Our Van Trip - France and a bit of Spain

Drew found his namesake in a wine!!! "Pisse Dru" Top shelf stuff

Peg also found her namesake, but in a cheese. Always been a bit cheesy. Ha ha ha. "Petit Saint Paulin"

Us, and our namesakes being consumed, with some olives.

Sunset over Pyla Sur Mer, south-west of Bordeaux.

And again...

The campsite we stayed at claimed to have "direct access to the beach". They neglected to mention that is was over a sand dune that puts Stockton to shame. We didn´t find the shortcut until we had climbed over it (Griffo Mum and Dad - it was a bit of a "Steve Lee" shortcut anyway)

The dune, from the summit.

Castro Urdiales, in north-west Spain. Nice view. We got chucked out of the pool for not wearing swimming caps.


The van soaking up the view

The city of Lourdes, back in the French Pyrenees, where Saint Bernadette saw the Virgin Mary 17 times. Now sick people flock there in the thousands to see the grotto where the apparitions happened to be healed. Unfortunately Peg´s sore knee didn´t fix itself.

We felt obligated to buy a Virgin Mary statue bottle and fill it with holy water. Yes, we do think this is tacky!

Drew filling said statue bottle with holy water pumped from the grotto

Drew drinking holy water...

Drew getting stung by holy water.

Just one of the thousands of tacky shops trying to commodify this tourist attraction. It is sickening.

After Lourdes, on the way to Marseilles, us and twenty thousand other people trying to get through a toll. The van didn´t like the heat and decided we needed a rest. Not before overheating of course. To get through the toll we used the truck lane in the name of speed. It involved Peg standing on the car to put the Visa card into the truck-height card reader. We got through, though!

Some bona-fide French cuisine. Foie Gras. Divine. For those of you who don´t know, it involves force feeding a goose until its liver explodes, then putting said liver into a jar for our consumption! Tres magnifique!


Some more scenery typical of France. So difficult to capture the sheer beauty of the entire country.