To South of France in a Mercedes caravan

Trip Start Jun 13, 2007

Trip End Sep 23, 2007

Loading Map

Map your own trip!

Map Options

Show trip route

Hide lines

Where I stayed

Sejours & Affaires Apparthotel Park Lane

(Lyon hotels)

Flag of France Lyon, Rhône-Alpes, France
Saturday, July 26, 2008

Roger, Manfy, Chris and I set off at the crack of dawn from Reading for our journey to the south of France. We felt like gypsies as we took off, the Mercedes Roger had bought on eBay for the occasion, packed to the gunnels with luggage for four adults, beach gear and food on the way, including a water jug which could be plugged into the cigarette holder - to heat up water for cups of tea or noodles and soup on the way.

We arrived in Dover with plenty of time for the ferry and had croissant and coffee at the ferry terminal while waiting to get on the SeaFrance ferry.
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HtEIMqMdW78&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HtEIMqMdW78&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
The one-hour journey across was uneventful and the channel calm

Our Mercedes gypsy caravan

. Jane, our GPS Navigator, led the way out of Calais and soon we were cruising along on to the Autoroute 26 at 130km an hour, heading for Lyon.

Somewhere south of Reims we stopped for a picnic at an idyllic spot and we found a small covered pavilion with a table and two benches.

Everything was fine until we opened the coke and we were invaded by wasps and had to pack up our things and get out of there quickly.

For the next two hours or so I drove - the traffic was bunching up and I had to weave in and out of lanes to keep up the speed.

Never having driven on the right hand side with a left-hand side car - it was a bit of a challenge changing on to A4, back to A26, followed by A5 and then on to A31.

We stopped before getting on to the A6 at one of the many 'pit stops' and had something to drink and eat. Roger decided to take over the rest of the drive.

Picnic spot somewhere on the way to Lyon

I had calculated about six hours from Reading to Lyon, including ferry, but out 'pit stops' had slowed us up and we were running hopelessly late.

It was past 10pm until we got to our apartment. Check-in was until 8pm, so I had been desperately tried to get hold of someone to let them know we would be late.

But our reception was a touch screen where I was asked to key in my name, slide in my credit card and retrieve it - and a set of keys dropped down.

After that it was 'open Sesame' and we got to our apartment without any trouble. It was a perfect place for an overnight stay and for only 59 euros for four, pretty reasonable.

Our apartment had one bedroom and a sleeping sofa in the living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. We just dropped our things and hurried to the restaurant below, which had closed already - but we were told by the bartender closing up the bar, that we would be able to get a meal at a restaurant around the corner.

We had a lovely dinner - steaks and chips for the guys and gourmet pizza for the girls plus carafes of red wine and coffee afterwords for a quite reasonable GBP80 for the four of us.

After a good meal and some nice red, we were all ready to go to bed.