Myself and Beth have been looking forward to this European trip for some months. It was a fantastic journey and would take us a total of almost 3 weeks.
It began driving from Cwmbran to Portsmouth to catch a ferry over to Bilbao in Northern Spain, this was something we’d never done before I’m really looking forward to it driving our own car around Europe culminating in the European Omega Masters at Crans sur Sierre in Switzerland – this was going to be some trip.
After we landed in Bilbao we drove a few hours to the middle of the Pyrenees and stayed in a beautiful hotel in the in the top of the Mountains with spectacular views and surroundings we had great food and met some lovely people there as well and spent two days exploring. Its such a good place to visit I would thoroughly recommend it.
Next we drove down to south Southern France to a town called Sete just south of Montpellier. The evening we arrived it was purely by coincidence it was the boat jousting festival which is famous, we’d never heard of it!!! but they were thousands of people there in the canals that lead to the Canal du Midi that runs up through the middle of France it celebrates the opening of this and the workers who built it. The married men would joust against the single men in competitions, a rowing boat of 30 men would grow at each other with a man stood on the top and they would joust against each other. The winner would be the one left on the boat, absolutely crazy these French man doing this!!
Anyway that was a great evening and the next day we travelled across to Eastern France. This area was famous for its Spa so obviously we had to try this amazing facility they had an offer it was truly beautiful in a French Valley, an old spa very similar set up to the famous spas in Bath. It was a great day and beautiful food again in the evening and we were so looking forward to our trip on to Switzerland the next day.
We arrived in Switzerland a few days before the European Masters was due to start and met with a good friend Alain who agreed to show us around and where to eat and we spent 5/6 days watching the tournament eating with the players, having a drink with the players socialising with them it was truly fantastic. Alan was a great host and will definitely go back to Crans. What an amazing tournament the Omega European Masters is, truly spectacular, incredible views in a beautiful country.
The next few days we spent traveling back through Northern France stopping off twice in a small town I can’t remember the name of it but we travel through so many places and we ended up in Saint Omer, which we have stayed in a few times now and a lovely overnight stay there with a meal in the village square before we made our way back through the Channel Tunnel and drove back to Wales. What an amazing trip, it was just fantastic, a different holiday to what I was used to but I would thoroughly recommend a European road trip to everyone. I need to get back and practice now I missed out on playing golf on this trip so I need to practice more and get ready for the upcoming tournaments. Safe travels everyone!
