour which was great.

Got around a lot of the "must see" stuff and gave us a sense of what we would come back for the next day. Travelling through the maze of streets in the Gothic centre was really nice. All sorts of shops and curious places.

Barcelona has its own Arch of Triumph.

Similar to the Paris arch.

The next day..we did the Roman underground. Like I mentioned earlier this was something else.

We had wine and beers along the way and shared the day with Caroline and Mike, who we met on the bike tour.

Seeing the city with others is an enriching experience as more is discussed and more ideas are exchanged.

View while walking along the waterfront.

From the end of the cable car we walked up to a castle who's history had been long, with rebuilds on rebuilds. Such is the way with castles.ñ

The view of the Port of Barcelona was spectacular with a full container yard and ship docking ports.

A huge harbour surrounded by rock had been built to shelter the port from the wave action.

Full size cargo and luxury cruise liners laid on the docks. Outside the harbour lay many ships waiting to unload or be loaded.

After this we bussed down toward another grand building with majestic water features.

Here are Caroline and Mike who we spent the day with standing by a water feature outside Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.

Barcelona was nice and I would encourage anyone to go there.
Sam

North of Gibraltar

Covered some ground from Seville to Gibraltar and stayed in Estepona camp ground.
Very close to the beach with not much around to look at.

Sometimes we just blob out and take care of a few chores like washing and sitting on the beach.

These are the kinds of houses that are typical along the Spanish coast.

These are very large and could be apartments.

Valencia was our next stop with a city trip and sight seeing of course.

This guy was a delight to watch. 

He would sit motionless until someone gave him a coin or two when he would suddenly come to life and perform. Quite an inventive way to earn a crust. 

More massive cathedrals and towers.

Just amazing how much the Catholic church built over the years.

They certainly didn't do things by halves.

The motorcamp here was the noisiest yet with bird scarers going off through the night at 10min 30 second intervals. Argh. ...we were positioned next to an orchard.

Next stop was in a small town called Case, right by the beach. The campgrounds were the best yet.

Photos from this morning's sunrise.

We are in Barcelona for 3 days and will post something later this week.

Sam

France, Spain into Portugal

Hi all

Bit of a catchup post of stuff we did these last few weeks.

In France we went to Lascaux ii caves.
This cave was discovered in 1940 and has since become a world Heritage site. Tourists cannot visit the original cave as problems with deterioration started happening. The French govt made an exact copy of the cave a few hundred metres away. They have done an excellent job.
17000 years ago Cro-magnon man painted on the walls inside this cave. See below.
There are a number of sights in France and Spain where this happened.

Above we can see different animal species. Photo taken from Google as photography is banned inside the cave.

We left Lascaux ii in the rain which followed us to a small rural campsite in France. 

The owner was Dutch so we had to have a drink with them at happy hour or three.

We stayed in a cottage that night as the weather was shitty and we couldn't be bothered setting up in the rain.

Next morning we departed with rain chasing close behind.

Around that time they had major hail in Cognac and flooding in France.

That morning we drove into San Sebastion for a look around. We parked quite a distance from the central historical area (Centro Historico) and walked along the bay front.

Big black skies above towards France.

It rained when we reached the central area so we splashed out and got some brollies. 

Nice city with lots to see. 

Next stop was Burgos at another camp.

Sight seeing off course.

At this camp we met De and De. 

Pommy ex  hoteliers. Full of mirth and liked their ale.

Next stop was Salamanca.

Here is Linda by one of the many monuments. 

Another nice place with similar scenes.

Next stop was Portugal.

We started seeing scenes that were reminiscent of South America. I guess SA was influenced by Portugal.

Lots of rocks, tight scrub and brick buildings. The main difference was that it was clean and tidy. No rubbish like SA. 

We stayed in Aviero for a couple of nights. 

Hot days were just starting. 

Next stop was Lisbon which is the capital of Portugal.

We stayed across the harbour, from town, in a smallish settlement. Just a quick ferry ride into Lisbon to soak up the sights. 

 All around we could hear Fado music being played as this is part of their culture.
Have a listen to this YouTube clip.
https://youtu.be/ARS7Zi-Zpkw

Plaza

Above is the Fado stuff.

Here is the cities big castle. This was an awesome sight.

Fishing boats are also part of the culture here.

From Lisbon we drove to Seville back into Spain 

Another big beautiful city.

To many photos to show here.

Well that's the blog caught up until Gibraltar.

Talk soon.

Sam

Gibralter

Hi all

Finally have some broadband so can post some stuff.
I am a couple behind so will post our latest travels first and catchup later.

We travelled from Seville, in Spain, to Gibralter which is under British rule.
The road to the rock was really hilly with a massive two lane carriageway most of the trip. High winds in the Highlands.  We crossed into Gibralter through immigration who asked for our passports. They glanced at them and smiled us through.

Here is a view from Gibralter looking out towards the south tip of Algiceras in Spain.

The streets through Gibralter are narrow and full of parked cars, motor cycles and vans. We managed to drive through to lands end without incident.

Arrival at the end was great. Plenty of parking and not to many tourists. A few people taking selfies but little else.

Gibralter has more history than Shakespeare. Neanderthal man lived here, Phonecians, Romans and pirates were here, and finally old blighty took over.
Here are some more pics and info plates.

Behind Linda are all the ships anchored waiting to enter port. Thats not all of them.

Neanderthal man was here first

Phonecians and other ancient people's also landed here.

Then the Romans made themselves at home.

Pirates and others in the 1500s 

Finally Old Blighty 

It was funny to hear English accents sofar from home. 

After this little stop we drove north around the rock and headed back into Spain to our next motorcamp. 

That's another story.

Paris

We arrived in Paris greeted by Laurent who we met in Bogota. He put us up for three nights and helped to arrange car parking.
If you ever take a vehicle to Paris you must either have free parking garage with your accommodation or arrange parking with a company. We used Zenpark.
We registered online and used the App to open the park doors.

No room for errors in this parking lot. Probably the tightest I've encountered anywhere.

On our first day we decided to see the Catacombs (old sewer tunnel tour). W

hen we got there the queues were very long so we kept walking and climbed the Eiffel Tower.

We were expecting massive queues but as luck would have it occasionally, there were no cues on the stairs entry side. There were cues on the lift entry side.
The view was spectacular from the first level. From level 2 it was even better. We then cabled upto the top of the Eiffel Tower.  Stunning view. Totally packed with tourists.

Here I am with my new toy.

The following day we got some bikes and cycled through Paris to the old part of the city.

Here we found the very old and very new. Again the place was crawling with tourists. May is considered the low season before summer madness.
We went into the Louve museum which was massive. You need at least 2 full days to see the lot. We were in there for 3 hours. When you start looking at museums they all start to look the same.

View of the River Seine 

We legged it for a late lunch in an Italian restaurant.
Cycling back through Paris was fun using the galaxy as our navigator.

We said goodbye to Laurent on Sunday and headed south out of Paris.