We woke up to see a foggy Sunday morning and a ginormous flea-market in fields that were empty as we went to bed!

Pumpkin fountain

Pumpkin pile

The pumpkin exhibition…

Spargelhof Klaistow (where’s that?)

The pumpkin festival ends today.

As we drove through Liège, we saw this amazing piece of urban art.

Pleasant place to park near Messe Kassel. No services, but a nice view and it’s free. (Where’s that?)

Steep drive down, but excellent parking spot for the night. (Where‘s that)

A long, foggy drive today.

Today Gerhild learned the French word for fog. Autumn has arrived!

As we spotted these trees marching along the wall, several women cyclists stopped and charmingly competed to see who could name the trees. (Lime trees)

In the tram we had a another delightful chat with a French pensioner. This lot weren’t very chatty.

Not chatty, but colourful.

Nice, non-mechanical octupus.

Classy mechanical chameleon who can eat a fly with a super-long tongue, but can‘t change colour.

Humming bird

Our old pal. Time to head for home.

Today we washed and dried &dried & dried some clothes.

And then set off to visit the island in the middle of the Loire.

Great rotating addition to a streetlight outside LU

The old LU biscuit factory, now a cultural centre.

An animation installed in Nantes central railway station.

Wonderful references to all sorts of things in Nantes.

Artworks which are also supposed to work as barbecues.

Some new Nantes architecture.

Clever, perforated facade.

A giant tape-measure.

„In a silent way“

Some light relief on the way to the tram (free all weekend!)

The market on Sunday. Loads of customers. All sorts of food.

Roast chicken was popular too.

There were several fishmongers selling all sorts of seafood.

Wine, of course.

There’s nowhere to sit in the market, so some folk took their fresh oysters to the nearest cafe to eat with a glass of wine.

As it was a bit chilly, we nipped into Nantes Musée d‘Art to see an exhibition on the age of the great Atlantic liners. Free on the first Sunday of the month, our luck‘s in today.

At the time they felt everything was so big.

Le Corbusier was said to have been inspired by the way the passengers lived for the 12 day crossing to America.

Life on board one of the great transatlantic cruise ships.

A utopian vision of future life prior to the war. That’s a Zeppelin at the top…

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We then followed the famous green line to the Jardin des Plantes.

One cool cat.

One cold and wet statue.

Another cold and wet sculpture, time to head for home.

First we fetched some bread from the Boulangerie in Coulon village

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Then we drove for a couple of hours to a great campsite in Nantes (website)

You‘ve never seen a friperie like this. Recycling parts from a ski lift, you take your place on the stairs and watch as the clothes waft their way past you. At least that’s the plan when the safety approval is granted. Love it! Their name is brilliant too – Dernière Main (last hand)

How do you like the Nantes streetlights?

A leafy start to „All saints day“

La Sèvre Niortaise

A rather large dragonfly next to the river

We are in what was originally a marshy area, dried out by monks to create agricultural land. Close to Niort, which we visited a looong time ago.

Where are we? Coulon, on the way to Nantes.

Today we went to see La Cité du Vin

The entrance to the locks connecting the old submarine pens to the river Garonne

This looks like the place. It’s meant to suggest a decanter.

This steampunk apparatus lets you smell a variety of fragrances (some not so fragrant).

Two glasses of Bordeaux wine to round off our visit.

This ferocious fellow guards the entrance to the maritime museum.

Gerhild is just about one mouthful

Once we got past the shark we found these costumes ready for a parade, each based on a famous painting.

See if you can identify Magritte, Ernst, De Chirico, Léger, Munch, Arp, Brauner, Malévitch…
Don‘t ask why these are in the maritime museum – I haven‘t a clue. Website.

Everything is possible but we just can‘t imagine it.

Time to head for home

Today we, eventually, went to Darwin, a sort or alternative setup on Bordeaux‘s rive droite.

Street scene in Bordeaux

Brilliant piece of street art in Bordeaux (rive gauche)

What a difference a tree makes

Lion

„The French“ Swiss slang…

The entrance to the old barracks

We had a nice snack here

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My favourite picture today

An incredible piece of art à la Robert Crumb

Abandoned tram next to the skate park for the local kids

Outside the skate park

Today went to visit la forêt des sens, next to the Château Smith-Haut-Lafitte vineyard, as visited by King Charles!

