All in a mad rush

What were we thinking. Hardly had we puzzled over the absence of campervans on our journey south, when suddenly we hit the flood. It was like someone had turned on the taps, full on, raised the starting gate and given every campingcar in northern France and Germany a shove off. Where previously there were none, now there are great convoys of the things, each one larger than the last, rumbling down the highways. They say size isn't everything but clearly when it comes to the campervan, it is. If you can't fit the bikes on the back it isn't worth going, it seems, despite the fact that from observing most drivers and passengers it is hard to imagine them being capable of ever getting into the saddle.

But then we figured it out. We have checked into a campsite in Mâcon, a large town which is just off the Autoroute du Soleil and it therefore serves as an overnight stopping place for everyone going to the south of France, The Road to the Sun. And since no owner of one of these trundling beasts would dare to drive along the sort of roads Mrs Google has been finding for us - avoiding main and toll roads - we are meeting them for the first time in our travels. We always pride ourselves in doing what nobody else is likely to be doing, indeed we make a great effort to do just that, so this just proves that we are successful.

This next section will showcase some of the highlights of Mâcon so those not interested might choose to look elsewhere for pleasure.

Another powerful big river, the Saône, a tributary of the Rhône runs beside the main town and it is lined with some magnificent specimens...

...of trees. The patterned bark of the plane trees always reminds me of my days working in central London, which is full of them, and the cherry blossom...well who can fail to enjoy that?

Next we come to the artwork of Mâcon.

I had to shrink Kate down a little to get the first one but the painted hoarding just cried out for a picture.

The nice part about our tour of the city was that we didn't have to think about where we were going, it was all mapped out for us with small metal plaques set into the pavement.

All we had to do was to keep walking and look for the next plaque.

Mâcon clearly sees itself as a city of culture and fashion, which may explain the headless figure standing on a high balcony...or maybe not...but we felt we had made the best of a rather chilly and indifferent day. The maze of narrow streets we were led along took us beside some ancient and stunning architectural marvels and the absence of crowds meant we could sit and eat our lunch on the steps of the enormous St Peter's church without being disturbed.

So what's next?

To answer this we must look back twelve years to the days when we were a recently retired couple who had decided to live aboard a boat in the summer months, travelling slowly around the coast of Britain, turning left at all the corners. Which left us the problem of what to do in the winter months when sailing on the seas around the UK becomes... well, less attractive. Then, as luck would have it, at the back end of the year an opportunity arose to spend those winter months in a tiny village in northern Italy called Torri. What happened next is documented in the earlier entries of this blog and one such entry documents how we spent time in Lyon fitting a tiled floor at the home of our friends Guy and Noëlle, who we had first met back in Torri.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, 12 years on and we're back!