Some of you may notice that it's a long way from Santiago to Barcelona and there is no mention, well it is a long way and I didn't leave enough time to "do It" and get to the airport to fly home, so, I'll have to go back.
Having had a few days on holiday at home, I am now making my way north from Spain into France and on to Italy. I had intended to do this part of the journey quickly, but I have got distracted and spent more time here than intended, but it is worth it as I have seen some stunning sights. I was pleasantly surprised with the Costa Brava coast, and have made a note to return to Lloret de Mar and just north of there, to St Feliu de Guixols. My next stop was in Arles, France, where I was stunned to find a Roman Amphitheatre, Roman Theatre and a Forum. As Van Gogh lived and painted here I was interested to see “Espace Van Gogh” I made a bee line for it as I expected to find some of his work there. It turned out to be a library, very nice but no paintings. This is the area of the Carmararge and I spent a morning looking for the 60000 ducks and 40000 coots that over winter here, I saw about 5 ducks, 2 coots and 3 Flamingos. Winter must be over! I did see loads of Little Black Bulls and many White Horses. The other animal I saw loads of were Coypu! I must have seen a dozen it all.
St Tropez, was all that I expected except there was no sun, The Harbour was full of multimillion £ boats, just two or three of them would have paid off Cyprus’s debt and left some change for the £4 coffee and the £5 parking for an hour and a half. But it was lovely and one day I will return in the sunshine.
Coming from Yorkshire I thought that I had to stay in Aups. From here it was just a short drive to the Grand Gorges du Verdon. These are the largest and deepest gorges in Europe so it was on a wet morning that I set off to circumnavigate the gorges. The 50 odd miles took me over 6 hours as I had to keep stopping to look and walk a little. The scale is astounding, look for the van in one of the pictures! I was very lucky as the rain stayed off for most of the time but low cloud at 3000ft did prevented some views. The River Verdon flows into Lac St. Croix, the largest manmade lake in France and one that changed colour several times during the day.
