La Rochelle (Holiday 2/14)

The gentle music wafting through the cabin, at a time generally only seen by those who haven't gone to bed yet, is clearly designed to bring a soothing note to your re-emergence into the conscious world. That early hour, in addition to the stern message twenty minutes late over the tannoy telling everyone to get out of their cabins as soon as possible, ruins the effect somewhat.

Bleary-eyed travellers all, but we were off and away and.... Into a long queue to have out passports peered over. And then we were off and away.

The decision taken between two routes to La Rochelle, the first of our two French stops on the way to Spain, we decided to use Le Mans as our first staging post. Breakfast at a service station (surprisingly good coffee) gave me a chance to see if Le Mans had a museum to the famous 24 hour race. Seeing that it did, there follows an odd 5 minutes where I tell Mel she'll be bored rigid and therefore we shouldn't go; while she tells me we need to do things I want to do as well, and therefore we should go.

The long and the short is that we determined to have a look and see if we wanted to go in. Which, on arrival, we did.

Mel actually found it more interesting than she thought she would, becoming fascinated with the 20s and 30s vehicles which somehow battled around the track. She was less enthused by the purpose-built modern sportscars, and in the main I had to agree with her.

With one key exception.

There was a specific exhibition about the Gulf racing team, with a few cars dressed in the famous blue and orange livery. The best known collaboration was probably with Porsche, but it was the two Ford GT40 variants that I wanted to see, and they didn't disappoint.

After revelling in the static machinery we could then take a wander around the periphery of a small part of the track. It turned out the most interesting thing here wasn't the few cars out on test runs, but rather a visiting Volvo owners club, with an eclectic range of very old to very new and everything in between of the Swedish marque on show.

The track itself lacks a little something without a battling race taking place, and with less coverage in the UK than the likes of Formula 1, it also lacks the iconic status in my head of, say, the Monaco Grand Prix (on one holiday we drove through the hideous city-state, which gave me a few rushes of excitement, especially as we rounded Lowes Hairpin).

By the time we finished the temperature was pushing 25 degrees, and it climbed steadily as we carried on to La Rochelle, hitting 30 as we pulled into the car park under our hotel for the night. You could almost hear the car utter a sigh of relief, a hand to the bonnet confirming the ability to fry and egg on there.

Neither of us have been to La Rochelle before, but as we ventured out towards the old port I feared the worst. We both have something of a dislike for places busy with lots of people, and what's exactly what we were faced with. Hordes.

But, and this was a surprise to us both, there was a charm to the place that transcended those ingrained dislikes. At first I was having to look at it through the haze of a cold which had first started the day before we left, and which had not been helped by 5 hours of ferry-sleep, a four and a half hour drive, and schlepping around in 30 degree heat. But La Rochelle pulled me through.

We visited one of the three towers of the port (the blingiest looking, of course) which not only had wonderful views from the top, but was filled with fascinating graffiti, carved into the walls, spanning 200 years of use as a prison. There were then grilled sardines and crevettes taken with a glass of wine overlooking the docked boats below. And a wander revealing quintessentially French pastimes of boules and sitting in cafés drinking wine while watching the world slip by, being wholeheartedly embraced.

Even so, the cold had me snoozing before dinner, but refreshed we demolished a huge seafood platter, sitting outside in a square near our hotel at Le Panier aux Crabes. And as if things couldn't get better there was an opportunity to speak to a (grumpy) cat on a final wander along the harbour wall between two of the towers.

Here's to the cold improving and the holiday continuing in a similar vein to the way it has started.