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Barry Flanagan‘s fantastic Hospitality Hare is the symbol for La Forêt des Sens.

Seems a bit small for the amount of wine they make here.

A wooden hare

Every vineyard should have a Bacchus.

Kim is listening to the stream flowing under the bridge.

It’s a beautiful autumn day today.

Funky fellow on the side of the pharmacy for the vines (only natural products).

Hit the gong, say ommmmmmmm, and think grapes.

A great walk through the forest, after fetching the key to the gate from reception.

Half a bottle of red at €69 was a bit too much for a souvenir, sigh. Website

Today we walked into the village for Gerhild to visit a hairdresser and for Kim to visit a boulangerie.

Big pine trees on our campsite

We walked for about 30 minutes to reach the beach

Looking down from the top of a dune onto the beach, the waves and the surfers.

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Gerhild is full of beans

Kim‘s Hawaian girl

Today we drove through the rain from behind the Zaragoza sports stadium to Camping la Civelle (where’s that?)

In the morning we were still surrounded by all sorts of birds. Fantastic!

We drove up into the hills to find El Jardí de Peter (where’s that?). Peter Buch has worked for 30 years in the abandoned hill farm which he took over, to make his magical garden. Now 86, he should really put his ladder away and revel in a job well done. There is an article about him in Raw Vision, a magazine about outsider art.

Peter the German artist

Goodness gracious, what’s in there?

The interior

That looks interesting

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Another house

Another interior

In the bathroom

In the bedroom

How do you like the door?

Another monster in the woods

Kim tried whispering in its ear

Even more

The green blob

The master’s throne

Nice start to our day as we leave the campsite heading for Arte-Contemporary en La Ràpita

Our first sculpture garden in an olive grove

Two strange birds to welcome us

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One of nature’s more colourful sculptures

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This chicken blends well into the landscape

This one’s a bit spooky

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Just landed from Mars?

Love this one

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the spottiest of them all?

The Ebro delta on the way to our parking space for the night (where’s that?)

Each white dot is a bird, roosting for the night

Today we did the washing, cleaned the camper and recovered from two birthdays.

Today we walked 10 km around the Sant Llorenç reservoir

The weather gods were kind today

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The birthday girl

Not quite a diamond necklace yet, give it a few million years and who knows…

A bright start to the day from the moat

The Pyrenees

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Foothills of the Pyrenees

Our campsite is on this lake, just around the corner

Birthday cake!

Halloween is BIG in Catalonia. Our campsite “Camping la Noguera”.

Today we headed up into the Pyrenees to Villefranche-de-Conflent, a fortified village.

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Quiet square with a vegetarian snack bar

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Sheep eat grass all day, so this seems like a good colour.

Sign for a wine bar using a “Porron” a fiendish Catalan invention to embarrass tourists

Then we went up to an altitude of 1500 m to Mont-Louis

Another fortified village

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The Pyrenees

No, not an artwork by Anish Kapoor, it’s a solar furnace

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Interesting place to camp for the night – in the moat! And it’s free.

This is the village called Eus which they claim is the sunniest place in France

Nice day for a 6 km walk

Some welcome shade

There are a few clouds

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Back to Eus for an ice cream

Today the weather forecast was for rain 💧💧 so we tidied up a bit and read

Kim read a detective story

Gerhild is reading a novel about the events in a house in Berlin over 100 years or so

It didn’t rain!

Advertising for the boulangerie

Everyone’s eating roasted chestnuts

I remember dancing like that!

Children from a French school where they are taught in Catalan

Away from the coast and up into the Pyrenees to Camping les Porte Ducanigou

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Walking up into the town (Prades)

Painted on a wall in the town centre.

We even managed a pedicure today, Wayhay!

Today we took a gentle stroll along the coast (the other way)

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The Pyrenees are in the distance

The coast & our campsite in the distance

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A good day to do some washing.

A scrambled-egg sunset to round off the day with a glass of French wine. 😀🍷🍷

We are parked next to a great tree

Today we went for a scamper along a sentier littoral

There are loads of these around here. No one seems to be eating the fruit?

