Safe and sound…almost

  Vence, Provence, France
Friday, June 26, 2009

The next morning I awoke and strode confidently to the toilets for my morning drop off only to find that there was no toilet paper. As we hadn't come across this before, we weren’t packing any either. Now came the mad scramble to find a substitute, which I did with not a moment to spare. We packed up and got out of there in record time, not bothering to stop at the camp restaurant for a morning café before getting on the road, which had been our habit until now.

Good eats

We drove on for a while and stopped for gas where we also found a great Boulangerie, which is essentially a bakery where you could also get café and other fresh foods like sandwiches. Again our bikes with the Canadian flags drew attention. The owner of the place chatted with us a bit and told us about the significance of the mountain that overlooked the area, which funny enough looked similar to the rock of Gibraltar. There seemed to be many of these particular outcroppings. This one was a frequent haunt of various artists old and new, including Van Gogh, Picasso and others. We headed from here along some nice tight backroads that meandered through vineyards and small towns that supported the wineries of the areas. The

Vines growing in the blood red sand

rich red colour of the earth in this area struck our attention. It was similar to that of PEI, although darker. Legend has it that it’s red with the blood of the many soldiers of the First and Second World War that lost their lives in this hard fought area. In fact, even the roads are labelled with dates of significance, such as Rue 6th Mai 1945, obviously in reference to some event during WWII that occurred.

In the mountains over the Cote D'Azure

We started to make our way upwards into the mountainous area that follows the coast of the Cote D’Azure, near the cities of Cannes and Nice. Here the roads started to get nice and tight with many extreme corners and hairpin turns. While there was quite a lot of traffic, again the French drivers pulled over to let us pass so we could drop knees into the corners with speed. As we reached our destination the clouds started to close in and a light rain began to fall. Connie suited up into her rain suit, but I held off

Ready to ride in the rain

hoping the rain would wash some of the salt stains from my leathers that had built up in Spain. Here in the mountains we came across marvellous towns perched atop hills dating back to the middle ages with churches surrounded by old stone walls. It was just outside one of these towns called Vence that we found our campsite that would be our home for the next three nights. As we rode into the campsite it started to rain pretty hard and we took shelter under the awnings of the restaurant until it blew over and then we set up camp.