VAN LIFE FRANCE: A Tough Place To Visit // S03E06

We can't really begin to tell you just how excited we are for the next chapter of this adventure. So far we've driven across America and now also across the UK. The UK was our last chance to prep this vehicle for the long drive to Australia and now we are as ready as we'll ever be. We are entering Europe, an entirely new landmass. Now we can really start focusing on exploring and hopefully all of this hard work will pay off. First stop, France. It feels like fall, the corn's growing. Very excited to be here in Europe. This feels like the beginning of like a whole new chapter. We basically are on a landmass now which extends all the way to Asia. So this is very exciting and we're going to start with that. That castle on the rock over there isn't in fact a castle. It's an entire village with an abbey on top. It is Mont Saint-Michel. This village rock gets surrounded by water in Europe's largest tide. Incredibly the ocean here goes out an astonishing 15 kilometers or 9 miles. It's said to return at the astonishing speed of galloping horses. I used to come here on family vacations when I was a kid so I thought I'd bring Leah to check out the old rock village. How cute is this place? Look at the little stained glass windows. The roof tiles on this roof are made out of wood. It's honestly so picturesque. You can understand why there are so many people in here painting and drawing these buildings. What a cute little place it would have been to live. There are so many details to take in in Mont Saint-Michel and the smell of French crepes fills the air as well as... and your own. What a combination. Yummy. Smells like medieval times. Looks like people still live here. I mean we just passed a few hotels so you can definitely stay here and an airbnb. You would never have thought it and plenty of people are still definitely working here. At the top there are monks who still live and work in Mont Saint-Michel. What a place to spend your time. If it goes through, your wish comes true. If it goes through my wish comes true? You might not accept the Queen's coin in this French well but we'll see if my wish comes true. What was your wish? I'm not telling you my wish. Why? It's a secret between me and the well. Mont Saint-Michel was conceived in a dream in the year 708 and legend says that Archangel Michael came to the bishop on three separate occasions instructing him to build a church on the rocky island. Interestingly during the French Revolution religion was outlawed and the abbey was closed. The site then began to operate as a prison and up to 300 priests were imprisoned here. These days though people do still live here. The town primarily serves as a tourist attraction so don't be expecting to get the twisty lanes to yourself when you come here. Still we think it was worth stopping by before we push on into Normandy. Or something like that. It's funny isn't it? After driving all the way through the Americas and being worried about where we can park and if we would get moved on during the night, we arrive in France and there are signs literally saying this parking spot is reserved in priority for people with camping cars and you can park here overnight no problem you're welcome to do so. Behind us there is facilities for dumping your grey and black water and for obtaining fresh drinking water all for free. Pretty awesome. Van life Europe man. Bring it on. Look at the view too and we got friends. Donkeys, ponies. This view's amazing huh? Yeah. Go France. Look how cute is that? extra special and there's beautiful orchards all around us too so it's a really special place this campsite. Speaking of apples, it is cider season in France at the moment so we have got a lovely bottle of artisanal Normandy cider which we're gonna pop open and give a go. That tastes very organic. That is definitely, that's not something you're gonna get in the supermarket. That is, I can't believe that's alcohol. Fabrication artisanal. Even, I still speak with French with a Spanish accent. How would you say that? Fabrication artisanal. That is good. Yum. There's farms everywhere here where you can stop by and get the local cider or apple juice that they're making on their farms and some of them even let you stay there as well so we're hoping to stay at a few farms across France and try their produce, local produce. We know that the French is famous for its great food produce and definitely its wine and we plan to experience as much of it as possible. When we left North America and headed to Europe, we've got to be honest, we were a little concerned about how difficult van life would be on this side of the pond. However, so far van life is easier than ever and if it continues like this we'll be very happy. Tell me if it's any good. What is it? It's wine, vin rouge. That's pretty good, you chose well this time. This time? Every time. This is usually a good wine. Isn't it a wine region? Yeah, anything from this region is good and it's delicious actually. You did well Ben. Two euros 95, thanks. So cheap, it's so good. Like one of the best things in France is that all the cheap wine is