Category: Trips

For anyone with a campervan, motorhome or a caravan there are two good reasons for visiting Sedan in northern France.  Firstly for around €9 a night you can stay at the municipal campsite.  This municipal site is easy to find and is pleasantly placed by the river Meuse, with moorings for boats alongside the site and an open aspect that helps it feel more rural than urban.  We were greeted warmly by the member of staff who gave us a map of the town and told us enthusiastically about the castle and told us we could pitch where we liked on the grassy site.  The ground is a little uneven but nothing the levelling blocks couldn’t deal with.  The sanitary facilities were not the most up-to-date but were clean and the showers were good and hot and we don’t need much more than that and you can’t expect much more for the price.

Sedan is handily placed for us to reach our ferry at Zeebrugge but we arrived with enough time to visit the second reason to visit Sedan.  It has what is claimed to be the largest medieval fortified castle in Europe.

It is about a 15 minutes’ walk to the castle from the campsite and it is as magnificent and immense as you could hope, with an impressive curtain wall around the castle and courtyard and lovely views over the town from the corner bastions and the ramparts.  We explored the dark corners, alleys and stairwells that were designed to confuse the enemy and from the information boards learnt how the castle had grown over time.  I was particularly fascinated by the view into the interior of a round tower that had been enlarged over the years and seeing the interactive scale model of the castle in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian First Battle of Sedan.  The Second Battle of Sedan was in May 1940 during the German invasion of France.

After exploring the castle, we strolled around the town that has a history of cloth-making; some think that upholstery from Sedan gave the Sedan chair its name.  We found narrow streets and charming shops, lovely botanical gardens and bridges over the river Meuse.  Sedan also has an open and covered market on Wednesday and Saturday mornings.

 

In 1974 the good people of La Ville-aux-Dames near to the city of Tours in France decided [very appropriately] to give only women’s names to their streets and roads.  I loved finding La Ville-aux-Dames [the town of women] but didn’t expect the town to have taken the female theme to such amazing heights.  Even on the lovely campsite, Les Acacias in La Ville-aux-Dames all the chalets are named after women; you can stay in Edith Piaf, Maria Callas and others.  Taking a stroll around the local area I found not only are the roads named after women, the local schools are too; as well as Avenue Jeanne d’Arc, Square Mary Queen of Scots and Rue Colette I found École élémentaire Marie Curie.  Some names were less well known to me and had me checking them out; Gabrielle d’Estrées advised Henry IV and had three children by him and I learnt that Anna de Noailles wrote three novels and poetry.

The mural in the photograph above is on one of the local schools and has images of nine French women;  Marie Curie, George Sands, Colette, Lucie Aubrac [history teacher and resistance member] and Berthe Monsit [impressionist painter] and others.  I was delighted to think that all the children who attend this school will know who these women are and what they achieved, adding a bit of balance to the male-dominated history my own schooling involved.  Just walking around the streets was an education.

The name is testimony to the abbey for nuns that was here and it is said the name La Ville-aux-Dames comes from the old name for the area, Villa Dominarum, the Latin for ladies town.  Surrounded by excellent agricultural land the local people produced milk for Tours and the inhabitants became known as ‘Caillons’ after their curd cheese.  In November La Ville-aux-Dames’ Marche des Caillons, a sponsored walk, attracts over 400 people.  Today the inhabitants of La Ville-aux-Dames call themselves Gynepolitains from the Greek words for women and town.

The campsite proved to be fantastic for visiting the lovely city of Tours.  On the confluence of the Rivers Loire and Cher we had no expectations of this city and so its beauty and charm was a surprise.  We cycled the seven kilometres in to Tours along the Loire cycle route and chaining up the bikes pottered around fairly aimlessly.  We knew of no ‘must see’ sight so we were free to just wander and admire with no pressure.

Starting at the cathedral we had coffee and cake in a lovely cafe and then followed lively streets to the old city.  Here there are pretty squares surrounded by 15^th century timber-framed houses with amazing narrow extensions on the back for staircases; these looked very Disney-esque and heath robinson.

In the big market hall we explored the lovely stalls and bought fresh vegetables and local cheese and yogurt for our evening meal.  We ate at a cheap and cheerful burger and kebab cafe in a lively square and finished up with sweet peppermint tea.  Walking back to our bikes by the River Loire I fell in love with the elegant fountain [below] in the Place Anatole in front of the library.

