French Kissing - Cote d’Azur. Part 1
Not sure what it is about France this year, but having not gone to France for 20 years I found myself on another trip there last week (no. 3 this year…) .. guess I had to get it out of my system - ohh la la. So KISS and I go wayyyy south.
Thursday 28th Sept… saw me hurtling south down the M1 once again to Maidenhead to stay with friends for the night and then get off early to catch a Dover - Calais ferry. Emptied the car on arrival and stowed it all into Des’s Galaxy.. was well impressed with the boot capacity.. dive gear for nealy four people (two CCR, two OC) and three passengers, minus some of the OC tanks that went in another car…
Friday 29th Sept… Left house about 0830 and arrived Dover just in time for the 10:50 ferry. Manged to get a place on standby as were booked on the next one. Our ‘Priority upgrade’ on P&O for an extra £20 was well worth it. Where last on the Ferry, but got a space right at the front and where first off again. Went to the Club lounge for the crossing and had free drinks (OJ or champus, plus as much tea or coffee as you can take - my kinda place )Weaved our way down the french motorways - (what a joy to see all the cars pull over to the outside lane after overtaking), through various tolls, past rolling hills and flat fields of Champagne on to Dijon where we stopped for the night in a cheap Motel (Bonsai Hotel for 31 euros per room - so we had one each) - http://www.europe-cities.com/hotel.aspx?hid=12072 Quick call at the supermarket and then grabbed some food at a diner practicing our pigeon french…
Saturday 30th Sept - Breakfast at 0800, then back on the road for the last leg to La Lavandue (Port de Bormes) near Toulon. Terrain was getting mountenous, big clouds brewing on the horrizon. Weather windy, but warm.
Arrived at 15:30 at the holiday village ‘La Grande Bastide’, but had to wait until after 17:00 for reception to open up http://www.generationvoyages.com/page.asp?page=886&menu=1146
…so we headed to the harbour to see if we could store our diving gear at the shop. Diving was booked with the Nautica Dive Centre - who have an Offshore 105, small shop and compressor.http://perso.orange.fr/bormesplongee/english1.htmBoat wasn’t back from the afternoon dive yet. Went for a reccy and had a coffee in the harbour side cafe. As the boat hadn’t arrived by 17:00 we went back to the digs to collect keys from reception… but reception was still shut.. so back to the harbour…This time the boat was back and we could offload the diving stuff into the shop and had a chat with the owner Mirko about the diving on Monday.Proposed 0830 meet for 0900 ropes off.. not too bad.. weather might be a bit rough, but there should be shelter in the Hyeres islands just off the coast. The setup is a bit like in the Farnes, only the boat comes back into port between each dive to collect other divers for the afternoon dive. The boat is licenced for 20 (!) divers and we were sharing it with a group of 5 other divers on Monday.. could be cosy with most people in our group having twinsets and us two RB dives…
Back to the holiday village to find reception… open, at last.
We had six ’appartments’ booked between 13 of us including breakfast and evening meal. Accommodation was in villas with two flats each - one up, one down. Each flat consisted of a studio room with kitchen and twin beds, separte WC, shower room and a second separate room with a set of bunk beds. Being the odd one out I got a flat to myself - nice! Cost was only £160 for the week, so quite good value.
We took posession of our rooms, unpacked the car, had a shower and headed into the village for some grub. Found a nice little restaurant near the harbour and sampled mules mariners followed by a fish dish and creme brulle.. yumyum.
Back to the digs to see that Jon had just arrived having driven the whole route from Boulogne in one go… quick round of drinks. Then off to bed.
Sunday 1st Oct.. breakfast at 0830.. followed by a drive along the coast to Carvalier. Had lunch in a pizza place by the port and then back to Lavandue to await the arrival of the rest of the party. Some had driven down over a few days, three had flown with RyanAir to Toulon and hired a car there. Most arrived in time for dinner at 2000. The last two arrived at 20:30 just in time for the main course. After dinner miost of us headed to bed for an early night.
Monday 2nd October
Early start and breakfast. Quick drive to harbour. Time to fettle kit and get it all onboard. Off we go… Quite windy and trip over to islands a bit rough. First dive is a scenic one around some sea mounts in 35m. Some nice red seafans, but rocky ground cover mainly algae with eel grass beds in the sands.. Several very friendly groupers quite happy to pose for the camera close up. A few shoals of pretty fish.. breams, me thinks. Lots of wrasse. Several morrays. Surprisingly nice dive really with lots of wild life.
Sara managed to drop her kowaltski torch whilst dekitting in the water, so the skipper jumped out of his cloths and went diving in T-shirt and underpants ;-). Des also went for a reccy to see if they could find the torch amongst the eel grass… no luck though. Will try and come back another time for another search.
Back to port for lunch and to drop off the other group. Ropes off again at 15:00 for the next dive…
tbc