When I think of Bordeaux, I think of wine. Not a particular surprise there perhaps as it’s the largest wine producing part of France and if you ask for a ‘vin-rouge’ in Beatrix you’ll most likely be served a Bordeaux. However, our visit was full of unexpected surprises…….

But before we get there, when we spoke last, we were enjoying a well deserved holiday on Ile de Re.

With our pitch littered with 5 days of contents from the garage….. tables, chairs and washing line…… we had some stowing away to do. We decided our next stop off was going to be just over the bridge in La Rochelle. We’re meeting friends here in a couple of weeks and wanted to check out the aire and see how to get into the city. I’m so happy we did as it was a sunny Sunday and all the locals were out. Restaurants and bars with tables spilling out across the port side and after a quiet week on the island, it felt like we were threading our way through crowds of people who were out walking, cycling and, like us, scooting about.

La Rochelle looks absolutely stunning and that will be a tale for another time. 

This year we had brought the French Passions guide. Not perhaps what you might be thinking, this is actually a guide to smaller, independent farmers and producers who are prepared to allow a motorhome to stay overnight in return for you purchasing something small or perhaps having a tour. In this region, that means vineyards and wineries.

We picked out a bunch of exciting looking sites to potentially visit and our first stop was at Chateau Nodot. Here we met the lovely Florence who welcomed us warmly and gave us a tasting tour of her family’s vineyard. It’s a small space but the family have made wine here for 11 generations and now make Biodynamic wine which uses all natural methods of growing way beyond simply not using manmade fertilizers. Suffice to say, the end result tastes fantastic, and we were unable to help ourselves buying a few bottles. Florence explained her husband, who is a bit of a historian, had researched two medieval recipes for white and red wine and they now make a limited number of these at the chateau. They were both excellent and really different with the red tasting just like Christmas in a bottle!

With a workday coming up, we wanted to stop somewhere with electricity and a good internet signal, so the campsite just outside Bordeaux seemed like the ideal place. The location meant it would be easy to catch a tram into town and we’re always happier if we have to leave Merlin in the van, to be on a campsite.

700 million bottles
of wine are produced
in Bordeaux each year

The day we were going to head into Bordeaux, I found a really interesting walking trail that is marked on the streets with little gold discs and so we decided we’d have a walk around rather than go into the Museum of Wine, which doesn’t allow dogs. So we did a quick lap of the campsite before breakfast with plans to jump on a tram. Halfway round, we heard a shout of “Toby, Sally!” and turned around to see our friend Richard jumping from his motorhome. A moment later his wife Michelle appeared!

To give you a little back story, we were parked up next to Richard and Michelle when we were skiing in Montgenevre earlier in the year. We’d skied a few days together and had ended up celebrating their anniversary with several bottles of excellent champagne. We’d mentioned that we were thinking about heading this way after summer and Rich mentioned the surfing was good on this coast so they may take a summer break towards San Sebastian.

It’s genuinely astounding that with this level of detailed planning, we ended up on the same campsite on the same day. It was even luckier that they saw us as the campsite is huge with more than 300 pitches and we were on opposite sides but just happened to take Merlin for a short walk before going into town. What a happy surprise!

We all decided to take the tram into Bordeaux for the day. Rich and Michelle had been here before but said it was really beautiful and there were lots of good stuff to check out so we spent the morning following some of the walking trail. Wow, Bordeaux was a complete surprise, how totally amazing. The city has a long and rich history and both the architecture and the general feel of the place is really great. This is a place we will definitely come back to, I’m sure.

Having had chance to share a couple of bottles from Chateau Nodot and with the promise to save a space for them in Montgenevre next year, we said goodbye to Rich and Michelle. Vanlife can introduce you to lots of people but in our experience it’s rare to meet people that you really get on with so to have chance to share stories and experiences was brilliant.

For our next stop, we had picked out another vineyard but as they were having an open weekend they said parking would be difficult so we decided to head back to the beach. Simon, Nina and Marley had been to this coast over summer and said that Biscarrosse was very beautiful so that’s where we’re headed.

Thanks for reading, Toby & Sally & Merlin

Link to the walking trail we followed

https://www.bordeaux-tourism.co.uk/parcours/bordeaux-world-heritage-site.html