Our first motorhome trip to France St Estephe to Cadillac
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St Estephe to Cadillac
Over breakfast we discuss our travels so far and decide that we have seen enough of the wine-producing area around the Gironde estuary, we were not enamoured of the wine and are going to move on to explore either the Dordogne or Lot valley. To help with route planning we purchased a paper map of France, it turned out very useful because of the overview that it gave. The areas we want to visit next will take a whole day to reach. Our first call today will be at Cadillac, a town rather than a famous make of car.
We found an interesting wine and cheese shop, where we discovered cheeses at €35 a kilo, and wines up to €1,300 a bottle, neither of which were of any interest to us, we rarely spend more than €20 on wine. Back on the road we passed through a landscape dominated by vines, mile after mile of straight rows, neatly spaced to enable special tractors to pass along the rows. The other thing that dominated travel was the speed bumps and so-called traffic calming measures in the villages. France has a problem, toll roads, the Payeage roads, motorway standard roads that are charged by use. For the government it’s a great solution to road provision, the money to build the roads is found, the roads are built and then the government rakes in VAT on the charges. What incentive is there for the French government to improve the ‘ordinary’ roads? In the UK we should be very wary of any plan to change for road use however it is presented.
What happens in France is that huge trucks avoid the tolls by travelling on the other roads, through the villages and small towns. 40 ton trucks passing along minor roads, it’s not joke, here’s an example from our travels in France later.
The overall effect of all those trucks is more expensive maintenance of the local roads, and all the costs of the the tolls are passed on to consumers in other ways. The UK and German systems seem to work better in the long run.
We stopped for lunch prompted by hunger, there are not many convenient places to stop along the narrow roads. The towns were there long before motor vehicles and of course retain their very narrow roads and cramped town centres — totally unsuitable for modern traffic. Our lunch companion was a donkey in the field next to the parking place. The donkey watched patiently, head over the fence, expecting something to eat I guess. No luck from the Brits, so our donkey friend abandoned us and wandered to the far end of the field where a vocal donkey performance was given, emphasis being on volume rather than sound purity.
After lunch we resumed our quest for the aire de camping cars guided by the anonymous voice of google maps. Unfortunately today was not a good day for the voice, it guided us to the wrong place, there was no sign of an aire de camping cars or anything else. We retraced our path and found physical signs that indicated a motorhome aire, but despite a thorough search we did not find it. Exasperated we abandoned that search and asked the voice for directions to the aire at Cadillac, about 20 minutes drive away.
Cadillac — a small town on the river Garonne, in an area that produces sweet dessert wines. The aire turned out to be a rather seedy car park in the town centre. Ten camping cars allowed, 4 already there plus us, but many of the reserved spaces taken by cars. This is typical of the French, a disregard for the signs and rules. This was without a doubt the worst aire that we used, our need overcame the reluctance to stay on such a cramped and unpleasant car park. Gill was not happy. The local women were very vociferous when someone spoke to them as they parked in the aire to drop off children at school. We might not have understood the words, you probably don’t find them in most dictionaries, but the volume and method of delivery said it all!
Our motorhome tour around France : St Estephe to Cadillac
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