Our new normal of skiing most days continued for ten days in February.

With a slight sense of self entitlement, we decided that we didn’t like queuing for the ski lifts when Montgenevre was busy, especially at the weekends and realising that half term was on its way there would be a lot more people on the slopes. We made a plan to bug out of the mountains for a couple of weeks, to coincide with UK and French half terms. The question was where should we go. We realised we were really close to the French Riviera and the weather looked like it would be pretty fantastic there. I had a remote workshop to run during this period, we did some research using search4sites and found a great campsite just outside Cannes that had decent wi-fi.

It was our first descent from Montgenevre and we had “forgotten” that we would have to do the hairpin bends in reverse. This time we were fresh and it wasn’t after a long drive so Toby was fully aware of the challenge and the driving skills he needed. We started the descent and very soon realised that going downhill with hairpins can be more terrifying than going up them. We made it round the first few hairpins but then we came to a really steep turn with a downhill camber that just seemed to drop away and Toby, who was convinced we were going to topple over, stopped Beatrix in the middle of the road.

Inside, I was trying to convince Toby that we weren’t going to tip over but we weren’t sure what to do to get out of it. By now there were annoyed French car horns beeping and people had decided to both overtake and undertake us at the same time.

This was not ideal.

It seemed like ages, although it was probably only a few minutes, before Toby released the brakes and very, so slowly, crept forward to complete the turn.

It’s a funny story now although at the time I was unsure how on earth we were going to get through it and make it down the mountain. Thankfully having made it round, the rest of the hairpins were better as we had the ‘we’ve done the worst so everything else is possible’ feeling.

We arrived safely at a Camping Car Park at Savines Le Lac for one night before heading to Cannes. Camping Car Parks are a little controversial in the motorhome world of France. They are run by a bigger corporation and are seen as taking over the municipal free aires. I can understand this perspective, although have to admit we quite like Camping Car-Parks. You pay to have a card “PASS’ETAPES” at 5Euros and then pay for your stay or just use the facilities. You know exactly what you’re going to get from a facilities perspective as they have drinking water, grey and chemical waste dumping and usually electric hook up. Savines Le Lac is in a beautiful location and what we liked was that even in winter there was drinking water available which we found rare for a lot of aires in France in the winter months.

It was a long drive from Savines Le Lac to Camping Les Cigales in Cannes. We planned our route. The start of the route was a bit tricky as the roads were a little small and had strange cambers on them although not as bad as the hairpins. The camber of the roads really impacts you when you have a larger vehicle and isn’t something I’d ever paid attention to in a car. Toby had a few moments where he was thought we might topple over and fall off the road – obviously we made it safely down and then hit the autoroutes to get to Cannes as quickly as we could. This drive was a lot easier, although, as with anything there is a cost to using toll roads. I had another disagreement with the sat nav for the last part of the journey. The sat nav wanted us to get off the autoroute really early and take us along some very twisty roads to get to our campsite. Google said we could exit the autoroute a lot closer. Google doesn’t know our weight and dimensions and when we tried that exit we realised our weight was prohibited. We went one junction further. The final drive in towards Mandelieu la Napoule was a little hairy as the road had two low bridges and some quite narrow roads however we did get there.

And the sun was shining

And it was warm!

We enjoyed our time in Mandelieu, although the campsite was quite expensive. We tried to use our ACSI card and were told we couldn’t get the discount price as we were too long for an ACSI pitch. We did, however, get a small reduction even though the campsite was pretty full, which was nice.

It was wonderful walking to the beach, being able to wear shorts and T-shirts in February and was such a contrast to the mountains being wrapped up in multiple layers.

The campsite was great, however for Beatrix it was a little small in places. We needed to empty our grey waste and tried to get around the campsite using the one way system. We struggled to get round one of the corners and now Beatrix has some inadvertent adventure stripes after a ‘discussion’ with some very big shrubs. We moved pitches mid way through our stay so we could enjoy more of the sunshine. It was glorious not just having sunshine, which we had that in Montgenevre – in Cannes we also had warmth. We were able to sun bathe and I loved it! Weather is always interesting as it is never constant. All of a sudden there were very strong winds. We were outside doing some Beatrix maintenance when we suddenly heard a very load crack and saw a very large branch from the tree behind us fall in the wind. It fell onto the pitch behind us and looked like it fell on the VW van and their trailer which had a stunning motorbike on. Luckily the people were unharmed and miraculously so were their vehicles. Interestingly though the motorhome next to us immediately moved, as did we after checking everyone was ok. We thanked our lucky stars as if that branch had fallen onto Beatrix it would have caused all sorts of problems for us.

Whilst in Cannes we went running along the beach, scooted into Cannes itself, walked to Château de la Napoule and took a boat trip to Sainte Marguerite.

We met a few other Brits on the site, who helpfully recommended some other sites for us to visit in the area. We took their advice and visited a great little aire at Sainte Maxime for a couple of days where we enjoyed more of the French Rivera beaches and sunshine.

Then we actually stayed on the beach, a place called Bonne Terasse – Pampelonne. This aire was a bit more basic, with no electric hook up and although there was water we weren’t sure if it was good to drink. The location was fantastic and the price was relative to the facilities. In the evening we saw wild boar roaming around the vans and although the wind was quite strong here there were thankfully no more falling branches.

But, we couldn’t stay on the French Riviera forever as our season ski passes needed more use so we returned to Sainte Maxime for a night – got some LPG and then headed back to Montgenevre.

I have to admit – I love the mountains and skiing and love balancing that with sunshine and beautiful beach walks. I don’t know which I would choose if I had to between the two. Luckily with the road less travelled we don’t have to chose – we can have our cake and eat it.

Hope you enjoyed this tale – thanks for reading.

Sally, Toby and Merlin

Camping les Cigales

Camping-Car Park