In a bid to extend our wonderful summer in 2022, we decided to follow the sunshine south through the beaches of Normandy and down to the wine regions of Bordeaux.
Many of the destinations had been on our travel wish list since we started planning our motorhome escape, like visiting and exploring the vineyards of Bordeaux, and some for years before, spending some time on the beaches of Normandy and visiting the cemeteries.
With these few good ideas as milestones and with nothing booked at all, the remainder of our travels were to be guided by the good weather. The sunshine took us from the Bayeaux Tapestry to Mont St Michel and onwards to the standing stones of Carnac. We discovered the amazing Atlantic beaches that make up the east coast of France and fell in love with the Ile de Ré and La Rochelle. In fact it was so good we visited it twice!
The sunshine beckoned us further south and into the Bordeaux region. The city itself is a place that neither of us had visited before but that both of us ended up loving. The architecture and history are incredible, and the relaxed atmosphere and outdoor living is just our thing. Our visit here was made even more special as we randomly and happily met our motorhoming friends whom we had last seen in Montgenevre.
Whilst in Bordeaux, we made the most of our membership of the France Passions scheme and visited quite a few (!!!) vineyards in each of the major wine producing regions. Each stay we had was a unique experience, giving us the chance to meet the wine makers (is there a proper word for that?) and understand more about their wines and the challenges that they have in producing them.
On Cap Ferret, the sun finally deserted us and Summer turned to Autumn. With our Brexit allowance of days running low (we wanted to save some to do our second ski season in 2023) we decided to head north and back to the tunnel at Calais. On the way we saw the castle that inspired Sleeping Beauty and visited the charming port town of Honfleur.
In total we spent 54 days in France through September, October and into November and we covered some 2287 miles.
The breakdown of our costs:
| Category | Cost (£) |
|---|---|
| Eurotunnel | £320.00 |
| Diesel and Petrol | £801.50 |
| Supermarket | £954.68 |
| Eating Out | £514.58 |
| Overnight Stays | £626.10 |
| LPG | £29.84 |
| Merlin vet costs | £48.14 |
| Parking | £8.82 |
| Public Transport | £5.28 |
| Tolls | £132.77 |
| Laundry | £34.74 |
| Data SIM | £210.00 |
| TOTAL COSTS | £3775.65 |
Overall, we had a great time on the tour. We’re relatively new to motorhome travel and whilst we know it could be done much cheaper than this, we could also have spent more for sure so overall, we’re pretty happy with everything and we had a fabulous time which was the main thing. The breakdown has given us some areas to consider as for example the cost of diesel was much higher than we thought, and we are definitely going to look into is the cost of data in Europe as we know there are better ways of buying this now.
Hopefully this is interesting and if you have any comments, please do let us know as we’d love to hear from you.
All the best Sally, Toby and Merlin
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