Long time ago we didn’t write for our blog, we are now in Spain, not far from Barcelona and here you have a summary from our time in France! Enjoy…
Between Oncino and France we passed some sunny days in Finale Liguria in Italy at the coast. A huge climbing spot close to the Mediterean sea! Sin ce long time ago we did not go climbing… sometimes it feels like you start from zero… but we enjoyed our first steps and the beautiful landscape.
In Ligure we also started making our own bread. Being surrounded by thymine it became our favourite ingredient for breakfast until now! Just some bread, thyme, good olive oil and a bit of salt…. So we are still making our daily bread and every morning Beate makes a new delicious doe for the next day.
From Finale Ligure we rode to Aigunes in the Gorges du Verdon. Some climbers advised us to go there, so we checked it out! The ride was chill, the weather shit, the music perfect and the road was just amazing because of the canyons next to the street. Aigunes is a small village with a few people and an international school of wood turning. We walked through the village with the hope to find climbers or/ and a climbing book… after half an hour we met Julien and Marie. Actually we met them because I was impressed of the chimney coming out of his caravan in this little village. This caravan was more a wheelbarrow than a caravan, of course without lights and license plate. Julien was preparing his caravan to quit the life in the village and to live in the nature close to the lake. Julien is a lovely guy -just life your life and don’t care too much about the rules but taking care about the environment. We were happy to meet them because they gave us a lot of advice for the area, they borrowed us a climbing book and overall we spend a good time with them. Julien was also happy because we pulled his caravan to a nice place in the middle of nowhere. Julien was riding with his military motorbike -of course also without a license- in front of us to show us the way. We followed him in our bus with his caravan behind it was so funny and it looked very cool! We left the main street and went off-road, we passed a huge sign (camping sauvage interdit). The road was tiny and not easy to enter. But we got rewarded! The place was calm, an old house next to a sea- just us and no police!. So this was a good start and finally we stayed there for two weeks.
There we went climbing, discovered the Gorge with our boat and had splendid evenings with Marie and Julien. One day they were invited for dinner at a friend’s place and we were allowed to join. There we met Celia who we met later again in Marseille!
Another highlight was that Julien showed us how to turn wood, if you get the chance to try – do it! It’s scary but also crazy: the fast turning wood which always looks round, the sharp tools and the right way to do it.. it was an interesting experience! Julien and Marie are really good wood turners. Just have a look at the pictures.
Aigunes was wonderful because of those unforeseen meetings and experiences!
The next destination was Marseille with a stop in Quinson and Aubagne. Marseille is surrounded by the Callanque, a National Park with a lot of rocks and seaside. We enjoyed the climbing and the nature, also some small villages at the seaside. Celia was a highlight in Marseille. Beate and me were stressed and tired of the city, finding safe parking sport and being allowed to stay was not easy… one day they tried to break in the door of our van and in the same evening they threw a stone into our window while we were riding. Overall was glass and this was a shock for us and we didn’t understand it! It made us sad especially when everybody told us:” ah but this is a very dangerous street, you should not go there!” Even the police don’t go there?! It took a while until we became calm again and got a safe feeling camping wild. In the end we fixed the broken window but the problems with those guys and this huge criminal energy is not solved…! Cilia explained us a lot about the situation in Marseille, she also showed us the good spots of the city. Good hospitality a lovely home and a nice shower!
All in all - Marseille was beautiful but a bit too wild. That’s why we were really happy about our next spot in the Gorge du Hérault. A very quiet and safe spot. There we met Sarah and Nono with who we spend some time, two French travellers who showed us a huge cave. This was really impressive. Furthermore David fished his first two fishes after a lot of hours waiting… they were delicious!
We drove further in the direction to Spain and stopped at the lake of Salagou, one day later Sarah and Nono stopped at the same place randomly. Those thinks are nice! Than its almost the same feeling like being home and it feels familiar.
Most of the time locals tell us where to go, where to climb, where to hike etc. In this case Julien told us about the hot springs in the Pyrenees. We passed a parking in the forest with some vans and busses so we decided to stop there where we met two other guys who knew the area quite well and also the springs…The same night I took my first bath in such a spring, Beate enjoyed having a lonely moment for herself in the bus. One of the guys is a professional guitar player, who decided to change his way of live completely.
For us it is so interesting to see who is complaining about the system/society and who’s doing his own stuff without complaining… “Try to put all your energy in building up your own system where you can reach the most of your potential instead of complaining and complaining.”…just by the way ;)
One of the guys showed us how to build your own outdoor cooker. Funny, because it was at the right moment: Since 3 weeks we were out of gas and we couldn’t fill it up, so we used our outdoor cooker which had also some problems or the wood stove….
The other guy became our mate for a few days and we had some more good bathes and even a nice concert in a small village. This guy is like us 28 years old but he has been travelling since 8 years, we had long talks and he gave us some tips for Morocco! We still don’t know how long we are planning to travel but we both know that it won´t be 8 years.
Slowly we took the road via Andorra and Spain because we were motivated to do some climbing and having better weather without snow!
The French Pyrenees are very beautiful so it took a long time… sometimes we wanted to make more kilometres but after 40 km we decide to stay because of the nice spot.
One time we stopped because there were a lot of birch trees,. In march you can tap the birch water of the branches to make syrup! It is very easy to make, tasty and healthy!
On the way we also stayed in a mountain village on 1500 m of altitude, it was freezing and in the morning we did our last snow track which ended with a warm bath in a nice hot spring! Afterwards you feel very calm…
The next blog will be about spring in Spain!
Our “future” plans are to enter Morocco in May and to stay there for 3 months. As we can’t pass Algeria we will come back to Spain and maybe pass Portugal. We would like to work in autumn e.g. some harvest of fruit picking and then pass the winter in the sun…