As I packed Agy up for another trip south to escape the February cold, I wondered if we have become snowbirds. I’d heard about people who head south to the sun for winter being known as snowbirds, and it feels as if that might be us.
I have come to really dislike February weather in the UK. Well, maybe I have always disliked it; but when I was working, I just didn’t see it. I’d leave the house early and get home often about 8 pm, in time to eat, sleep and head to work again. I often ended up travelling in February as there was a conference I used to attend each year too, so the month passed me by. Now I’m not working, I definitely experience it, and I am not a fan!
When I signed off the last blog in October we were heading home from our epic UK adventure and were planning a trip away over winter, but leaving Agy at home. We were thinking of a different type of trip, but for family reasons we decided to postpone that and stay home until later in February.
Having made that decision, and we are very glad we did as a very special person joined us during this time, we needed a new plan. So here we are in what is rapidly becoming our winter home from home. We travelled through France into Spain and are back in Benidorm with Agy.
We caught the ferry from Portsmouth to Cean, an easy daytime journey. As the ferry left early in the morning we headed to Port Solent late afternoon the day before, spending the night free of charge, before heading to check-in at the international port at 6 am. Not a time we usually see nowadays!
The ferry was great, we’d booked a cabin so we could catch up with some sleep enabling us to clock up some miles once we arrived. Before we knew it we were arriving in port and our journey began.
Our intention was to get as far as we could before it got dark, and we did fairly well. Travelling in France is so easy in a van. The roads are clear and almost every village has an Aire de Camping where you are able to stay for up to 2 days, many have water available, some have electricity, but all welcome you - so different to the UK.
We made it to Cinq-Mars-la-Pile as darkness fell, and with a quick trip to the supermarket to stock up on essential food and wine, settled in, slept well and headed off again the next morning.
We’d heard about the village of the martyrs d’Oradour-Sur-Glane when some van life YouTubers we follow had visited and thought it was somewhere we would be interested in.
The village is about 22 from Limoges and has been preserved as it was left by a unit of the Waffen SS in World war II.
On 10 June 1944 the whole village was destroyed, in fact it was annihilated. Every person there killed including the children, a total massacre. 643 people were killed that day, and the whole village burned. The bodies of those killed were burned in a mass grave so they were unable to be individually identified.
On November 28th 1944 the provisional French government decided to preserve the ruins, so future generations could remember, understand and learn.
As we walked around the village, you find the dentist, the baker, the garage, the seamstress‘ store. The equipment that survived the fire is still there. The cars still sit where they were the day the Nazi troops arrived. It is horrifying, but there is a sense of calm now. The school children who are visiting, hearing about what happened are quiet, respectful, there weren't too many people visiting the day we arrived. In this first photo you can see the Singer sewing machine belonging to the courtier, which really hit me....
As we visited there are people facing similar horrors in the world, it’s hard to comprehend how leaders of the modern world can continue to promote such awful behaviour, and yet still they do. If you are interested in learning more, you can find details here www.oradour.org
Continuing our journey south we covered a fair distance to spend our second night in another Aire, this time in Villasavary, not too far from Carcassonne. Now, if we had realised that we had both been mistaken in our campsite booking in Benidorm, we would probably have visited Carcassonne. It is somewhere we have wanted to go. We will one day! However, we pressed on the next day getting as far south as we could. The weather was warmer, the sun was shining, we thought we’d press on and head straight to Benidorm and see if we could get into the campsite a night earlier than booked.
Luckily, as we sped (at an Agy sedate pace) south, Ian suggested I contact the campsite to see if they could fit us in. At this point I realised we had another 2 nights before we were booked to arrive, and funnily enough (it’s a fab site and usually fully booked well in advance) there was no space!
After a quick Google, I found us a site a couple of hours from Benidorm and booked us into Camping Tauro, Benicassim. A lovely small site that meant we could stop earlier than planned and rest for a couple of days before our final destination. It gave us a chance to purchase a local mobile SIM for internet access in the van, stretch our legs, and ease our backs that were complaining from all the travel.
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