We decided to start our day in the Taittinger champagne house with a tour of their cellars. Fortunately, we were an hour early, so we took a quick walk down the road to the house of Veuve Cliquot to sip on a glass and browse their wares. Feeling good, we headed back to Taittinger to start our tour. This particular ‘warehouse’ has 4km of cellar tunnels over 3 levels which are as deep as 18m. The site is an old Benedictine Monastary that was destroyed as part of the French Revolution, where the monks used to brew their own wines and mine the chalk from the ground, meaning ready made tunnels. In the 4km of tunnels there are 2 million bottles of champagne (the GOOD stuff) aging for around 10 years on average. They also have another site where they have 12km of cellar that holds 10 million bottles. We certainly learned a lot in the tour about what goes into the making of champagne –
· All grapes are picked by hand and gently pressed into open vats
· Over winter, the vats ferment and let out CO2 to become still wine
· The master crafters create the blends for the year and the wine is then bottled and capped
· The bottles are stored in the cellars for a minimum of 3 years for a non-vintage and a minimum of 5 years for a vintage
· This is where they go through their second fermentation process – sugars and yeasts are added and the gas builds up to create the ‘fizz’
· Once aged, the bottles are turned by the cellar hands for 6 months – about every 2-3 days they are turned 1/8th of a bottle turn, increasing to ½ and ¾ of the bottle. The cellar hands can turn up to 6000 bottles per hour
· Once this process is complete, the bottles are then moved from horizontal storage to inclined storage in wine racks – this is to let the yeast settle at the neck of the bottle
· To remove the sediment the neck of the bottle is put into a -25 degree cooling solution that creates an ice cube around the sediment. The cap is then unscrewed and the sediment ice cube removed
· Some wine is lost in this process so some more sugars and alcohol is added to top up the bottle and balance out the flavours and then the bottles corked
· The bottles are then cleaned up, labelled and ready for us to purchase, pop the top and enjoy!
This told us plenty about the process and why proper Champagne costs so much. It was all very interesting, but we were ready to drink! So it was up to the tasting room to check out the fancy displays and try a glass of the precious gold liquid. It was delicious. Well worth the money. We were about done in Reims so it was time to follow the champagne trail down to Epernay. It was a beautiful drive through the little villages full of Champagne makers and grape vines as far as the eye can see. As we arrived in a little village near Epernay we saw the sign for Bollinger – we decided to stop in and try to get a glass of this to try. No luck here. It was either midday siesta or closed for the day. So we headed on. Once in Epernay we took a stroll down Avenue de Champagne and saw the big houses – Moet and Chandon, Pol Roger, Jouet & Perrier, as well as many others. It was pretty cool to see these well known brands. None were open to the public at the moment unfortunately. Moet and Chandon had a small boutique that we visited – unfortunately the 15L Dom Perignon was a little out of our price range at 9000 euros. But, moving on. It was (late) lunch time so we sat down for another glass and some sustenance. Yuuum. We purchased ourselves a bottle of Bolly to celebrate our final camper night, since we had missed out on trying it earlier. We had successfully completed our day in the Champagne region, and it was fabulous! Tonight we would just drive until we found a random ‘camper’ park.
This place was in a very strange neighbourhood and was definitely less camper and more trailer park with plenty of stares directed our way.
Next morning we hit the road again, as our camper thankfully still had all 4 wheels attached. First destination of the day – Giverny and Monet’s Garden. This was a beautiful place and it’s very easy to see why he was inspired by this garden to paint such beautiful things. The huge amounts of colour in all different kinds of flowers, the huge, perfect rose specimens and the tranquillity of the lily pond and Japanese garden area were really just things that have to be seen to be believed. It’s a perfect place! The foundation have also restored his house using written accounts and photographs of it and recreated the paintings he used to have on the walls – every single room was just filled with paintings by very well known artists. He would have had millions of dollars of art in his house. It’s crazy!