 

Is being a travel writer non-stop glamour, always in business class on the plane and being wined and dined at the launch of a new hotel?  Well it isn’t like that for this campervan travel writer and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  I only write about my travels because I enjoy sharing the wonderful places I have visited and want to inspire others.  Each trip I make is a real trip that we have paid for ourselves and are trips that anyone with a ‘van could make.  I am not interested in writing about luxury tours that I wouldn’t make if someone else wasn’t paying.  I guess if you are a travel writer or editor invited on to press trips for the PR then your days might be glamour-packed but for the travel writer without a commission this is a long way from reality.  First and foremost the trips we follow in our campervan are our holidays, the payment I get for writing about it is a bonus that comes after the event.  Below might give you some idea about how much work it takes to create an article.

The work starts even before you pack a bag

Research – This can start months before we set off on a trip.  I read travel books and articles, watch TV programmes and follow other travel bloggers and sometimes a story or a place grabs me and sparks off an idea for a trip that I will run with.  Sitting at my laptop I research exciting places to visit in an area, stories that might interest readers, campsites and walking or cycling routes.  I will also look at ideas for the best photographs of the area.  This is generally internet research but I also read guide books and walking guides to learn from other people’s travels and find out about places we might enjoy visiting.

The weather – As I said these are real holidays and trips and so we get all sorts of weather but travel magazines want to see blue sky and sunshine.  In the days leading up to a trip or THE important venue during the trip I check the weather forecast obsessively – a dull day means I have to be more creative with my photography and rain plays havoc with photographs and my camera.  Magazines require good quality and colourful photographs that will inspire readers and my writing is nothing without good photographs to illustrate the words.

We arrive

Being there – This is the holiday, the easy [thanks to the planning] and certainly the most enjoyable part.  We are there and visiting the place of interest or following the walk I have planned.  At this point I am truly on holiday, as with no commission in my pocket I have no idea if an editor will buy my story.  I am in the moment and appreciating and absorbing the colours, smells and feel of a place while also taking hundreds of photographs and cursing street furniture, signs and other visitors that get in the way.  Of course I am still a writer and so I am always on the look [or listen] out for that extra something that will help make a place come alive for readers.

That evening

Sifting the photographs – I try and sort through my photographs while the day is still fresh in my head, deciding which are worth working on and which didn’t come out as I hoped.  I am a writer not a photographer and make no claim of expertise in this area.  By going through the photographs immediately I can check their quality and if they are all a disaster we might have chance to go back for a second try.

Edit the best of the photographs – Using Photoshop I try and do this on the same day, otherwise I end up with a backlog of hundreds of photographs to edit.  This can take hours!  Sometimes Mr BOTRA reads to me while I edit 🙂

Writing up notes about the things I have seen – I am a bit old fashioned here and always write my notes in long-hand in a journal at first, the pen and paper experience seems to help me to think.  I will type up these notes either that day or later and use these notes as a framework for a story.  I note down smells and sounds, as well as what we have seen and snippets of conversations that I liked, all this helps to bring the place back to me once I start writing.  I also need to keep notes of the cost of campsites and entrance fees as these are often required by magazines.

Back-up photographs and notes – I am terrified of the photographs I have worked so hard to get going missing and so I am a bit obsessive about backing up.  Photographs are left on the SD card and as well as the laptop are copied to a pen drive and a hard drive, just in case the camera and / or the laptop goes missing or gives up the ghost.

File away useful leaflets and information – I also keep leaflets from venues and for walks so that back home I can check the correct name and spelling and maybe opening times, rather than just rely on the internet.

More backing up – If wifi is available I will upload the best photographs to the web as well as the obsessive back-up procedure.  Sometimes campsite wifi can be very slow.

Back at home

The writing and editing and writing and editing …. I don’t normally start writing my articles until I am home, although ideas will have been meandering around my brain during the trip and added to my notes.  This is not a nine-to-five job for me and so I have the luxury to be able to be a slow writer and generally spend around two weeks on a 2,000 word article, constantly checking facts, seeking the right words to describe a place and adding the reference information.

Choosing photographs – From the hundreds of photographs I have taken this gradually has to be whittled down to the 30 photographs that I think would look best in a glossy magazine.  This can be a painful as well as a time consuming process.

If you still want to have a go at being a travel writer I can highly recommend it and there is some useful guidance here.

In contrast

At the end of our trip around Croatia, Italy and France we had a few day in Brittany that won’t appear in any of my travel articles.  We were meeting friends and socialising in the the lovely resorts of Batz-sur-Mer and Le Croisic and later in the pretty inland town of Corlay in Brittany.  It was these few rest days that inspired me to write about the work involved in being a travel writer, as the down time I had made me realise how much free time I have when I’m not doing all of the above!