Photos from our travels: Part 3 – Mediterranean France

Getting into the swing of this now! Here are some photos from the first couple of weeks of August. As before click the map and photos to see large versions.

St-Quentin-de-la-Poterie was a fascinating little place. In the past it had been a commercial pottery town, making tiles and such like. Several years after the heavy industry closed down independent artisan pottery studies started opening up, now there is something like 23 studios. If you like ceramics, it’s worth checking out! Anyway, to the photos, this was a mosaic on the street. Cevennes National Pak. This is in Bédouès where our campsite was. We liked this area and the nearby town of Florac which had an interesting market.
We went for a walk from the campsite in Bédouès, Cevennes. We never like to take the same route back but we hadn’t got a map so we took a bit of a risk. Turned into the longest walk ever, didn’t get back to the van until sometime after 10pm! At the bottom of the campsite was this river and lots of wild greens for fresh juice.
Gorges du Tarn, on the edge of the Cevennes National Park. The gorge is over 30 miles long and very beautiful, went for a good walk, although the trees generally obscured the view of the gorge, we got the best views from walking along the road. Flamingos in the Carmargue area, not far from Montpelier.
The amphitheatre in Nímes, over 2000 years old and still standing In a little place called Ginac, campsite by the river.

Photos from our travels: Part 2 – Italy

Oops, I’m a bit slow with this, here are some photos from July. We were in Briançon, only 10km from the border with Italy so we decided to pop over for a quick visit. The first night we camped wild and saw the most amazing sight, lots of fireflys. First time I’ve seen them, they fly around flashing a little light on and off, the affect is best when there are a lot of them. I did take a photo, but it came out black! We covered a lot more ground in a short time in Italy, we whizzed down the motorways to get to a few interesting places, unlike France where we mostly stayed off the motorways on the smaller roads.

Click on the map and photos to see larger versions:

Santa Isola, Italy – This was quite a random stop (like many of the places we have seen), we were driving along and stopped for a little walk and found this beautiful lake and river. Wanted to go in the water but it was very cold (in the mountains), just got my feet in for a few minutes. Out of the mountainous area, we did find a beautiful river to swim in, really warm, but I can’t remember the place name or river name! The sea on the coast at Marina de Pisa was also lovely and warm for swimming.
In Tuscany we went to a few interesting towns and villages with old buildings, Volterra, San Gimignano and Siena. These three photos are from Siena. I’m not religious (far from it) but churches and cathedrals are often beautiful buildings and this one was one of the most ornate I have ever seen.
Back on the coast, this is Vernazza, one of the five villages known as the Cinque Terra. I thought we were in Russia for a moment, but it turns out we were in San Remo This is somewhere in the Alps on the border between Italy and France.
More in the alps. Back in France, Gorges de Daluis (Alps). This was a beautiful area, the photos don’t do it justice.
A place called Annot. Not the most amazing place, but the campsite was great.

Photos from Tarragona

I’m currently travelling in Spain and thought I’d post some photos from my trip.

Cactus flower

I’m in Tortosa in Tarragona Province and I was very supprised to see Booja Booja raw ice-cream for sale on an organic stall in the market. There were two organic stalls, one with fresh fruit and veg where I got some delicious cherimoyas (custard apples). The fruit here is just divine, eating lots of kakis (persimmon) at the moment. Tomatoes with lots of flavour, so different to the UK!