Bormes-les-Mimosas - 19 September 2019

19 September

Watched the second episode of The Capture last night - not really sure where that’s going!

Yet another peaceful night! This morning wandered down to ‘our’ beach about 8am for our last swim. Tintin was initially reluctant - but swam out to the floating raft and back again. Even though it’s not totally tourist season, the bins in the beach get emptied twice a day, there’s a guy with a leaf blower getting rid of sand on the steps, the actual sand around the sun beds on the other side of the steps is all flattened out by a tractor - very impressive!

We toyed with the idea of staying yet another day, especially as the sun came out - but no - decided to be adults...

Tintin drove today, first about 45 minutes along the coast to an Intermarché so we could do the laundry! Different from the others we’ve tried - had to use your own washing powder and conditioner - and seemed more choice in temperature! A dark and a white load to wash and dry was €12. Especially lovely to have clean sheets and towels again 😊Also, don’t think we’ve ever been to the beach so much whilst away - so beach towels needed washing to get rid of salt water! Popped into the supermarket. Once again, so disappointed by the fruit and veg - looked past its best - also the whole place stank of fish (not my favourite!). Luckily, we didn’t need much!

There was a service station (Aire) about 10 minutes drive away, which had awful reviews - but we didn’t find it dirty. We had to use a card in order to get water (first time) and surprisingly our Easy FX card was accepted for the grand charge of €2.50. It gave 10 minutes of water, so managed to wash most of Dave too.

We then drove to Bormes-les-Mimosas. Park4night only had 3 reviews, and described with horror the steep angle to get to the parking. Of course, my husband likes a challenge! Yes, access is very steep! Even used Dave’s hill descent function! Tomorrow, I’ll have to get out in order to stop traffic, as if we stop on the final two bends - it’s so steep we’d wear out the clutch getting going again!

The 12th century village has a population of nearly 8,000, and the cobbled streets are lined with art galleries and boutiques selling traditional Provençal products. There is colour everywhere from the numerous plants. We missed the best of the bougainvillea, but it was still pretty. Very up and down, steps everywhere - all in all, a lovely medieval village to pass a few hours in. We even splashed out on our first ice-creams of this trip!

The temperature today has felt hotter than ever - was about 30° when doing the laundry and driving. Glad to say it’s down to a cool 25° inside Dave as I type. Looks like we might be Billy no mates in the carpark. We haven’t gone down another two levels to get to where the mohos should park, because we don’t feel the need as there aren’t other cars up here, and why risk going down even further!

Note from Tintin - below is a whole host of photos, way too many but what the heck.