Seven Countries,
One Tan Arm

Three and a half hours north of the port, just above Bayonne, Messanges is the gentlest possible introduction to the trip: a pine-backed stretch of the Atlantic Landes coast, a tidy campsite, and the beach a short bike ride away. A good place to find your feet, your gas hob and your bearings.

A medieval, golden-stoned UNESCO town set in a sea of vineyards — and, out of season, almost serenely quiet. Two nights camped among the vines, a tour of a château, and rather more than one tasting later, we left thoroughly, if temporarily, educated. The cycle home was, in the only stroke of planning genius all trip, entirely in our favour.

"Quick wine tour and a few tasting sessions. Proper wine buffs now. The bike back was interesting — luckily it was downhill all the way."— Dave

A pilgrimage village stacked vertically up a limestone cliff, chapels and houses clinging to the rock above a gorge. Lindsey called it a fairy-tale town; Dave called it a bloody great big church built into the cliff face. Both descriptions are, on inspection, entirely accurate. The drive over featured a brief and unintended spell on the left-hand side of the road, much to the gesticulating alarm of oncoming locals.

"Rocamadour is like a fairy-tale town — Linds' words, not mine. I'd say it's a bloody great big church built into the cliff face. Quite impressive, to be fair."— Dave

A toll-dodging run east on A- and B-roads, three hours of scenery the camera flatly refused to do justice to. Lunch was a roadside aire beside a river — tablecloth out, stove on for filter coffee, bread, cheese and charcuterie until we couldn't manage another bite. We camped on the volcanic uplands above 1,000 metres, high enough that the evening turned cool even in a heatwave. And then there was the hedgehog.

"Top tip: don't leave a punnet of nectarines out — hedgehogs make a lot of rustling. Being the man that I am, I sent Linds out to sort it, thinking it was a rat."— Dave

France's largest natural lake, and the first proper taste of the Alps on the skyline. For this leg we paid the tolls — three hours against five made the choice easy — and were rewarded with a shaded pitch, a swim, and snow-capped peaks reflected in the water. At 32.5°C in a van with no air-con, the lake did the cooling the van couldn't, and one arm began tanning conspicuously faster than the other.

"32.5 degrees today in our non-AC van. My right arm is tanning up nicely."— Dave

It started with a wrong turn that the sat-nav "fixed" not with a tidy U-turn but by sending us up a single-track 7% climb of barrier-less alpine switchbacks, with Lindsey hanging on, feeling sick, and at one point quietly weeping. The recovery plan was lunch in Annecy — the Alps' canal town, with the clearest river either of us has seen — followed by a hypermarket raid for provisions.

Then Chamonix, under Mont Blanc, at 33.5°C. We rode the Aiguille du Midi cable car up to 12,602 feet, where 32 degrees became 3 and a coat became essential, and somehow bumped into people from the home gym at the top. A 5 km, two-and-a-half-hour loop to a waterfall earned the evening's beers; two nights of close, theatrical thunderstorms cleared into rainbows.

"Please excuse the many photos of the same mountain, from the same spot — that's the view from the van, and I'm excited every time I see it."— Dave

The switchback climb out of Chamonix opens, once you're over the top, onto the Rhône Valley — a view worth pulling over for. Interlaken sits between Lake Thun and Lake Brienz, the water an almost unreasonable blue, with the Eiger — the original North Face — on the skyline. We biked down to a lakeside beach bar and, naturally, stopped for a couple, in a scene with distinct American spring-break energy.

"It was like something out of an American spring-break film, all skimpy thongs. And that was just the men."— Dave

A drive of more switchbacks, jade-green lakes and tunnels — so many tunnels — delivered us to the southern Black Forest. There was CurryWurst mit Pommes, and then a genuine bucket-list moment: Lindsey ordering Black Forest gâteau in the actual Black Forest — an order years in the making. German campsites, we discovered, casually provide a free dishwasher. We need this at home.

"She'd been practising this order since high school — and she still had to point at the picture."— Dave, on Linds

Lindsey researched, with great precision, exactly where the Champagne region is — and then booked a campsite an hour's drive south of it. In her defence, the site had "Champagne" in the name and sold the stuff by the glass, which we agreed was close enough to count.

"To her defence, the campsite did have Champagne in the name and did sell champagne by the glass. So we'll give her that."— Dave

Rolling forest, very good beer, and a river to swim in — though by this point in the heatwave the river had given up any pretence of cooling anyone down. A quiet, green interlude before the home straight.

City camping, it turns out, is a thing — and a rather good one. Dordrecht delivered everything the Netherlands is contractually obliged to: canals, faultless cycle paths, clogs, and, as the headline act, a windmill of reportedly record-breaking girth. A fine note to end the touring on.

"To top it off, we found the windmill with the largest girth in the world. What a sight it was to behold."— Dave