Leaving Spain, visiting Le Bacares, Marseilles & La Seyne Sur Mer

After Barcelona, we spent a couple of nights at the El Delphin Verde caravan park on the north east Spanish coast. It is a huge park, the biggest one we’ve stayed in yet with tennis courts, huge pool, beach frontage, supermarket, shops, bars and a restaurant. They also have separate stalls serving crepes, hamburgers and ice creams. A large Nordic contingent seemed to be holidaying there, with a large proportion of holiday makers seemingly intent on turning themselves a deep brown or orange. We had one of the van superintendents give us a tow start as we didn’t have willing onlookers to help push start the van but once we were on the road we were fine. We’re trying not to let the situation get to us but it’s a bit of a comedy of errors how much stuff seems to be not working or falling off the van at the moment. More on that later. Upon leaving Delphin Verde we saw a Peugeot mechanic and stopped in for a chat, my rudimentary Spanish was enough to understand that he wasn’t that interested in trying to understand or help, instead fobbing us off to another mechanic whom we never found. We continued the drive to France and went to Le Bacares on the French coast, about two hours over the border. We parked down by the promenade and the sea and went to have some dinner, a pretty decent pizza each. We also went for a bit of a wander around the main drag, it was quite nice but some of the shops were pretty expensive, fitting in with the seaside resort theme. We spent a night in the carpark along with a couple of other vans, trying to save a bit of money. Probably not the best place to park in the end as it was a popular spot until quite late, after which it got more popular with some hoons on hotted up mopeds racing each other. We got an early morning wake up too. Some local traders had arrived at 5.30am to set up their stalls for a market. Still, we managed to get our own back slightly as they had to push start the van for the priveledge of their space. We deliberated for a while on our next move and thought it might be best to strike for a larger city centre, hopefully with a greater concentration of mechanics. Marseilles was about three hours along the coast and is a very large port city. We set off down the motorway, we are quite impressed with French motorways as there’s parks quite often and you can have an easy rest stop. It was at one of these parks I saw that a small chimney/gas vent on our roof was bent back and about to fall off. After clambering up on a nearby skip to get access to the roof I saw it was held on by it’s last screw. Kirsten and I rattled off a list of things not working or falling off the van and tried to make light of the situation. At least the van goes... once it's started. We arrived in Marseilles just before lunchtime and Kirsten jumped out of the van while I parked illegally (it was absolutely heaving down by the port) to head into the tourist information office. We had a bit of help to find a couple of local mechanics and we set off. The first guy had a bit of a theory but couldn’t see us until after 4pm so we tried the next suggestion. They were a tiny, single car garage that the van had no hope of getting into so they suggested a nearby servo where we met again with helpful staff and mechanic but no room for the van to fit in the workshop. They advised us of two more places we could try on a nearby street, the first turned out to be closed and we couldn’t find the second one. We were getting a bit hot and bothered by this stage so we thought we’d try and find a park and go and have a drink somewhere. A lot of the city is on a hill so we tried in vain to find a park on a slope so we could roll start the van without too much trouble. After almost two hours of trying to find a park (it is no wonder so many people drive micro or Smart cars here) we gave up in bitter frustration and left the city. We didn’t end up going back to the first mechanic as we suspected the van wouldn’t have fitted in his workhop anyway (he never saw the van, only the manual which depicts a shorter version). The nearest campsite was 60km away so we left Marseilles without a real chance to look around which is unfortunate but we didn’t have much of a choice. The next caravan park, Mimosa, is a very quiet family affair and we’ve set up (near a slope) and have been quietly reading (I’ve just finished 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' and thought it was excellent) and relaxing since then. A local supermarket ended up having a massive range of food (something like 20-30 types of Brie alone, but I suppose that yes, it is France) so we got some stuff for dinner - lovely. There is also a Peugeot dealership just down the road where we've finally been able to book the van in to be looked at. Fingers crossed for Monday!