The Buddy System

So we're back in the UK, have been for a couple weeks and have covered several miles in my brother's motor visiting friends and family aroond the contree, like. It's been a while since I wrote on here and a lot has happened so I am going to attempt, large glass of wine in hand, to address as many cool points as possible since we were in 'Cathar Country' (it could get a bit long-winded), though Kate has already written about the crazy hippy commune episode which will forever remain the scariest but most potentially-filled-with-awesomeness-but-we'll-never-know-it-but-thats-what-makes-it-cool situation I've yet been in.
So after Carcassonne, we headed to the Med and landed first in 'Palavas Les Flots' where we discovered some decently hot tarmac and the most flagrant nudist beach ever (never again). We made bacon and brie baguettes and survived the nudism for approx 2 hours before heading off again lest our appetites never ever recover.

From Palavas-Les-Butts, we drove to St Mary's by the Sea (I translated that myself; check out mon Francais!) which can have surf at times, though didn't when we were there (no surprises) so we buttered up some pasta and ate it on a small jetty thing whilst I attempted to catch some fish with some terrible Camembert as bait.

From St Marie de la Mer we motored for ages through Marseille which appears to be the Ultimate City, with beaches, a decent Marina, general cool overall feel and some fat mountains just on the way out of it. We ended up in a small seaside town called Cassis and camped up on a big ant-infested hillside for 2 nights and swam around in a small cove which had a knackered old pier on it which you could jump off into fairly shallow but super clear water - awesomeness. Cassis also has the best and cheapest bakery found on the whole tour.

From Cassis we motored East in search of the great St Tropez which we weren't sure if we really wanted to go to but what the heck? It took 24 hours longer than planned due to my awesome navigational skills but when we arrived we weren't let down a bit - plenty chubby old rich people everywhere and more white clothing than a Michael Jackson music video (err...). We had a beer or two in the cheapest looking place we could find and then zoomed out of there before we got hired as ship hands on some fat old bloke's oversize yacht.

This is the point where we met the wee hippy lass of whom you can read more in Kitty's previous post.
Post-hippy situation, we pushed Mr Buddy right to his 50 mile per hour limit all the way to a small town set amidst big cliffs with churches set atop. The cliffs were lit up by huge lighting rigs which, at night, had bazillions of bugs going crazy in their beams; it was like St Tropez for bugs; they were probably all wearing white outfits but I couldn't tell from the glare. We camped up in a car park which was fairly empty and slept fairly badly on account of the strange experiences of just a few hours earlier. I woke to find our car park was a 'use at your own risk' place due to it being close to the river which is 'prone to extreme, sudden over-night flooding'. Nice.

The next day we motored up and down various mountains, mostly in 2nd gear and it was the coolest driving ever; winding around and through mountains and tunnels with huge drops just the other side of the road. Buddy managed most hills in 2nd gear, but we had to stop halfway up most of them, for half an hour, to let him cool down, the poor lad.

Next day we motored around and up and down and into Digne les Bains, a mountain town with a cool Municipal outdoor man-made lake full of ultra freezing cold water and a big waterfall which massaged some of the Buddy-induced knots out of our shoulders nicely. This place had a strange feel to it as we were right up in the Alps with All Nature around us yet we were swimming in a man-made lake surrounded by ice cream cabins and things. Surreal.

This was a day of stupendously stupid amounts of driving as we motored all the way up to Grenoble which we had high expectations of but which was an ultra-dump, Newport South Wales-style. So we motored out of there to a small town and then ascended approx 1000 metres to a tiny municipal camp site which was more of a back garden with an outdoor loo. We were knackered at this point and so crashed here for a couple days. We went for a big hike further up the mountain, about another 400 metres up (slowly) and stopped when we felt drunk as skunks from the altitude. We sat out another of the Summer's huge storms that night (storm #13 or something) and then headed out through Chambery, towards Lyon.

Now, Lyon is the coolest city we've been to so far; there's an awesome summer festival (Le Nuits de Fourviere) each year where decent bands play and lots of free outdoor cinema goes on. And this is something a bit annoying about our trip this summer; it seems every other town we've come to has had a sweet music festival on that we didn't know about and we've missed one of our favourite bands who randomly seem to be playing there; we missed Arcade Fire in both Bilbao and Lyon, The Howling Bells played down on the Med 3 days before we arrived and The Good The Bad & The Queen played the day before we got to Lyon. One year we'll go to the Lyon festival and watch a few bands and ride around on some of the rented bicycles some more. And eat a few more 'Maxi Chocolatines'. It's worth doing some research to see what festivals are happening in Europe and where cos there are some great ones which are totally non-advertised outside of the towns they're happening in, it seems.

