words by Williams

Saturday June 3

The randonneurs are up and about early as we get ready to depart. Our pitch was tricky to get into and is tricky to leave. It takes Cal and about five randonneurs (including M Le President) to see us safely out. What a lovely bunch of people they are. Not sure how, with 50 of them on the way, the site is going to solve the waterless pitch conundrum.

Today we’re heading to Colombiers on the Canal du Midi, but via a.couple of places we remember from our 2009 visit.

In Pepieux, we park just up the road from the Vieux Relais, which sure enough has a notice on the door saying it’s closed.

Stopping for a coffee and a croissant we bump into a couple of English ladies who live in Pepieux and know the Slowthers. They confirm Mike and Val now live in a flat next door and have returned only yesterday from a trip to Australia.

We were going to give them a knock, but decide against it.

If you ever see a re-run of James Martin’s French Adventure, there’s a whole 10 minutes or so dedicated to Mike and Val - particularly Mike’s butterflied barbecue lamb. It’s lovely. I cooked it for Cal’s sister Sam and her partner Suzy’s now-legendary hen do with the crazy ladies of the St Albans mafia.

Next stop is Homps, right on the Canal du Midi, where there’s a big port de plaisance for what hire cruisers that Rick Stein dismisses as ‘Noddy Boats’ in his French Odyssey. Homps doesn’t seem to have changed much at all.

Maisie Waze finds us a back road into Colombiers. We are, as usual, ungrateful. We get to Camping Les Peupliers at lunch time, so it’s a kind of help yourself check-in after a quick phone call to whoever should be in reception.

We can choose any pitch we like, but don’t park on the grass, I’m told.

In the end, the pitch is a bit grassy round the edges, but gravelly in the middle. Hook up, set up time to chill on another hot day.

Sunday June 4

We walk to the port de plaisance in Colombiers, which is all of 500m from the campsite. It’s nearly lunchtime and the place is starting to get busy. Cal hadn’t really remembered coming here before, but she recognises it now.

We grab a table at La Passerelle which is a great place to watch the bigger boats come in and the day boats go out. We hear enough versions of the handover instructions to be able to consider ourselves experts. 

It takes us back to holidays on the Norfolk Broads watching boats moor end-on with an audience that you’re never sure is entirely stacked in your favour.

We’ve intended to just have an aperitif or three, but the food looks good. Cal tries her first tuna poke bowl and I go for the Caesar salad, just for a change. Lovely.

One hour, good food and a bottle of rosé later we amble back to the shack. It’s another hot one.

Cal struggles with Mary Berry’s autobiography while I watch the Spanish Grand Prix over a beer or two in the campsite’s restaurant. She’s not warming to La Berry and she’s seen a place you can donate books. They may not be acquainted much longer.

Monday June 5

Another bit of a hike today, heading for Aix-en-Provence, where Paul Cezanne used to hang out painting a mountain, apparently. Cal remembers taking her mum and dad there a few years ago. We’re booked at a site called Camping Chantecler in the suburb of Val Saint-André three or four kilometres east of the city.

When we get there it’s clear that the version you see on the website doesn’t actually match the reality.

The place looks unkempt, the pitches arranged in an apparently haphazard way either side of steeply sloping access roads. The on-site restaurant clearly isn’t open and at reception I’m charged an additional ‘local’ tourist tax, which has to be paid in cash, apparently.

We try one pitch but it slopes and it’s muddy from recent rain.

We move to another, flatter but still muddy pitch at the foot of the hill, nearer to the shower block and reception.

I’m not happy, and but for a long drive to get here, I’d be moving on. Cal’s reasoning that we should stay and see what it’s like.

Right now it’s hot and sunny, so we check out the shopping in Val Saint-André, which reminds me a little of the setting at Huttopia Arcachon.

My mood’s not improved later when we have a loud, dramatic and very wet thunderstorm that seems to last all night. They do seem to get them round here.

Tuesday June 6

One thing the site does have is a great bus connection into the city from the small square in Val Saint-André. It costs just a little over a euro each way and in no time we’re wandering down the Cours Mirabeau in the centre of the city in one of the biggest clothing markets ever. With the slope and the Fountaine de la Rotonde at the bottom, today it has a bit of the vibe of La Ramblas in Barcelona.

The street has to be a kilometre long and it’s lined with stalls selling everything from jewellery to bags, dresses and hats and it’s packed - and not just with tourists, although there’s plenty of them about. For the first time we’re noticing a few American accents.

Cal’s in her element. She has her shopping head on and is not to be rushed. She’s wearing a red dress, which clearly needs a red costume ring, so she buys one. But then she buys a green dress, which rather confuses the issue.

She negotiates a red polo shirt for me, too. She’s not sure I can fit in a French XL, but actually the fit’s not too bad considering I try it on over a tee shirt.

By the time we get to the bottom of the road and checked out the bus stop back, we’re hungry.

Buoyed by the success of Cal’s poke bowl in Colombiers, we try a rough-and-ready-looking Thai street food place. The food’s decent enough, but Cal’s not impressed with the dark decor or the location, which definitely doesn’t beat a cafe on the side of the Canal du Midi.

It’s another hot one, so before we catch the bus we have time to wander into a side street to find somewhere for a swift half. We find O’Sullivans overlooking the bustling Place des Augustins just behind Mirabeau.

It’s a compact bar with an open frontage and a few tables and chairs out into the street. Now this definitely does beat the cafe for people watching. It’s set up for entertainment. Three narrow roads meet in this busy square and two of them are one-way. It’s on the route for a special city bus for old folks (we think) and every so often one will turn up from the top of the square to turn left at the bottom.

There are those pneumatic barriers in the road, which the drivers have the means of opening through some kind of device in their cabs.

Cal’s fascinated about their ability to just-in-time it to get through. Except for the time the guy parks his car at the bottom of the road, just where the buses turn and disappears into a shop.

Not only is he blocking the road, he’s facing the wrong way. And he’s left his wife in the passenger seat to face the consequences.

When the bus inevitably arrives, there’s a stand-off and the traffic’s backing up. It’s backing up behind the bus and it’s backing up behind the car. The woman in the car gets out and has an arm-waving argument with the bus driver as though it’s their fault for turning up at an inconvenient time. By now there’s a lot of horn-hooting going on and people are taking sides. No-one’s rooting for the passenger, it seems.

Finally the driver of the car returns to jeers and laughter. He struggles to persuade people to move so that he can back out. Finally, a precarious three-point turn later, the road is free.

They really need a webcam in this bar facing out onto the square. They’d be world famous.

Time to head back. We’d been expecting one bus, but another turns up heading in the same direction, but by a circuitous route apparently.

In turn, first me, then Cal wave our debit cards at what turns out to be the wrong machine at the front of the bus. That one’s for people with travel cards, ours is a couple of steps further in.

The driver is first perplexed at our inability to understand his simple instructions, but deals with it with humour. “You English, you give me a heart attack,” he laughs. “Every time, every time.”

A few minutes later, we’re expecting to be dropped off in the square at Val Saint-André, but it seems the driver has made a small detour. He drops us about 20 metres from the end of the road to the campsite. “I figured if you’re English and on this bus, you’re camping,” he laughs. We thank him. Fun end to an entertaining day in town.