Vic-la-Gardiole - Goodbye France

Finally arrived in the south, we are shocked by how busy it is here. Once again, we get the last spot with electricity. It is currently winter vacation in France, and somehow we forget that carnival is also celebrated in other countries. We will describe what that means for us in more detail later. No more rain and sunshine again! We decide to stay for 5 nights and are assigned a small spot next to an apparent permanent camper. After one night, we decide to explore the surroundings a bit. We imagined a walk towards the sea and lagoons differently. Opposite the spot, there are various dirt roads towards the water and to individual houses. Eventually, we come across a fenced property with a massive metal gate. Behind the gate, we see and hear a Rottweiler whimpering. Only a few meters later, our hearts skip a beat. Suddenly, a pitbull emerges between the fence, barking threateningly at us and pushing itself further into the fence. We quickly decide to continue without looking back. Once we were out of sight, the dog could calm down again. But then the road suddenly ends, and we can't walk any further. The way back takes us past this dog again. And by the way, this is not meant to be prejudice against any breed of dog! We love all dogs, but we love our dog Rocky the most and he probably wouldn't stand a chance, probably not even us... We check our options, and there don't seem to be many. There are fenced pastures next to us or a river that we would have to swim through. We find a small pasture that is not fenced on our side and walk through tall grass and bushes until we reach a fence. We manage to climb over the fence and feel safer again, although a bit shaky.

Our neighbor, the supposed permanent camper, is also a bit eerie. He talks to himself several times a day and sometimes walks in front of his caravan for minutes at a time. Sometimes, he starts small sprints out of nowhere and stops in the middle of the paths. He's probably a nice guy, but it seems a bit strange.

Originally, we wanted to take a trip to Montpellier. But it's so windy today that we decide not to drive a car in this wind to avoid unnecessary risks. We plan to explore the Cote d'Azur in the coming weeks. After 5 nights, we continue towards Marseille. When we arrive at the new spot, we are quickly sent away again because all spots are occupied and reserved. So, we decide to drive on towards Nice. After almost a full tank of gas, we arrive at a spot near Cannes and are also turned away there. There are no more available spots. After about 7 hours in the car, we decide to spend the night at a rest stop. We find a rest stop near Cannes on the highway where we feel safe and we're not the only campers. In the middle of the night, we wake up to blue lights and knocking on Polly. Apparently, the police are here and knocking on all the campers. We don't open the door since we were woken up from sleep. The police, if it really is the police, don't seem to be too serious and leave us alone, speaking to the camper next to us. After this day, we decide to travel directly to Italy because the joy of France has faded a bit for the moment, and the entire Mediterranean coast seems to be full of campers.