From Lyon we headed further West towards the surfing coast and stayed in a couple small towns along the way and then a couple days at La Maison Sedgewick where awesome food and wine is in total abundance. We ate some fish at a local village barbecue where anyone can come along with food (or buy some there) and barbecue it on one of the huge barbies and sit at a huge table in a tent and listen to terrible music - it's awesome!

We zoomed from Correze back to the coast but didn't quite make it all in one day and made the terrible decision to park-up for the night in a busy motorway services area. As we slept some sick sumbitch screwdrivered the drivers door on Buddy but didn't manage to get the door open thanks to Kate hearing them and making a bit of a racket. Me, being the next Jack Bauer, slept peacefully through and when Kate tried to rouse me, I told her not to worry it was probably just 'Acorns falling on the roof' (quick thinking!). She was right though and half an hour later when I'd managed to wake up, I discovered the damage and we raced out of there, back to the woods of Biscarosse and into the safety of Juggernaut Campervan Land.

We spent a few days lounging around and surfing small waves and sampling the WiFi and beers of The Globe Trotter Cafe in Bisca before heading to Biarritz to meet one Miss Catherine Sweet at the airport. What followed was an awesome week of decent surf for the first few days, tripod photography, knitting and free-camping in car parks with the new added challenge of finding somewhere to illegally camp but which was safe enough for Bessie to pitch her tent for the night; she did well and was well into our non-washing-eating-only-cous-cous lifestyle by the end of it.

Bessie left us and a couple of chicks from London decided they had to buy our van the next week and suddenly we were presented with the possibility of being Buddy(home)-less and with no plans as to what to do next. We spent that week cleaning the Bud up for the viewing and looking at prices for various trips which included a stop in Melbourne.

The London girls bought the van but asked us to drive it home which was just fine by us (though by this point Buddy is much worse for wear and I have super duper Gun Gum skills wheeee!). The trip home took no less than 4 days and we discovered that there's surf near Calais - who'd have thought it?

Next day we were at the Euro Tunnel departure area at 6am wondering just what the heck we were doing there; it was a total mixed bag of feelings...

I was treated to a little insight into life with Kate , Boo and the monkeys in their little Buddy van for 10 days. I brought a bargain Tent for £7 , risked the flu on Ryian Air , hiked across London with my 7ft board 'Matilda' and 'Serious Concerns' by Wendy Cope as my only companion after completing a grueling 4 night shifts in a row. Kate and Boo had 'serious concerns' about me when i arrived and compared myself to a very depressing poem ......so they fed me lentils, rice,onions, garlic,French bread, Cheese and Rum and Coke and who can forget the porridge and apricots and introduced me to their worlds...... and Wendy....., you know where you can shove your Serious Concerns!!!

On the plane i stalked a TV presenter and was keen to find him again when i arrived at the airport in France, instead i ran into two extremely albino Brown Twins holding a brilliant welcoming banner! They looked amazing! They had got living in a van down to a t but i had 'serious concerns' to learn that they took turns to sleep on the fridge so that they could stretch out at night to sleep, Boo was wasting away a bit and Kate looked like surfing Barbie but they both looked extreamly healthy and content.

We started out in Biarritz and worked our way up the west coast and they shared with me their favorite places, we spent our days surfing, swimming, skateboarding, chit chatting, drinking coffee, Rum and knitting. We all knitted hats and even the monkeys got hats. Boo knitted an amazing hat by the lake one day which was totally lovely. I think we looked like total hippies! we probably smelt like some, i didn't have a single shower all week and totally loved the freedom of having an early morning invigorating swim in the sea and then showing next to a tramp on the beach. When i got home i tried to keep my sea curls by not washing my hair, i got to work and realized i had very bad dandruff!gross!

I spent the week admiring the choices of canine companions the French have whilst Kate and Boo admired homes like theirs along the way. The weather was lovely and i have the fondest memories of Kate and boos generosity and loved just hanging out with them in beautiful France. We all took some amazing photos and my little tent was a gem. So thank you masses Kate and Boo, i love you both tons, you are totally living freely and lightly and have faith in what your doing, you may never have this chance again xxxxxxxxxxx

few weeks old but wanted to write down the hippie experience!!...

