We drove from the train at Calais to a place called Neufchâtel en Bray. Our first experience of a French aire.
The drive was very easy being on the main French autoroute out from Calais, we just needed to remember to drive on the right! When we arrived at the aire we realised we might be a bit too long. We had a slight challenge navigating the barrier and the turn into the site. Once in the aire we realised our length may be more of an issue as we could only fit easily on one pitch without impacting other aire users. After the fact, we read the instructions at the entrance, where it mentions if you’re a long vehicle, check in with the owners who lived at the campsite next door. Sometimes it’s better to ask forgiveness than ask permission – eek! I knocked on the door and in my pigeon French explained our length and also mentioned we were already parked – at this point the lady said “if you are in then you are fine”. We stayed for just one night, took Merlin for a quick walk and found there was a E Leclerc supermarket with petrol station just down the road. We enjoyed our first day in France and were proud that we had made it this far. The aire had electric hook up (EHU), shower facilities, toilets and waste dumping (both grey and black) and it was all really well looked after all for 12 Euros – how refreshing! If all aires were like this we would enjoy our time in France.
The next morning we needed diesel for our mammoth trip south and decided to try the E Leclerc petrol station. We got into a bit of a mess as after driving into the car park we realised we couldn’t fit through the standard diesel area. The car park and queue for petrol had become busy and we caused a bit of a stir trying to back out the way we’d come in. It’s always good to cause a stir in a vehicle our size – you certainly get lots of looks. We made it out with a couple of red faces and drove to our next planned stop Marcilly En Villette, finding some diesel en route.
We arrived quite late in the afternoon circa 3pm and our nerves were suddenly on edge as we drove in towards the aire to see orange roadwork signs, cones and work trucks. When we actually got into the aire, it had been taken over by bundles of pipes and piles gravel and there were more trucks and diggers parked. Happily, we did find a spot where we could park. In January the water was turned off at this aire, as we realised is true for a lot of aires as they don’t want the taps or pipes to freeze and cause issues. This meant we couldn’t get drinking water – luckily we had filled up at Neufchâtel En Bray so didn’t actually need any for this stop. There were toilets at Marcilly that were open during the daytime and from a facilities perspective it was a great aire, it was our second aire in France and it was free.
We woke early the next morning, got croissants and then headed out as we wanted to get as far Molinet via Sancerre on the next day – the first wine region visit in Beatrix. This was first the day I fell out of love with our Sat Nav and yes this is in a shouty voice. Google was telling me that there was a road closure on our planned route to Sancerre and I was still learning how to use the Garmin – which is easy when you know how. All I wanted to do was just put in the road closure and for it to find me an alternate route. At this time I hadn’t leant how to use the “shape route” function and I ended up using a mix of the Garmin sat nav and google maps to navigate us to Sancerre. The original route should have taken 1.5hours, we took 3.5 hours. It was very tiring for Toby as driver, as we ended up going down some very, very small French roads. From this moment we decided using an actual map when we plan would be useful too as it would help us focus on the bigger picture view of how to get to a location rather than the micro detail of each minor road and shortcut. If we’d have done this we could have gotten to Sancerre in about an hour even with the road closure. Still, every day is a learning day!
We parked and ate lunch at an aire in Sancerre looking out over the vines – due to the diversion route we had taken we still had a long way to get to Molinet – shock horror there wasn’t time to try or buy any wine.
As we had lunch, we watched three people walking through the vines with a wheel barrow that was quietly on fire, pruning dead branches and adding them to the smoking hand cart. It was really beautiful and will be on the list of places for us to return to as it would be great to try and buy the wine and enjoy the region a bit more.
We drove on and then got to the aire at Molinet. This aire was really quiet, there was a service area, we didn’t use it as we still had water and did not need to empty the grey or black waste. We spent the night and it was very quiet with only a black labrador causing Merlin a little distraction in the morning before we headed off. Again this was a free aire. We knew we would soon need to get some LPG (how we heat Beatrix and cook!) and were debating whether we should wait until we got closer to the mountains, as the LPG mixture changes when you are in lower temperatures nearer the mountains. When we researched a bit further, we found that almost all of LPG in France changes to winter mix in November. This was lucky as when we woke in the morning the gas had run out so the heating, fridge and, causing somewhat of a crisis, the tea-making had stopped.
