Explore europe in a campervan

We spent the night parked up outside the aire in Leucate, the barriers were closed when we arrived, not surprising since it was 1:30am. The aire looked pretty full and there must have been 10 other motorhomes parked outside.

We checked out this area 3 months ago with a view to staying a few months, so we knew where the campsites and aires were located. That wasn’t peak season though so we didn’t know what to expect on this occasion. As expected there were loads more campervans but still enough space for us. Last time around we could drive into the aire at night and leave the next day, never getting charged; not this time. Also the large car park near the kite zone in La Franqui was great for free parking; not this time, it’s free for parking in the day but costs 6 euros to stay over night.

In the morning we got up early and drove straight to La Franqui where we could settle in, have breakfast and check-out the kiting. We didn’t get around to check-out the kiting until after lunch. The wind wasn’t very strong but there was a few kites dotted around and lots of vehicles on the hard packed sand. We walked for around a mile down the beach hoping to find a british kiter/campervan to chat with. We didn’t find any, there seems to be next to no British vehicles in the area. So we decided to go back to get the van and drive onto the hard packed sand.

We found our way onto the beach without too much hassle. We didn’t stay in our first parking spot for long as the tide seemed to be coming in. Lots of vehicles seemed to be stood in about 5 inches of water and it was rising. So we moved the van to slightly higher ground, as owners of those other vehicles also decided to follow.

It wasn’t very windy but we both got some kiting in. The surface is hard packed sand, very hard packed! We both wore the knee pads that we used for snowboarding. I should have worn elbow pads too as I fell right at the end and rubbed the skin off my elbow, thankfully on a softer patch of sand.

The beach at La Franqui is 6 miles long! But we couldn’t board the whole length, the wind would have to be directly on-shore for that. So it’s potentially a massive area but is spoilt by the patches of soft sand and foliage. What is good is that you can kite on land or out on the water. It wasn’t windy enough though on this occasion.

After kiting we decided to go for a swim in the sea to cool down. The sea was very pleasant; its only downfall is that the sand is very dark so the water doesn’t look all that inviting.

Just as we were about to leave a French woman came over asking for help, her car was stuck in the soft sand. We were very careful not to get too close as we didn’t fancy the same fate. The car was well and truly stuck, the front wheels were very much in sludgy, black sand. Even the front of their bumper was a couple of inches into the sand. We tried getting the car free, but without putting our heavy van in danger we couldn’t be of much help. Thankfully someone with a car and a strong tow rope got involved and managed to pull them free.

By this time it was getting dark, we didn’t know our way around very well and the tide was well in by now. The tide doesn’t come all the way in but there are still pockets of soft sand so we really needed to be very careful. It didn’t take too long to navigate about a mile down the beach and back onto the main road, were just thankful we managed to get out without any problems.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Diary, Kite-landboarding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.