This was cut into the concrete outside a house in Collioure. Lucky mum – every time she pops out shopping…

Stone at the base of the castle

Where‘s Collioule?

Time to say goodbye

And drive to Les Criques de Porteils camp site. Where is it?

It’s next to the sea

Minerve is one of the „plus beaux villages de France“. Where is it?

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The gorge surrounding the village

Two lads

Nature clinging on and the house too!

Wild shapes cut by the river

The village

Walking around the hill under the village

The gorge

We’ll, you‘ve got to keep the wine somewhere

We had a delicious meal in the Relais Chantovent

Le sentier des meulières shows how millstones were made in days long gone

Whatever they’re looking at, it’s not a millstone.

It‘s a praying mantis!

Father and son

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Old pals

Fine, misty start to the day.

Autumn is coming.

A marble tiger to watch over the camper.

Next to the parking space

Next to the abbey

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Good piece of art in the abbey

The camper parking is here

Saint-Priest-Sous-Aixe is an interesting little village with a free space to park campers

Big-city art in this little village

Which still has several wells!

Kim enjoying the evening sun behind the church

Also hidden behind the church

It rained non-stop today.

You often bump into Louis Vuitton

Window-shopping with an umbrella

The Petit Palais

A petit picture

Paris past

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A Swedish painter, Bruno Liljefors, who liked cat pictures.

Old pals

In the evening we went to the cinema to see Megalopolis.

On the way to the Musée de la chase et de la nature

The flesh of the world by Tamara Kostianovsky interesting YouTube video.

Pieces of tree-trunk made of old fabrics…

A tree-stump fixed to the wall.

A fabricated feathered friend.

A feathered ceiling with owl motifs.

A dog or a bear, what do you think?

One of the more traditional exhibits.

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No, not in the museum, outside in the street.

Charlie‘s looking suspicious.

Maybe he’s worried about this guy?

She looks suspicious too.

Sublime smile.

Someone’s not keen on this cafe.

Place des Vosges is looking good.

Why do I feel nervous every time I walk past here?

Today was a lazy day apart from filling the water tank, emptying the rubbish, shopping, haircut, cooking, washing up, washing and drying dirty clothes and putting everything tidily away. In the rain… Very lazy.

Today we went to the brilliant (and free) Espace Monte-Cristo for their „Imaginary Worlds“ exhibition.

A rubber tree?

New homes for fashion-conscious birds by Antonio GAGLIARDI. See video on YouTube.

An antique telephone handset takes on a new life

Strange people hanging about

There are more of them!

They are growing them in plant-pots!

A proud mum and her children.

The little girl is growing her own doll.

What a family.

This daughter has grown out of dolls.

All by JEAN-FRANÇOIS FOURTOU, called LA FAMILLE DES HYBRIDUS – 2023-2024. See earlier work on YouTube.

Today, we popped by the Eiffel Tower.

Then we visited the Consiergerie to see some contemporary work by artists from Benin.

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A mixture of crash-helmet with sea-shells

So whose head did she cut off?

Could be haute couture

… until you take a closer look

The colours !

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A lot of traffic next to Notre Dame

No cars allowed next to the Seine!

Today we went looking for urban art in Saint-Denis

Near the Stade de France

It’s nice and sunny today

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Good things are even better when shared

Concrete cat

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In the Halle St Pierre

An outsider artist from Mauritius

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Looking up in Montmartre

Down to earth in Montmartre

On the way to Centre Pompidou

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In the surrealism show

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He‘s the best

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You can see the Eiffel Tower if you squint

How do you like the restaurant?

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If only our living room had the space

You know you’re being watched

Bugs Bunny on the way home

Chocolate shop on the way to Salle Pleyel

Interesting evening of contemporary dance with an unexpected support act of two young musicians. Parisians seem to find it OK to arrive half an hour after the show starts expecting everyone to stand up to let them prance to their seats. We drank red wine from plastic long-stemmed wine glasses, plastic so that if we throw them at the performers no one gets hurt… French culture? Two good souvenirs for the camper anyway.

Article about the work.