We use a great app called myLPG.eu which shows where you can buy LPG. It’s great as it also tells you when the LPG station was last used, the price and the location – it’s really helpful both in the UK and abroad. We found an LPG garage in Digoit just up the road from Molinet. We filled up with LPG and then got onto the autoroutes to help get some kilometers under our wheels. We travelled the A6,A463, A4 and the A6 to get us to a campsite in Vizille called Le Bois du Cornage which was just outside Grenoble our last stop before Montgenevre our ski season location.
We stayed 2 nights in Vizille to help us get prepared for going into the mountains. Ville Bois du Cornage is an ACSI* campsite and although the showers were closed it did have drinking water and waste dumping and it was a cost of 27Euros for 2 nights. The site was relatively close to an Intermarche supermarket so we stocked up our cupboards. It was a lovely town and we walked to the chateau on Sunday and as we had Merlin we were not able to go into the gardens however it was stunning. We planned our route to Montgenevre – there were two routes we could have chosen and we decided on the longer route – which should take us about 3 hours.
Aside 1*: ACSI is a discount card that you can use for campsite in many countries specifically out of season. If you are interested in getting a card we have provided the link below to get more information and to get the ACSI card.
We woke, breakfasted and emptied everything ready for the trip. It was really cold with frozen water pipes and there were people on site who blamed me for breaking the water tap at the cassette emptying location however I hadn’t broken it, it just didn’t work.
It was the 23rd January and we left the campsite at 10am filling up with diesel in Vizille before our very exciting drive to the mountains and Montgenevre!!!
Our route took us to Gap around Lac de Serre, through Briancon and then onto Montgenevre. It was due to take 3 hours so we should arrive into Montgenevre at 1pm. We know that we usually add 15 minutes for every hour that we are supposed to drive, however we eventually made it to Gap at 13:00. The drive was really long and was the first time we’d consistently been driving up then down really big hills just to get to Gap. There were a few occasions where we were driving for long periods at an incline of 3% and over and Beatrix showed signs of overheating. Toby got very nervous seeing the temperature gauge going upwards, however Beatrix’s fan kicked in and thankfully she didn’t overheat, handling the change in terrain far more calmly than we did.
This was the first time we had tested Beatrix limits and started learning what she could and couldn’t do. It was a very loooonnnnggg drive! Similar to the trip we did to the Lake District in October we knew the last few kilometers would be the hardest, getting from Briancon to Montgenevre had hairpin bends and steep inclines as we were travelling 500 meters vertical to get up the mountain. Toby was already tired and we probably should have stopped, but we just wanted to get to the aire and finally stop for a beer, so Toby valiantly carried on and we drove through Briancon and started our ascent to Montgenevre.
It’s only 12 kilometers but it’s a little terrifying driving on mountain roads in an 8.8meter motorhome. Toby was mostly driving on adrenaline, he managed to navigate us through the five hairpin bends to get us to Montgenevre. He was incredibly focussed and determined – and only raised his voice a couple of times as he could not see certain parts of what was coming next on the road.
We finally got into Montgenevre to find a massive traffic jam. Our delay meant we had arrived as the mountain was emptying and was really busy for the weekend. Unfortunately someone had hurt themselves on the Italian side of the mountain and the road out of Montgenevre to Italy had been closed by the police.
The traffic was horrendous and queuing three or four cars wide on the single road though the village. Not what we needed after already nearly 6 hours driving. We ended up driving round and round Montgenevre using the roundabouts at the top and bottom of the village.
The road did eventually open and we drove into the aire filled up with water and found a pitch! Finally after a very long drive with overheated engines and fraught drivers and traffic jams we got to our next dream location – doing a ski season in Montgenevre.
We enjoyed a well earned dinner and settled in for the night. The next morning we walked to Montgenevre to try and buy some skis and pick up our season ski passes. We had foolishly hoped that there would be some second hand skis for sale and although there were some we ended up doing a try before you buy option with the intersport. It meant we got to try a couple of sets of skis before buying some. What was great was that we were skiing within 2 days of being in the resort. We were ready for our new normal: skiing, enjoying being in the mountain air, burning loads of calories, walking Merlin, going to the Durancia spa one a week for a relaxing swim – jacuzzi and long hot shower and moving Beatrix once a week so we only paid the optimal price of 10Euros a night for the aire.
The mountains never fail to take my breathe away, whether that is through their beauty or sometimes nervousness when conditions are bad or my faith in my ability to ski down them fails – all of these feelings made me very much feel alive in Montgenevre. It truly was living up to the dream we had imagined 5 years ago.
Thanks for reading.
Sally, Toby and Merlin
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