57 nights in a campervan the truth.....when you imagine trips to the beach and camping it normally consists of 2 nights or maybe very occasionally a week at the end of this time you have had lots of fun and funny experiences and feel great for being out in nature, it is also the truth that you cant wait to get back to home comforts of bed/shower etc....we feel that we have broken through the camping boundary and have complied the following:

bad points about camping:

* considering a toilet (with paper) a luxury! when free camping it is essential to use the forest as a nature toilet, hence when you get to use a bathroom you feel like the queen!

* when we built the inside of the van we were quite rushed and the planning went a little out the window and we have ended up with a tiny bed which is forces you to sleep in the most uncomfortable way and we both have mornings of pins and needles and/or cramp plus a bad back/neck/shoulders!

* not considering the fact that france and spain can have bad stormy, rainy days in the summer months we have discovered that a small retro van is much like living in a broom cupboard, when the weather is great its fine to have such a tiny home as you hardly use the van at all, spending all day outdoors and most the night, only cooking or crashing to sleep but when the winds start howling and the rain keeps coming, the last place you wanna be is crammed into the broom cupboard, especially when it contains almost everything you own.

Knowing that we would probably not make it all the way to Morocco and back in our little tin can we started on a road trip to the med coast and then up to the french alps and then back across the middle to Biarritz, all the places we havent ventured to before and its been really fun! lots of driving but we feel we have truely experienced life on the road, eating basic meals at various different locations and the fun of stopping whenever you feel like turning off the main road and exploring whatever you may find, its brilliant as when you have so many miles to cover in one day you find that each morning can be completely different to lunch time and somewhere different again in the evening. we have been in search of surf but not found anything but a small ripple, instead we have found many nudy beaches, old towns, the bluest of seas, incredible mountains, windy never ending roads up and down the alps, mini hurricane, more storms, the canal de midi, gorgeous bays where you can dive off the jetty into the sea, swimming in an icey cold lake with a waterfall, the posh people of saint tropez, altitude sickness, and to top it all off a hippy commune. We are over half way through now and just outside the cool town of Lyon, slightly annoyed that we were two days late for a arcade fire gig. Its really nice to be back on ground level as the altitude was hitting us bad, sometimes making you feel slightly drunk (good) or sicky and sore ears! we found a real cute campsite which was really old fashioned and didnt end up charging us for the two nights we stayed, we are real tired as no sleep was had last night due to a massive storm in the mountains.

Anyone that has read 'On the Road" by Jack Kerouac will understand that you become taken with the idea of people hitch hiking and so whenever we have passed people needing a lift we have always tried to accommadate them, up until last week this kind gesture took a crazy turn and before we knew it was weirder than weird.......so we see this girl outside st tropez trying to get a lift, she looks like a typical traveller, nothing too strange and she has her dog with her, so i look at boo he looks at me and we decide to stop and help her out if we can...turns out she is going to the next town north and as this is not out of our way and she seems nice we decide to take her, she gets in and now i notice that she is not wearing any shoes and has real hairy legs and pits, not a problem just noting. She starts telling us about where she lives, that she lives with her boyfriend and another couple and one more friend, they have 3 dogs and kittens, so we are approaching the town and she says that she actually lives a few miles out of town and would we mind taking her there, so we are going down this crazy off the road track we start to think this is a bit weird and we are not sure whether this is gonna be awesome or the scariest and stupidest thing ever, arriving at a run down house we meet her housemates..... the place is such a mad set up that this is the first thing to shock us...who lives like this with stuff everwhere and a garden full of old motors and overgrown weeds and all sorts of stuff all over the place and the house has been covered on one side with mud and she tells us there is no electricity or running water....the housemates all had no shoes and mud and oil on their faces and half their clothes hanging off and we are trying to act like this is normal but actually on the way up to the house we now remember her saying something about her housemates wouldnt mind if we arrived naked and we both feel like we need to know more but if we stay we may be at risk as we are in the middle of the mountains no where near civilisation and we didnt really expect to find this, they show us the garden and one of the girls plays a wooden flute and they show us the things they have been making out of tin cans and we stay for a cup of nettle tea all of us drinkin out of jam jars and they start to tell us about rainbow gatherings and how magical they are, and the guy asks me if i would think about joining some kind of hippy commune like this and I say ummmm maybe not right now! Its like a scene from the book "the beach" its all great but a bit weird and we are feeling a bit uncertain and its getting late and we finally feel like we should leave when they ask us to come swimming in the river with them and we get away safely feeling that it was more than likely gonna be a naked swim with these people. In all we were there about 2 hours it was fun to experience but altogether we were glad to be back in our broom cupboard and driving far far away from that place!