When the 21 st century traveller visits France, they generally go with a mind-set believing that the map of France has always been vaguely the same over the centuries as it is today.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The map to the right courtesy Wikipedia suggests that towards the end of the 10 th century, a little over two thirds of modern France was in place. Whilst true in some senses, the map of France as shown in this diagram was fought over again and again throughout the next years as our journey up the west coast of France to Brittany and Normandy would reveal.
When visiting the area of Nice and, 28 kms further along the coast, Antibes, we were travelling in a part of the country that was only formally ceded to France in the s during the negotiations between France and the Kingdom of Savoy as part of the negotiations for Italian unification. This was true of Nice itself, but Antibes was just over the border in France; it had become part of France back in , thus explaining the presence of a border fort guarding the entrance to the Antibes port.
From our camping ground in La Colle sur Loup, we drove to Antibes and discovered that getting a park any where near the old centre of the town was going to be difficult. We eventually had to settle for a park outside a large shopping centre in the suburb of Rabiac and headed off in the rain down towards the port, named after Sebestien Vauban, a military engineer from the 17 th century whose name we would become very familiar with on our travels in France.
After coming to the gates of the city wall we decided we would follow the trail of fellow visitors inside the walls of the town.
