2018-03-30 Northern Italy and Southern France Couges les Pins to Istres

Previous Day :: Trek Overview :: Next Day

Couges les Pins to Istres via Marseilles

Northern Italy and Southern France by Hymer Motorhome

Couges les Pins to Istres via Marseilles

We were up, breakfasted and have the Hymer serviced, coffee drunk and are ready to leave by about 10:30am, a leisurely pace, there’s no rush so we can enjoy taking things a little slower. We head for Marseilles, a sprawling city, the oldest city in France as well as one of Europe’s oldest continuously inhabited settlements. Marseille became prosperous as a trading city and still has its port at the heart of the city, where soap manufacture began 600 years ago and still goes on. Marseille has the most museums of any city in France. (Wikipedia). 

As we passed through Marselle we called off at a filling station and topped up our LPG tanks with 10L of LPG and added 59L of diesel. The filling station had a good vehicle wash, so we took advantage of that and cleaned the motorhome, it looked a lot better for the wash.

Just after 1pm we reached our next destination, the small town of Istres and its aire de camping cars. At Istres the entry to the aire is via a short stretch of road with rising bollards, you enter, the bollards rise behind you and as you approach the next set of bollards they fall to let your motorhome pass. One pays on exit via a self-service machine. We parked up, had lunch then went walking around the lake where we spotted many Mediterranean Gulls, then walked into the town. We found a specialist cheese and meat shop that had an extensive selection of different cheeses, jamons and cooked meats, as usual we purchased a wide selection of things we have not seen before.

Istres is built on a hill, so you can climb to the top of the town through narrow winding streets that seem too narrow for cars. At the top there are wide views across the town and surrounding country. Some of the houses have amazing roof gardens and sitting areas.

Tonight we sampled a bottle of rosé wine with our pork, mushroom and sun-dried tomato stir fry and rice. By bedtime there were another 5 motorhomes on the site.

Our Hymer motorhome trip to Northern Italy and Southern France

Click any image to enlarge

Summary of motorhome journey – Couges les Pins to Istres