Back to the travel roots

Southern France – August 2020

Our 3 week road trip to southern France is a spontaneous decision. Selina and I originally wanted to travel to Indonesia, but Covid didn’t let us do that. Over the course of 2 weeks we try to get hold of as much camping equipment as possible and on the Swiss national holiday August, 01st, we pack all we could gather in our minivan and head south. After a brief lunch stop in Morges, including a free visit to the local castle museum, we escape the afternoon heat across the Swiss – French border. Optimistic as we are, we expected the coming 3 weeks to be all sunshine and no rain – after all we are heading to the Mediterranean! 

However, shortly before Lyon the clouds break and rain starts pouring down onto the hot asphalt. We arrive at our first camp ground and have to set up our tiny (not so trusty) tent while it rains cats and dogs. The creepy middle aged guy across the alley from us tells us that it will end soon – but all we can think about is, that we can’t even have dinner in the shade as we don’t have anything to cover our table and the two of us. And so we head to the campground restaurant even though we promised to only eat home cooked food to save money.

The next day the weather is a lot better and we spend some beautiful hours discovering Lyon. After a second rainy night, we pack up our wet tent and all our belongings back into the car. I am driving and Selina is in charge of upgrading our singalong spotify playlist. Once we reach the seaside suburb of Montpellier where we booked a campground in walking distance from the beach and smell the salty ocean air, we truly feel like our vacation has begun. We get our first sunburns, visit the gorgeous roman cities and villages in the Occitanie region, buy more camping equipment and lots of food at the local Hypermarché and do some shopping at Uniqlo.

More than once I catch myself thinking about our early family holidays spent on road trips around Europe, and I can’t help but feel a little nostalgic. But our journey isn’t over yet. After a few days we head east to Carcassonne. By now we have perfected our driving routine. After Selina safely brings us to the medieval castle town, I take over the driving shift to Andorra. The GPS guides us out of the town and onto a pretty countryside road. We sing along to Harry Style’s “Watermelon Sugar” and Selina takes videos of the poplar tree lined streets. Then the navigation system tells us to turn right onto a gravel road.

We kind of think it’s weird, but then again we aren’t in a rush anyways. However, after crossing the 3rd mountain pass, we kind of feel like something is off. We check the GPS and realize that we forgot to turn off the “no highway”-feature. But by now we are already halfway to the miniature state between France and Spain and so we continue the drive through the backcountry. About another 2 hours later we make it to our 3rd country on this journey. Andorra is a tiny state in the Pyrenees. After we cross the border from France, the next sign already shows you where to turn if you want to get to Spain. However, due to Covid-regulations we won’t make it that far on this trip.

After a quick shopping trip to the capital, we look for our accommodation for the night. We find a little campground along the street to the mountains where we plan to hike the next day. We quickly set up our tent and go for a stroll around the campground – our second favourite activity after cooking and eating dinner. As always we look for cool gear the other travellers own and once again we are not disappointed. There are a couple of interesting tents and some people even brought their fridge!

As we can’t go to Spain, we spend an unplanned second night in Andorra before heading north towards the Atlantic ocean. This is the part I was most looking forward to. I’ve been to the area around Biarritz before and can’t wait to show Selina the picturesque Basque towns and laid-back surfer spots like Moliets-et-Maa. We have a great time and both of us don’t want to leave. So we do the only reasonable thing and extend our stay at the ocean until the last possible day.

3 days before my school year starts again, we finally leave the ocean behind and head east. With a few shopping stops along the way to buy delicious food, pens and postcards, we make it to Rocamadour. From there it’s still an 8 hour drive to Biel, where we want to visit a friend on the last day of our holidays. So we look for a place to spend our last night camping in France halfway along the way and find one close to an artificial lake. We befriend the campground’s local chicken and go for a swim in the lake. And after a sleepless night, it’s time to drive the last kilometers on the French highways.