freaking delicious. In Australia like an average good wine is 30 Australian dollars a bottle. Here you can get really good wine for two euros, three euros, four euros. It's so cheap and everything we've had so far has been absolutely delicious. I love France. Want to play conkers? Sure, what's conkers? Conkers, we used to play conkers when I was a kid. It is the season, first of all we need to get a conker down from this tree. These are conkers but you can't use the ones on the floor because they have probably gone soft because they've been out of the elements. We need a nice fresh one from up here. Good luck with that. Is that the one you're going with? Yeah. Is that your conker of choice? It's beautiful. I don't know what to look for in a conker, you need to help. You want a big, you're going to basically bash your conker against my conker. All right. I need a big one then. You want a hard one? Big hard one. That one. Oh that's a good one. Jesus yours is massive. This one's mine. Let's have a look. Don't swap them. That's big. I don't think that's how you play Alaska, you're not supposed to eat them. Now you've got to drill a hole in that. Drill a hole in it? Yeah. Really? Why? I don't understand. Going for boys obviously. Do you really used to do this as a kid? Do you? All kids do this across the UK and no doubt the world. We haven't got any string but we've got electrical wire so that'll have to do in a pinch. There's a lot of effort for this game, it better be good. Oh it's such a good game, it'll kick your ass. That's got to be the final blow, look at that crack. Before we left Normandy and the north coast of France to head south, we wanted to remind ourselves about the battles that were fought right here and the enormous human price that was paid by too many people so that all of us could enjoy our freedom today. Such a peaceful place to wake up here on the Normandy coast, just wildlife everywhere, just vast open nature, so peaceful but you know what happened here and you know you can't escape that when you're on this coast and you have to think back about that day, about D-Day, 6th June 1944 and how that it would have been so different here. I think it's important to remember days like that even though it's in the past, it's old news, it's well documented, it has important lessons within that story that transcend time, that's important for everybody, every generation to look back and see where humanity failed and what lessons we can take from that. It's pretty spooky to think that someone, probably quite a few people actually died in this bunker. I mean it's it's got signs of like bombshells and obviously it's been destroyed from the peaceful decade since when it's just rested on these sand dunes and kind of slipping slowly away into the sand but yeah this is definitely showing signs of war. Less than 100 miles away I grew up on the island of Jersey where there was also a lot of Nazi war bunkers. Thanks to the efforts of those involved in the D-Day landings the bunkers I grew up exploring didn't see a lot of action during the war but here on these beaches many thousands lost their lives and these scenes are deeply moving. But the next war site we discovered was even more disturbing. For the most part any destruction from World War II has been cleaned up. France has been rebuilt stronger and now prospers in peacetime. However this town in central France has been left exactly the way it was when it was obliterated by the worst atrocity of war. Absolutely obliterated this town. Like these walls are two foot thick and they're just being destroyed by the tanks. There would have been no place to hide. War is a terrible thing. It's actually quite a large village. 642 people were massacred here. The houses that weren't destroyed by tanks were just later burnt so there was really not much left of this village but it's been left here standing exactly as it was right after the terrible terrible act. Really spooky. After the men and women were separated most of the men got gunned down and burnt alive some of them and the women and children got brought to this church here where the soldiers just threw grenades into the church and killed all the women and children but one woman survived. Yeah it's pretty horrific this scene. Sad being here in this. You can't stop thinking about what happened. It's quite traumatic but I think it's really important to experience this and just to be reminded what can happen and what has happened so you can, like Ben said, you can learn from everything. Learn from these mistakes and hopefully it will never ever happen again. This might seem like it happened a long time ago and it's not relevant but it is every bit as relevant today as it ever was and it will always remain so. The impact we have on our fellow humans is telling but we have the power to choose whether we leave this planet better or worse than we find it. From here we are changing the pace and direction of this road trip. We're swapping rural France for the city life and not just any city it's Paris. We were hoping to experience real Parisian life and that is exactly what we got. But that is a story for next time.