Leaving this incredible place behind, we were on the road again. The storm clouds were threatening and we thought it was going to be a massive storm. But false alarm, it was a couple of showers of rain and the sun started peeking out from the clouds. Or so we thought… After about 30 minutes of driving we hit absolutely torrential rain and the camper was leaking both front and back, worse than we’d ever seen – We barely had enough towels to keep up with it! 4 saturated bath towels and 2 saturated tea towels later and it finally stopped raining and leaking. We finished the drive and arrived at Mont St Michel without any further difficulties. As we arrived, the sun was just breaking through some clouds and illuminating the massive structure. It was way more impressive than we were expecting, sitting out on its rock. After some dinner, we parked the car and walked the 3km across the causeway to the island. It’s such an awesome place – old cobbled alleyways with a few restaurants, hotels and shops wind their way along the bottom of the island. Then you climb a few sets of stairs and wander the old walkways beneath the abbey and look out across the mud at the mainland. The tide was out when we were there and you can walk the 1km around the island in the mud, but the waters do rise quickly and we weren’t sure what the expected incoming tide time was, so we contented ourselves with walking on the actual island. We wandered for a couple of hours, until sunset (at 10:30pm) then took our car out of the parking to wait for it to go dark. Tim had visions of some great night shots. But it was midnight and it wasn’t even dark yet and the clouds had come back to say hello, so we headed to the local supermarket where we had seen lots of other campers earlier in the afternoon. We enjoyed a free nights parking in relative safety (surrounded by other people).
Our next day was spent in the internet black hole of McDonalds. We were about a day ahead of schedule and had only a couple of hours to drive, so we caught up on the happenings of the world before completing our short drive. We drove through the city of Le Mans where the Le Mans 24 hour race had just started, so Tim had to make the agonising decision of whether to keep driving or stop and buy tickets to watch it. He decided against it. Another pleasant surprise tonight involved Tim taking the wrong turn, us seeing a camper dump station WITH a toilet and a heap of campers parked up for the night. Woo Hoo! Surprise free night! We figured this was a little safer than free camping on the military ground we had been driving through for the last 30mins that had signs in French that we couldn’t read – a quick ‘word lens’ translation said something about Danger, shooting – hell no!
The next morning we drove to one of our last stops in the camper – the Loire Valley where it’s renowned for hiring a bike, heading off and checking out the Chateau’s of the area. Well… as usual… the rain came to say hello and we ended up spending 2 days going between the van and the café for wifi. All we wanted to do was cycle! So that was a bust, and feeling down about wasting the time and fuel to go somewhere for nothing, we headed to Versailles. As only we can do, we turned a 4.5 hour drive into an all day affair. This included stopping to eat cherries directly off the tree. They were so sweet and delicious.
Thankfully the weather at Versailles was a LOT better. We spent the morning exploring the Palace, which is incredibly huge and opulent. It’s definitely a massive display of wealth from the artwork to the marble rooms and the gilt edged EVERYTHING. The hall of mirrors was as impressive as we hoped and we found it really interesting to see how these royals lived. A quick walk around a very small part of the garden and we were done. Last attraction ticked off! We made our way the 20mins to Paris and checked into our second last camper park! We headed into the city and took a walk through the streets, now buzzing with activity and excitement. We were all dressed up with someplace to go – to the Moulin Rouge! We were led into the beautiful theatre and took our seats – the show started and we were captivated by the beautiful girls, the feathers, the rhinestones and the dancing! The intermediary acts were hilarious and the show was incredibly entertaining. We had an awesome night and enjoyed getting out of our usual daily clothes and getting all jazzed up for the evening.
Our final full day had dawned and we had almost 5 hours to drive. So we got going. As we got closer to Lille we started seeing the war cemeteries from the Battle of the Somme. Through our whole trip, we’ve seen so many reminders of such dark periods of the world’s history and that it really did affect the whole continent. Our very last task was to find a final, FINAL camper park for the night. The GPS tells us some that are around, but not all so we figured we always see plenty, we’ll find one within 30-60mins of Lille so we can get in there early tomorrow. Of course not. There was not one to be seen. All the ones in the GPS were minimum 20km in the wrong direction (and we’d already filled with fuel so had limited km before it clicked off ‘full’). We took a chance on the 20km away park, but it no longer existed – bust! We saw a bunch of campers across the river from here but, so we were relieved and set off to find this park. But after driving around and around, we were unable to find it. So out of options, we went back to Lille and pulled in at the first hotel we found and opted to stay there the night. It might have been a crappy Ibis Budget, but it was so good to sleep in a real bed and have an in-room bathroom.
Finally, it was over. We shoved all our shit into our bags – and by bags I mean bags, bags, bags. We just sent 14kg home, where the heck did all this other stuff come from?? We did the best we could and ended up with 2 large backpacks, 1 carry on suitcase, 2 small backpacks and 2 plastic shopping bags (might have to do something about this :-| ). We gave back the keys with absolute relief (and just a touch of sadness to leave our little home) and couldn’t believe it was all over. That’s 11 weeks, 14 countries and 15,795kms done and dusted. At times we hated it, at times we loved it, but lets just say we’re definitely glad it’s over! Bruges and 4 star luxury await us.
T-Squared