France Part Three - Week 3

We arrived at Camping Les Mures, which is on the busy coast road between Saint Maxime and Port Grimauld, mid afternoon on the Tuesday. It’s a huge site of the type we’d not normally use, however we were impressed as we pulled into the lovely reception area, with well kept gardens, immaculate facilities and right on the beach across the bay from St Tropez. The area was very busy on our arrival, unusual for late season apparently and we understand this is due to increased Covid confidence, apart from the Italians who we’ve been told are retreating still and not yet out out. We’d pre booked and were duly and proudly allocated pitch 307, which on approach we saw was half taken by an out of use water tank and the act of parking the van would occupy the rest including any sunshine, Mrs H, and I; it had to be said; were

not happy….we clocked pitch 330 next door was free, huge (as in room for 3 vans) and resplendent in the Cote D’Zur sunshine. After much queuing, awaiting the booking in by the one receptionist of most of the population of the EU, I’d secured a relocation for a bargain of an additional €1.50 per day and made Mrs H happy again. Chuffed with that and we gloated over the various occupants of said pitch 307 during our 6 days here. The site is in 2 sections; beach and vineyard. We were in the latter as beach really is beach and we’d have been dragging Daisy Dog out the sea each time we opened the van door. At home the beach pitches would be called Gypo like. On the Med, it’s fabulous and we enjoyed a beer or 3 at the beach bar within 10 minutes of our setting up. We enjoyed also taking our beach chairs and beer cooler over to the beach, and I swam in the now warmed up Med; lovely.

Our stay was filled with walks along the cycle track (or finding a later short cut through the very nice Les Prairie site) to Port Grimauld, bike rides in the

sunshine into St Tropez and the other direction to Saint Maxime on a cloudy day. Port Grimauld is purpose built and pleasant to wonder round.

We’d last visited St Tropez 10 years ago in the summer and experienced the infamous traffic jams around the bay and a very busy town. None of that this time and it was lovely to stroll around the upmarket centre. Daisy getting lots of attention as we wheel the bikes around, with her perched regally on her Buddyrider seat. We both said we enjoyed seeing St Tropez through slightly older (& child free) eyes, and would love to spend more time nearer to it for evenings out sometime.

Port Grimauld was designed by architect François Spoerry who I understand was a sailor who envisioned holiday homes with private moorings. He created the canal setting as the Venice of Provence and built the houses in their Provençal style, bright colours and shutters, over what was previously

mosquitoe ridden marshland in the 1960’s

After 6 days here we’ve decided to move on and see something else, still driven though by a continuing good forecast in the Corniche area; golden balls and high 20’s predicted. That will do us for our 4th week in France.

We’d not planned to be here, just took a recommendation from a couple we met in Aups and we’ll probably keep the trend going as we met a couple from Leicester whilst shopping. They’d just left the site we had shortlisted and sang it’s praises; we’ll let you know in next week’s ramblings.

Finally the week was marred by my team going into administration, 12 point deduction and a slide down from mid table to bottom; just below Forest. Nice to see the fans behind them and Rooney pledging commitment. I’ll be back to watch them from the end of October so hoping this continues.