Lac de Narlay

After leaving the Route des Sapins we noticed that the next few days were looking a tad hot, well, hot for two Welsh people! We needed a campsite and somewhere to cool off. I’d been given a tip by a work colleague about a lovely campsite at Lac de Narlay in the Jura. We headed to the nearest town, Champagnole to buy some food and hopefully service Heulwen.

All stocked up on food and fully serviced we headed east towards the Jura lakes. This area has a series of beautiful lakes of varying shapes and sizes but all ripe for a swim!! The drive towards the area was beautiful, again rolling meadows and forested gentle hills, the Jura is not disappointing.

A quick stop for lunch at a shady riverside picnic area. Good old Park4night strikes again! It really can be a fantastic resource for finding all manner of places to picnic, sleep, service etc.

We arrive at Lac de Narlay and head to the campsite, wow, what a fab spot! It’s right next to the Lac, which is one of the smaller in the area but the water is blue and looks very inviting. There are a couple of options for pitches, wild spots, with or without electric, These are not marked, you just pick a spot and avoid your neighbours by an appropriate distance. We chose a level pitch with a bit of shade, electric and a killer view of the lake, result! https://en.camping-narlay.com/

On hot days like this it’s nice to pitch up at a campsite, roll the awning out, get the camp furniture out and just chill. Later in the afternoon we wandered to the lake, explored the site and just relaxed.

Food time, so us veggies get stuck in to something healthy while the rest of the campsite burn meat!!! Nice evening though, but after a longish day we just read, people watch and get set for more chilling tomorrow.

During the night we have an almighty thunderstorm, I don’t think we’ve experienced one so ferocious! It rumbled and cracked from 11pm until 4am with torrential rain! Scary stuff..

Morning brings clear weather and having peaked out of Heulwens windows and been glad that our neighbours tents are still standing after the storm we’re all set up for a relaxing day.

We pretty much spent most of the day having a swim, cooling down, drying off, getting hot and repeat! It was just what we needed to see out a pretty hot few days. The campsite did fill up and as we were leaving we found out that there where public holidays in Germany so lots of people had made the 400km trip to this area to enjoy the weather and lakes!!

The weekend was over so time to move on, next stop is a visit to some waterfalls and then hopefully a route towards Lake Geneva!